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I miss walking in Manhattan. The Bay Area has many undiscovered urban hikes and opportunities for finding new roads to discovery without the dizzying annoyance of real and potentially dangerous nature. Or so I thought before I went on my own urban hike.
EXERCISE IN HUMILITYThe distance between my Davis Islands home and the St. Petersburg Pier is roughly 20 miles.
Purists would tell you my training routine of walking a quarter mile to Tate Brother's Pizza on Davis Island Boulevard once a week for a pitcher of beer and molten lava hot wings was woefully inadequate to prepare me to walk that distance in two days.
It wasn't.
My companion for the walk was a new love, who had pronounced me lazy a week before our hike began. By the end of this little urban hike, he would join my legion of ex-boyfriends who have deeply underestimated me and overestimated their own charms. His two-hour-a-day, five-day-a-week gym regimen had broadened his shoulders while delicately maintaining the heft of his beer belly. He believed that this activity rendered him a superior physical specimen.
If true love is blind, then self-love can be dyslexic.
THE CARE AND FEEDING OF BLISTERSThe bridge from Davis Islands to Bayshore Boulevard is the most perilous part of the trip to the St. Petersburg Pier.
The 35 m.p.h. on-ramp portion that feeds onto the Island's main drag is usually stampeded by sport utility vehicles speeding by at 50 m.p.h. and bearing locals talking on cell phones while checking their faces in the rearview mirror and changing radio stations. Once this body-crushing death trap is crossed, there is the necro-zone where fishermen throw unwanted catfish and stingrays. The resultant decomposing sludge makes for a slippery walk.
While the urban hike differs from its tree-hugging bathroom-sparse cousin, it still has dangers -- though clear benefits abound. First, it isn't necessary to carry a backpack that could double as a body bag. Any school backpack will do. I favor the Scooby Doo backpack. It isn't necessary to pack food or water, emergency flares or camping gear. It is nice to take things with multiple uses like duct tape (belt, shoe repair, sex aid) and MD 20/20 fortified wine product (yuppy repellant, wound cleaner, liquid motivation).
It's also good to follow some basic rules. Read the current medical literature on the care and feeding of blisters, take in the widely varying views on "popping vs. not popping," pick one and pack the necessary implements. If hiking socks are out of your league, buy the lowest percentage cotton available in a sport sock three-pack. Change them every three hours. As the miles mount, cotton's friendly soft absorbency becomes an acid footbath.
MILLIONAIRE MILESBy the time we made it to Bayshore Boulevard, approximately 1/16th of a mile, my hiking buddy was working on his second cigarette and an increasingly bad mood.
We had to get to food fast.
A properly planned urban hike has all the offerings of a fair midway. With a plethora of convenience stores and shops, the backpack can be kept to essentials. Like socks, underwear and call-brand liquor in plastic containers.
The walk down Bayshore is best if the infamous bayside sidewalk is avoided. The crush of jogging bras, roller blades, pampered pets and speeding baby buggies is terrifically overrated. Walking across the street by the huge, stately, eye-bleed-causing conspicuous multistory homes facing the bay is a genteel if humbling experience.
Occasionally you can spot an incredibly thin denizen of one of these mansions, her facial expression tightened with a surgical precision we mock primarily because we can't afford it. Much like the simplest chandelier on the porch, the table settings visible through large bay windows or the landscaping -- a square foot of which would equal one low down payment with Bond's Auto Sales buy-here-pay-here plan.
In addition to being hungry and foul-tempered, the love of my life version 5.0 hates his shirt. Conveniently, our turn onto Bay-to-Bay Boulevard puts us within a block of the Salvation Army on MacDill Avenue.
Hyper salesmen leap about the store, hustling the half-off sale. It's Let's Make a Deal with used lingerie. For $3 we walk out with hiking boots, a man's tank top and a woman's handbag.
Back on Bay to Bay, I imagine that the oriental carpet stores actually sell Arabian Nights-style magic carpets. By stealing one, I could reach the end of my destination a lot faster. Early in the morning we had stashed my truck at the Grant Motel, a 1950s-style motor court on Fourth Street North in St. Petersburg. The motel was the mid-point destination for the two-day hike and served as an important resting place after the 8-mile portion of Gandy Boulevard that included Gandy Bridge's arch.
An arch that was assuming Everest-like proportions in my mind in only hour three of the hike that, from start to finish, would take 12 hours.
BEAN THERE, DONE THATBean There (3203 Bay to Bay Blvd.) is a quaint, wooden-floored, real-food-serving coffee shop, the sort of place I'd driven by dozens of times. On foot, the city assumes new proportions. Each little store, each block, each house and even individual trees present small acts of discovery. Each step brings a new world into focus.
Inside Bean There, my boyfriend and I fight over a couple who are loudly discussing the relative merits of Aruba and the Bahamas. My guy takes exception to the gent's chest hair sticking out over his V-neck cotton shirt. I'm tired of a certain shade of dyed red hair she sports.
We've earned bitchy. We've got an $11 backpack between us and 10 miles to cover before dark.
The specter of the Gandy Bridge now assumes the shape and sheer size of the Washington Monument.
Farther down Bay to Bay, we stop at the Bali Trading Company (3407 Bay to Bay Blvd.) and purchase sandalwood and lilac soap. The dream of clean is stronger than my need for water as we turn left on South Dale Mabry.
A Rolls Royce slides by somewhere under the sound of speed as I wonder if road fumes might actually make one high. I consider that privileging the "natural" over man-made is an act of self-hatred. A vertical sign in front of the new Howard Johnson Express advertises "refrigerator weddings" and "microwave reunions" with Jacuzzi suites. It takes two stoplights for me to realize I'm running the words together and there will be no appliance honeymoons.
ANTS IN HER PANTSThe pleasures of real bathrooms cannot be overstated. The carefully planned urban hike is lined with comfort stations. As my sidekick goes to the bathroom, I take the opportunity to remove my backpack and set it on the ground as I ponder the possibilities of an ice cream sandwich.
When I strap the backpack onto my partially bare back, the real fun of the day begins.
Crushed between my vulnerable lower back, and rapidly spreading to sensitive lower areas, are somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-million pissed-off, biting fire ants. Raking my hand across the back of my hip removes approximately 20 of them.
The resulting dance crushes my sunglasses. My walking companion comes back, refreshed. He suggests that I wash my face.
The calm wild flowers of untamed suburbia along El Prado Boulevard are balm to my terrorized soul. Every two blocks I erupt into hysterical laughter. It is possible that multiple bites may cause a narcotic high.
Turning down West Shore Boulevard, I look longingly at the original Green Iguana. But I know if I walk into its cool, dark interior I will never leave. Instead I restrict myself to the kumquats I can steal from people's yards on the winding path to Gandy.
The 7-Eleven at Gandy and West Shore actually has a condom dispenser that sells a product called "Rugged-n-Ready" for a mere 50 cents. We opt instead for some power bars and bottled water before we turn toward scaling the bridge.
Chewing the chocolate-covered, sawdust-flavored Zone Bar is not recommended when you're walking into a bait shop. An insidious synesthesia takes over the senses, causing the Zone Bar's taste to approximate dead, rotting fish. Two bait shops featuring vats of squirming things suitable for Fear Factor dining are the last two points of civilization before the Gandy Bridge, the so-called Friendship Bridge.
I replace my sunglasses and face my man-made nemesis. My other nemesis has fallen half a block behind me. We've been walking for nearly five hours.
The 50-minute walk over the Friendship Bridge will be nearly the last pleasant one we'll ever share. I cross over what I think is the roughest part of the hike with no difficulty. As Mark Twain once wryly noted, he had feared a lot of things in his life and some of them actually happened to him.
At the end of the bridge, under the southbound span, rests a handmade memorial for 18-year-old Carlos Monti who slipped off the catwalk into the water and drowned in 1999. The cross bears the words: "You are my love, you poophead, mom." Almost four years after his passing, the memorial remains well tended.
As we cross over Gandy, we are following the path of where Monti's body drifted. He was found near the Banana Boat Restaurant days later after an intensive search.
Between Monti's memorial and the Banana Boat, there are many other crosses and flowers marking memories of those lost, including a larger permanent one carefully maintained here on the beach known affectionately as The Redneck Riviera. A memorial filled with liquor and beer bottles serves as a remembrance to Dale Earnhardt.
Just past it, a woman with wild red hair drives a van with a front plate bearing Earnhardt's mythological number 3. She's following a boy, probably her son, as he speeds by in a go-cart.
At the Banana Boat (13090 Gandy Blvd.), it seems all three patrons know each other. Consequently they sit as far apart as possible and do not speak. A mood sinks in between my doomed boyfriend and me as we look at late 1980s and early '90s posters of Buccaneer cheerleaders wearing bathing suits that may have been shocking at the time but now closely resemble jogging apparel. The Banana Boat is a big, expensive downer.
Unfortunately, we bypass the Crab Shack's famous 50-cent oyster shooters and honey grilled shrimp. We fight in front of Dave's where the bar throws some great cold, cheap beer and has a great Southern-inspired menu. I get bit again by a legion of ants when I sit on a curb and refuse to walk anywhere else with my boyfriend, who is yelling about something that doesn't remotely make sense.
We're so close to the Grant Motel, where we're planning to spend the night, that if the Jolly Green Giant moved the Derby Lane Greyhound racing track, we could see it.
The compromise we reach gets us to the Goodwill, where he buys some more clothes and stores them in my backpack. Next door is the Bed Tyme Stories Adult Store (10568 Gandy Blvd.), where I pick up some Foreplay lubricating gel. Not for the coming night at the Grant Hotel, but for my toes.
This slick gel advertises its lubricating powers for pelvis-pulverizing sex, but it actually works well to keep blisters from popping and toes from rubbing together. At this point, we're in hour nine of the hike. My feet don't resemble bubble wrap. Yet.
However, my companion meets his Waterloo. He can't go on. His legs hurt. His calves hurt. He hurts. The 10 hours he spends in the gym every week are nothing against the nine hours on the terra firma of Tampa Bay.
I feel fine. We take a Yellow Cab the half-mile to the Grant Motel.
ROOMS TO HOWhen we get to the Grant Motel, the ladies staying in the room next to us are about to take a walk. One is wearing nothing but a T-shirt.
I watch her bend over so her ass faces downtown St. Pete and sort of V-frames the shuffleboard court out front.
"Let's get in the room," my companion mumbles as the women laugh and walk happily down the strip.
Fourth Street continuously battles streetwalkers and all manner of crime that traditionally haunts its small motels. Some of the motels have gained second lives as childcare facilities while others house sexual predators and offenders who can't find housing elsewhere. In the small hotels between Gandy Boulevard and Second Avenue North, there are at least nine people who are listed on the State of Florida's Sexual Offender database. The AAA-approved Grant Motel's $42-a-night room rate discourages some of this.
I become mesmerized by an unopened moist towelette pack attached to the door with two deliberate swatches of tape. It turns out it covers the peephole. If you were tracking big game, this would be the metaphorical footprint for a big freaking paranoid crack addict. As in, the police can see through the peepholes.
Thank God a moist towelette can save you from the man. In terms of multi-uses -- this is a new one for the urban hike backpack.
One of our last conversations is about the spiritual qualities of the blister. Now sporting four kidney-bean-shaped ones around my toes, I marvel at their unique and practical character.
"I think blisters are a sign that we are loved by the universe," I say, perhaps blissed out by all the fire ant venom in my blood.
"I think it's a sign of infection," he replies, peering into the depths of the remote control to the ancient Zenith television set.
The real bridge crossed today wasn't the one off Gandy.
HOW IT ENDSI get up early and leave without him. The hike to the pier is only 6 miles, which means I can make it back to check out by 11 a.m. if I return by cab.
The golden minarets of the Ukranian Catholic Church rise behind the Grant Motel. The Sunday walk down Fourth Street is quiet, but by 9 a.m., I can hear the bells of the church ringing behind me.
This is the quiet part of the walk because no one is holding me back or telling me what to do. My blisters are slicked down with Foreplay lubricant, so my pace is quick.
I am thinking about the mystery of Karen Boren, whose abandoned car was found in Tampa in April of 2000. She had been dead nearly eight months when her body was found that fall at the Monticello Motel at 1700 Fourth St. N. in St Petersburg. She was in bed. Her purse lay nearby. The motel was closed and had become a haven for transients.
Boren's babysitter had reported her missing that April night; she had last been seen at Mr. T's Pub, a few blocks from the Monticello. It was a mystery that weighed on me when I decided to take my long walk to a short pier.
The Monticello Hotel is open again. It even has a Mediterranean restaurant. Looking at the area where houses and shops are packed together like grapes, I have a hard time believing that no one saw anything. Here the street becomes something I call the Banyan Quarter. On Sunday during the day, this is a neighborhood suitable for the new Starbucks and Tijuana Flats. However, at night it might be that the red devil painted on the interior of Tijuana Flats stands for more than the hot sauce.
Spidering out from the Banyan Tree Motel area (610 Fourth St. N.), men hang out in doorways, pushing crack and women. And women alone, occasionally in pairs, walk from block to block. Judging by the cars that stop for them, I'd say it's an egalitarian place because I see everything from high-end sports cars to family vans stopping for some action.
I peer into the closed, pale-wood-paneled room of Mr. T's Pub. The bar hugs the door. There is one exit. Reports said that Boren liked the karaoke that they do here many nights. They also mentioned she was 33 and had some bad habits in her past. Mr. T's is midway between the Banyan Tree Motel and the Monticello Motel. If Mr. T's Pub had a house drink, it should be called Sex on the Bench, due to its proximity to Round Lake Park, a place with its own night scene.
The police have never found her killer. They've had leads. Suspects have been questioned and the case remains open. But Karen's last call here on Fourth Street has never been adequately explained. For women of a certain age with certain histories, there are no Amber alerts or neighborhood turnouts.
By the time I get to Second Avenue North, my solitude is heavier than my backpack. But I'm wearing it well. On the corner of Williams Park stands the perfect man.
Brigadier General Thaddeus Kosciuszko. Composed in bronze with broad shoulders, thick sensuous lips and tight, suggestive pants, he represents all that I do not have in my life. A moral, spiritual compass in the hands of a man who looks incredible in knickers. Kosciuszko was a military engineer of Polish descent who was a friend of Thomas Jefferson. In his will, he left his money to free slaves. His presence here on a corner of St. Petersburg is a gift from local Polish societies, including the American Institute of Polish Culture Pinellas County.
At this end point, the walk slants a bit down toward the pier. The landscape begins to get lush. I walk past BayWalk and its specialty shops down toward the Fine Arts Museum.
In the window of Ambria's Gallery of Wearable Art (20 Beach Drive N.E.) are some amazing dresses that make me dream of being a latter-day Cinderella. Embroidered white roses encrust a mint green gown whose hem resembles falling gossamer spring leaves.
By the time I reach the infamous inverted pyramid of the St. Petersburg Pier I've resisted jumping into the cool green water at least a dozen times. On the top floor, I look toward Davis Island and I'm overcome with a grand sense of accomplishment.
I've made it past memorials and being called lazy. I've eluded the sweet darkness of a bar, fought myself out of the softness of a bed, walked past blocks that still hold a mystery and cried over my own lost glass slipper. But I walked from one bay to another in the same pair of shoes. And in terms of fairy tales, I'd left the sleeping dragon back at the motel and happily every after is something I can draw my own map for -- and walk each and every mile.
Rhonda Kitchens is a poet, a librarian, a Weekly Planet muse and a woman about town.
