Wednesday, July 17, 2002

A Pilgrim's Progress

The trek from Tampa Bay to the Gulf along Central Avenue is a chance to examine the city’s landscape and the nature of exploration.

By Robin Sloan
Points South Staff Writer

GULF BOULEVARD

My back is tied in knots. My hands are swollen from swinging at my sides for hours. My shirt is soaked with sweat and the sun is sinking lower in the west, peeking under the visor of my hat. Nothing is fun anymore, not even Treasure Island’s gaudy pirate spokesman.

Then, something glitters between two buildings. I think I see water.

BEACH DRIVE

Four hours earlier, I dipped my toe into Tampa Bay and turned to face Central Avenue. This road runs clear across Pinellas County, through St. Petersburg and Pasadena and Treasure Island, straight out to the Gulf of Mexico.

You see, I like maps. In middle school, I used to draw maps obsessively and dot them with cryptic-sounding cities, oceans and mountain ranges. Roads, too--but only the grand roads, the passages that connected the civilizations.

Well, Central Avenue’s not quite the Silk Road, but it’s still pretty sexy. It runs like a belt across the peninsula, nine miles long.

My Central Avenue stories have focused on single points--never the entire line. My goal today is to walk the line, to see what it looks like.

Contents of backpack: Six bottles of Zephyrhills water. Twelve Nature Valley granola bars. Two extra T-shirts. One backup pencil. Here we go.

FIRST STREET

As I trot past the pink expanse of the St. Petersburg Yacht Club on the corner of Central Avenue and First Street, I remind myself to use all my senses on this trek. I smell the plants. I hear a jackhammer from the north--they're building a new hotel up on First Avenue North.

This is where Fortunato’s After Dark serves up 178 different kind of beer from around the world to connoisseurs and college students alike. That’s a point on the line--one of my stories.

I see the clock on the Bank of America tower--it's 1:15 p.m., and the sun is almost directly overhead. I drink a bottle of water and chew on a granola bar.

DR. M.L. KING (NINTH) STREET

This is a part of Central Avenue I know well. Downtown thins out fast. Soon, I’ve hit the eerie quiet of the Dome District. Here, the dome at Tropicana Field looks too big and too flat, like a cardboard cutout pasted on the horizon. The landscaping is exquisite: colored concrete in wide swoops and swirls, palm trees imported from California.

This is where Dawn Storm started the Realm, an artsy coffee shop, nearly a year ago and where John Warren is fighting with the city of St. Petersburg to build more parking. They are points on the line--a couple of my stories.

19TH STREET

Just beyond the Interstate 275 overpass, I see a huge mural on the side of an orange building called Club Excalibur. It shows the view down Central Avenue to the east. In the mural, Tropicana Field is on the right, shining like liquid mercury; The Pier is likewise rendered as a high-tech, upside-down pyramid, surrounded by what are either roiling clouds or gigantic typhoon waves. Lightning crackles all around downtown St. Petersburg, as if the whole city is being electrocuted. In the foreground is Club Excalibur, a limo parked in front, huge lines stretched out around the corner.

I look around. The street is completely empty.

25TH STREET

Central Avenue is very flat here. The heat is starting to get to me, and I feel slightly sick. It’s about 88 degrees. I crack open another Zephyrhills.

Near here, Beacon House serves hot meals to homeless men from up and down Central Avenue. They’re points on the line--one of my stories.

I see the Sunday St. Petersburg Times in a newspaper box. The front page features a story about a double amputee, a man without legs, and his quest to walk. I decide to pay attention to what it feels like to walk, but soon realize it doesn’t feel like much of anything. For a young man, walking is like breathing. I can barely even feel my muscles working as I put one leg in front of the other.

Other parts of me aren’t so lucky. My profoundly unergonomic backpack has been focusing the weight of my water and granola entirely on my trapezius muscles, high on my shoulders and back, and they have begun to protest.

My journey is not feeling as epic as I had hoped. There’s not really a sense of crossing a great land mass; it’s just one stoplight after another, and they’re all beginning to look the same.

I realize that my default facial expression has become a grimace of pain. My head is swimming. I hoist my backpack a little and crack open another Zephyrhills.

This isn’t as easy as I thought it would be.

43RD STREET

I'm walking past a row of palms, and I see a cake on the grass. It's a birthday cake, overturned, and it seems fresh--no bugs yet. Some of the white frosting sticks to my shoe when I nudge it over. It's covered with colored confetti sprinkles. I wonder how it got there.

Here, in the middle of Central Avenue, the trees aren’t trimmed. Their branches droop down across the sidewalk, slapping me in the face if I’m not watching. Palm fronds are stacked in layers on the sidewalk, dried to a crisp. There are cans, plastic wrappers, cigarette butts, sandals and birthday cakes. Here, far from either shore, the world is not well-maintained.

46TH STREET

I pass a man in a bright white suit and matching fedora with a jeweled stud in his nose. He nods at me and sips his 20-ounce Coke. A few blocks later, I pass a small group: men in pinstripes and suspenders, women in elegant red-and-white skirts and jackets. They’re standing in a parking lot, arguing about something in low voices.

I try to open my senses here, but I’m too tired. My shoulders ache, and I just want to be done. I look straight ahead.

PARK STREET

I’m not really reporting anymore, just trudging forward, focused on my goal. My heart surges a little as I cross the first bridge toward Treasure Island. I have one bottle of Zephyrhills left, and I am hoarding it.

PARADISE LANE

This is the home stretch.

My walk has ceased to be in any way adventurous, and I realize that I may have, er, romanticized the great explorers of the past. This is only nine miles in the heat. Ibn Battuta, the great 14^th-century traveler who is said to have logged tens of thousands of miles, must have had a terrible time. They didn’t have ergonomic backpacks back then, either.

I see two joggers coming my way. The man is wearing a red Speedo and a spandex shirt that ends above his bellybutton. Sweat becomes venom, and I think: What a stooge.

At the end of Paradise Lane, I see the final causeway to Treasure Island. As I cross, the sea breeze thrums across the open top of my Zephyrhills bottle.

GULF BOULEVARD (AGAIN)

Yeah, it’s water.

I really do feel like an explorer as I stumble between the Bilmar and the Thunderbird beach resorts--there it is, the Gulf of Mexico. I kick off my shoes, peel off my socks, and walk into the surf. The waves roll over my toes, up my ankles, and I am so glad to be done with this terrible walk.

I look back and imagine I can see Tampa Bay and all the things between here and there. My tired, annoyed tension melts into plain fatigue, and as I cool down and chill out, I realize I didn’t find the line I was looking for.

I found some cool stories, though. For instance:

"J. Bryant" is the artist who painted the Club Excalibur mural. His airbrush art adorns walls and windows for blocks on Central Avenue. He’s a story.

For the first time, I noticed that the Church of Scientology has adopted a section of Central Avenue through the Adopt-a-Street program. What do people think about that? That’s a story.

And finally, most intriguing of all: a birthday cake, abandoned. That is definitely a story.

Stories, like single geometric points: lay them down in a line, and you’ve got Central Avenue. The only physical line I found was made of concrete, and that was pretty boring. Was the Silk Road boring in person, too? Was it just a bleak dirt track?

I still like the line from far above. I love the thick red squiggle across a map, signifying commerce, immigration and discovery--maybe some adventure, too.

But down on the ground, all I see are stories: a man in a white fedora, a man in a red Speedo.

And now, there’s a new story: a reporter with an aching back, eating another granola bar, sitting on a bench in downtown Treasure Island, waiting--as you never could on the Silk Road--for an air-conditioned ride home.