The Talk of Downtown St. Petersburg, FL – Race Cars!

"Was that an Indy Car?"

It takes something interesting and obvious to get the people of downtown St. Petersburg, Florida to talk about the same thing. Yet this week and probably next, the residents of this beautiful little city on a peninsula have had the same subject on their lips at least once a day in their comings and goings – The upcoming St. Petersburg Grand Prix.

St. Petersburg is a wonderus little city. It quietly achieves what other cities pretend to. St. Pete (as we lovinginly shorten its name to), is a large modern city that actually feels like a small town, without the “deliverance” style folks mucking about. Its citizens are not the typical NASCAR crowd for sure.

Not everyone in St. Petersburg, are fond of these races. As you can imagine, it’s Florida and that means we have a higher portion of retirees than cities “up north.” They like their sleep and they like to start it early. The race winds through the streets of the usually quiet downtown waterfont parks and several very large high rise condos overlook the course, bearing the brunt of the noise. The cars race with their high octane powerhouses well past their bedtimes I’m sure.

There are plenty of fans too. Some of them are actually race fans, some just like the deep pocketed tourists the Indy race brings into town. A lot of them are like me, not race fans at all but still finding it entertaining to be able to walk downtown and see this grand spectacle of shiny cars, raw horsepower and the artistic nature of the cars high tech designs.

Of course, any large event in any city brings its share of people the residents would rather not have visit us. There are a few drunken rednecks, there are always a few “I’m rich and important” types, drunken frat boys or the ones that want to be racers themselves. This last type seem to think that our city is the set for a sequel to “Fast and Furious” racing their super-loud cars all over our city at all times of day or night, well, not usually early in the morning. St. Pete is in Florida so we are used to tourists, and having this crowd here for a week or so isn’t really doing us much harm, I suppose.

So we look forward to Grand Prix starting next week (March 30 if your interested), we watch with interest as the massive preparations get underway in more than half of our downtown parks. And we talk about it with relief. It’s so nice to talk about something that isn’t going to anger someone even if they don’t like it. It’s a nice safe subject, and there’s usually something interesting to say.

Not everyone goes downtown often, but a surprising number of us do. We have a wonderful downtown, chock filled with all kinds of independent restaurants and coffee houses. Is there a better way to start a conversation with a stranger than “Was that an Indy Car?”