If you’ve arrived at this page, it’s likely because you listened to The Zest podcast and possibly heard my chat with host Robin Sussingham about my online shenanigans related to documenting the Great Convenience Stores of Tampa. (More on that in a minute.)
To paraphrase “The Shawshank Redemption,” if you’ve come this far, maybe you’re willing to come a little further.
This is my first attempt at my own name-brand site. I started blogging in 2002 on a site called Side Salad. It still lives, mostly as a ghostly artifact to a time before Facebook and Twitter swallowed all the words. I learned a great deal in the nine or so years I did that blog. Reading the archives is akin to bamboo under the fingernail. Cringeworthy, as the phrase goes. Much of it reads like an embarrassing diary, but those were the times. Imagine the worst of Facebook, without the politics, and then quadruple it.
From 2002 to 2014, I wrote and edited and podcasted about food for the Tampa Tribune. It was the perfect time to have a choice seat watching the city’s food life evolve for a new generation. I still write occasionally (See Tampa’s Table and Tampa With A Twist), but now I mostly do it for fun.
Hence the “Great Convenience Stores of Tampa” series.
In September, I started documenting c-stores (as they’re called in the industry) on Instagram and Facebook. They’ve always fascinated me.
It probably goes back to my childhood in St. Petersburg, when my friend Keith Poirier and I would violate Mom Law and sneak across busy First Avenue South and Central Avenue to the 7-Eleven on 64th Street to go buy Wacky Packages, Gatorade gum and Amazing Spider-Man comics. When we were worried our parents would find out, we’d ride our bikes to the safer alternative: the Short Stop Food Mart at 64th and Fifth Avenue South. They had cool stuff, too, but it wasn’t as much of a thrill as crossing two streets of rush-hour traffic.
I love mom-and-pop shops because of the odd variety of snacks and drinks they stock. Each one has its own personality that both reflects the neighborhoods they’re in and the differences between their businesses and the corporate chains. I don’t know what will happen to the independent neighborhood stores when the invasion of the Wawas and Thorntons and RaceTracs take root. I’d like to think there is enough business for all of them. The Short Stop and the 7-Eleven I grew up with? The Short Stop is still there. The 7-Eleven is now called M&S Mart.
Not long ago, I realized that my interest runs through my DNA. After my great-grandfather, Bruno Reitano, emigrated to the United States on March 23, 1905, from the Italian region of Calabria, he made his way to the Dundalk suburb of Baltimore, where he was a butcher. One of my favorite photos is of him in the early 1930s standing in front of his grocery on Holabird Avenue with my great-grandmother, my grandmother Josephine and her sisters Betty and Mary. He sold fresh vegetables and ice and lard in addition to his butcher shop items. Eventually, he bought and expanded the building, creating a beauty shop for Betty and Mary and a nightclub for my grandmother who ran it as a strip club, featuring performers like Blaze Starr and Gypsy Rose Lee.
My mom remembers playing with the G-strings and tassels in the dressing room.
My point? Sometimes passions choose you without your knowing what truly propels them.
Talk about convenient.
In November, I sat down for an interview with WUSF’s podcast, The Zest, about the series. It was a bizarre experience, being interviewed about something so ephemeral.
But maybe that’s the point. When you do things for yourself, an audience that grooves the way you do eventually finds you.
There was no goal when I started all this, but I’ve been encouraged by friends to make a book of some sort from the endeavor. So I will. Eventually.
In the meantime, there will be other projects along the way, including a non-food podcast that I’ve been working on.
Please be patient. It takes me a while to get going. This site was at least a decade in the making, for goodness sake.
Thanks for joining the party.