“All skate, all skate!” When Elynor Gould’s voice came over the public address system at Gay Blades Roller Rink, the skaters on the floor – sometimes...
When Rob Stambaugh was a boy, his job was to sweep up the family business every night, once the last customer had departed and the buzzing,...
This story appears in the book Vintage St. Pete: The Golden Age of Tourism and More (St. Petersburg Press). No one in all Florida rejoices...
St. Pete wasn’t exactly a one-horse town in 1939, when its aging City Hall (at the current site of the First Central Tower, on 4th Street...
VINTAGE ST. PETE is a series focused on our city’s illustrious (and occasionally notorious) past. Many of these features have appeared in the Catalyst over the...
Because of its popularity as a retirement destination, and the subsequent preponderance of an elderly population, sleepy St. Petersburg had a nickname: God’s Waiting Room. Although...
Thirty-five summers have come and gone since Regan Garnett last stood on the windswept deck of the HMS Bounty, the replica 18th century wooden ship docked...
St. Petersburg might be a very different place today if Titan Marketing Group had purchased Sunken Gardens back in 1999, as the Homosassa-based real estate company...
VINTAGE ST. PETE is a series focused on our city’s illustrious (and occasionally notorious) past. Many of these features have appeared in the Catalyst over the past...
When the Great Depression enveloped America in the late 1920s, the curtain had just come down on the silent film era. Spirit-lifting “talkies” were all the...