St. Petersburg's restaurant scene runs from Downtown's Beach Drive Italian corridor to Grand Central's taquerias, Central Oak Park's Mexican strip, and a Gateway neighborhood that's quietly become one of the best eating areas on the Gulf Coast.
St. Petersburg has a Beach Drive bar scene built for visitors and a completely different bar culture for locals. This is the latter — from a dive open since 1950 to a Kenwood neighborhood watering hole open until 3am.
St. Pete's best experiences are not on the tourist corridor. Roser Park's historic brick streets, Coffee Pot Bayou's manatees, the Kenwood artist enclave, and a maple swamp most visitors never find — here's where locals actually go.
Historic Kenwood is St. Petersburg's most genuine neighborhood — 1920s bungalows, a thriving artist enclave, kava bars, and the Grand Central District a walk away. The guide tourists haven't found yet.
St. Petersburg treats weekend mornings as a sport. The sidewalks along Central Avenue fill before 10 a.m., the patios on Beach Drive get a steady breeze off Tampa Bay, and the line at any espresso bar between MLK and 4th Street tells you exactly which neighborhood has figured out
Walk west from the downtown waterfront on Central Avenue and somewhere around 16th Street the city changes register. The buildings drop to one and two stories, the awnings start advertising vinyl and vintage Levi's, and a four-story mural of a heron or a stag or a woman with butt
By the last Saturday in June, downtown St. Pete has rearranged itself. The northbound lanes of Bayshore Drive are coned off before sunrise, the bars along Central pull their patio gates open early, and the waterfront parks fill with sound checks that carry across the harbor to th