I was born and raised in St. Petersburg, Florida. My parents came south from Chicago in 1958, which is when I arrived, so while my three siblings are more or less Midwesterners, I am a Southerner. I left St. Pete for Gainesville, and the University of Florida, and I stayed there for more than 20 years. My kids were born there, and I ran the arts section for the local newspaper.
Music has always been important to me. That’s why I started writing in the first place, because I was passionate, and opinionated, about popular music. Writing-wise, everything else came later.
After Gainesville there was Stuart, Florida and Savannah, Georgia, and in 2014 my wife Amy and I settled in St. Petersburg. I discovered a very different city from the one I knew so many years ago.
The rapid growth of this area is disconcerting, but not entirely unwelcome, as progress can’t (and I suppose shouldn’t) be stopped. I began the Vintage St. Pete series, in the St. Pete Catalyst, to preserve important memories of people, places and traditions gone by – not the technical nuts and bolts of city history, but those things that entertained and elevated those of us who lived and worked here.
The idea there was “Somebody really ought to write this stuff down,” before it fades into dust. I looked around, and nobody else seemed to be doing it. So it turned out to be me.