It is Downtown. It could be any American city.
It is St. Petersburg. Earnest young women in no-nonsense dresses exit the office buildings. Uneasy young lawyers in dark blue suits duck furtively into Blimpie's for lunch. Speed, they volunteer, not the the $2.99 sandwich special, is the attraction.

Out on the streets, mixed among the cleanly dressed, yet hardly noticed, are the Regulars.

They are characters from another time, another place: a fiddler; a fairly prosperous-looking pensioner; a harmless old crazy calmly talking to a seemingly less harmless old crazy who barks occasionally; a half-starved old lady who lives in a hotel; any number of people waiting for free food in Williams Park; an ex-bellhop from a time when even little hotels had bellhops.

There are Key People who work downtown, too, and by evening most of them have gone wherever people like that go. Movers have moved, shakers have shaked, and Downtown settles back.

Times artist Don Morris has roamed the Downtown streets, met the humble and the haughty, ventured into little hotels and penthouse offices, the rooms with and without a view.

Don Morris Audio (270k)

Introduction by JACQUIN SANDERS
Stories and illustrations by DON MORRIS, Times Artist
©St. Petersburg Times, Published October, 1994

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