Kelly Miyar | NNB For Carla Bristol, a sense of community is as important as an appreciation of art
BY KELLY MIYAR NNB Student Reporter
ST. PETERSBURG – The new art gallery on St. Petersburg’s historic 22nd Street S features art, of course – specifically African and Caribbean art.
But depending on when you stop in, owner Carla Bristol has other offerings in her Gallerie 909.
Musical instruments are scattered about the room, ready for impromptu jam sessions.
There are spoken-word performances from 4 to 6 p.m. on Sundays, professional photo shoots every third Saturday, wine tastings, and musical performances.
There’s even something for teenage boys. Bristol says sagging pants – a style statement for some in urban culture – are demeaning. Young men who sign a pledge to keep their pants pulled up get a “U Don’t Have To Sag To Have Swag” card and free ice cream. So far, six have made the pledge.
For Bristol, 46, a sense of community is as important as an appreciation of art.
“This place shows importance for both the community and art,” she said. “To me, one of the words that I value most is exposure. I want to expose others (to art) and I want to stay relevant with what’s needed in the community.”
Bristol was born in Guyana on the northern coast of South America. She was 11 when her family moved to Brooklyn, N.Y. A desire for warmer weather prompted her to move to St. Petersburg in 1996.
Courtesy of Carla Bristol Musicians Claude Kennedy (left) and Abasi Ote perform at the gallery
In April, she opened the gallery in one of the old buildings along 22nd Street S that entrepreneurs Elihu and Carolyn Brayboy have bought and restored.
During the days of segregation, 22nd Street – “The Deuces” – was the main street of a thriving black community. In its heyday during the late 1950s and early 1960s, more than a hundred businesses dotted the neighborhood.
Then decline and decay set in with the coming of integration, drug trafficking and Interstate 275, which in the late 1970s effectively cut the neighborhood in two. In recent years, the city and private business people like the Brayboys have sought to revive the area.
Gallerie 909 features artists from all around the world. Every four to six weeks a new artist is featured. A variety of artwork – ceramics, paintings, sculptures, furniture and even some jewelry – is showcased.
Bristol stresses African and Caribbean art. “I find that although we have a lot of galleries here in St. Pete, none of them specifically feature African or Caribbean art,” she said. “They may carry a small collection of it, but that’s it. I wanted a place to showcase ‘black art’ because it deserves to be shown.”
Gallerie 909 got its name because of its address, but Bristol incorporated the uncommon spelling because she wanted a French influence.
“I knew that the restaurant next door was going to be a Creole restaurant so I decided to spell it as Gallerie,” she said.
In June, Bristol left her job as an account manager at a business services company so she could focus on Gallerie 909.
“I am an art enthusiast! I love art,” said Bristol, who has filled her home with paintings. When she isn’t at Gallerie 909, Bristol is spending time with her 10-year-old daughter and 18-year-old son.
Courtesy of Carla Bristol Patrons pack the popular gallery
Gallerie 909 was recently recognized as one of the area’s top five art galleries by readers of the Tampa Bay Business Journal in the paper’s annual Best in the Biz: Readers’ Choice Awards. Some 15,000 votes were tallied to determine the winners. The Dali Museum, the Chihuly Collection and the Morean Arts Center in St. Petersburg and the Michael Murphy Gallery in Tampa also were recognized.
Two local musicians, Claude Kennedy and Abasi Ote, shared their talents at Gallerie 909 in November. Kennedy played the flute and Ote played a unique blend of drum and native flute.
“Gallerie 909 is a warm and inviting place,” said Ote.
He and Kennedy are scheduled to perform again on Dec. 26 at the Gallerie 909 world music concert.
If you go
Gallerie 909, at 909 22nd St. S, is open from 1 to 7 p.m. on Saturdays, 1 to 6 p.m. on Sundays, and on special occasions. For more information, see its website at: http://www.gallerie909.com/about-us.html
Nancy McCann | NNB Elihu and Carolyn Brayboy’s restaurant offers nostalgia and Creole cooking
By NANCY McCANN NNB Student Reporter
ST. PETERSBURG – Elihu and Carolyn Brayboy have opened a new Creole restaurant on St. Petersburg’s historic 22nd Street S. Although they are busy being entrepreneurs, it is just as important for them to welcome people to the neighborhood and share its history.
“I’m Mr. B and this is Mrs. B,” Elihu Brayboy likes to say when introducing himself and his wife.
The Brayboys, both 65, are investing $800,000 to buy and restore four buildings along the street that was known as “The Deuces” when it was the main corridor of black St. Petersburg during decades of segregation and discrimination.
The restaurant is at the intersection of 22nd Street S and Ninth Avenue, a five-minute drive from downtown St. Petersburg.
Nancy McCann | NNB For 50 years, these doors opened into Sidney Harden’s grocery
The Brayboys are proud that the entryway and open-style kitchen of Chief’s Creole Café used to be Sidney Harden’s grocery, which served black customers from 1942 until 1992.
“It breaks my heart when people see an old building and think they’re seeing just an old building,” said Mr. B. “Harden’s grocery was a cultural market with things like chitterlings, rabbit and possum. We feel so blessed to be saving this building. This building meant a lot to a lot of people.”
When they were tearing down Harden’s old meat locker, Mrs. B said, they found two aprons that once belonged to the butcher. The butcher’s family shed tears when the aprons were returned to them.
Chitterlings and possum are not on the menu of the new restaurant, where entrees like red beans and rice with sausage, Creole gumbos, jambalaya and other Louisiana favorites range in price from $9 to $15.
Every week there is a “Soulful Sunday Supper,” including baked ham, fried or baked chicken, macaroni and cheese, candied yams, corn bread, seasonal vegetables, and bread pudding or ice cream.
The “chief” in the restaurant’s name refers to Elihu Brayboy’s late mother, Mary Brayboy Jones, whose specialty was the Creole cooking of her native Louisiana. She got her nickname from her take-charge personality. Some of the dishes on the menu are prepared from her recipes.
Courtesy Elihu Brayboy The “chief” in the restaurant’s name was the nickname of Elihu Brayboy’s mother, who was well known for her take-charge personality and Creole recipes.
“Chief was raised around great cooking by her mother and other relatives,” said Mr. B. “After she moved to St. Petersburg with my father, she ran a small catering business serving famous entertainers and their crews who came to town.”
He said that his mother and father divorced and she later married Norman E. Jones Sr.
“Our dessert, ‘Down on Central Jones’ ice cream, is named for my stepfather’s radio program, broadcast from Tampa in the 1950s,” said Mr. B.
Jones’ program was “for and about African Americans locally and nationally” and “helped introduce jazz to the Tampa Bay area,” according to the website Radio Years.
“Something people find interesting about my stepfather is that he was chairman of the National Black Citizens Committee for (Alabama Gov. and presidential candidate) George Wallace (in 1972), because he believed many of the governor’s policies supported blacks and helped them flourish,” Mr. B said.
Many people remember Chief through her work as a nurse at Mercy Hospital, Bayfront Medical Center and Eckerd College’s student medical clinic, Mr. B said.
The Brayboys’ restaurant is two blocks south of Sylvia’s – a soul food restaurant that opened last year in a restored building where Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Count Basie performed during the Jim Crow era – and seven blocks south of 3 Daughters Brewing, a popular night spot.
Courtesy of Matt McCann Entrees on the menu range from $9 to $15
Memories of the people who lived, worked, survived and thrived in segregated African-American neighborhoods are important to the Brayboys. They want it known that amid the tough conditions of segregation, there were many positive experiences.
The Brayboys grew up and dated as teenagers in the neighborhood – now called Midtown – that developed along 22nd Street S. They remember their community as a place where people were deeply connected, pulled together, and treasured their close, personal ties.
In their book, St. Petersburg’s Historic African American Neighborhoods, Rosalie Peck and Jon Wilson say that 22nd Street between Fifth and 15th avenues S was at one time the lively hub of a black neighborhood that sprang up in the 1920s and thrived until the middle 1960s. Peck and Wilson call 22nd Street S “the most important thoroughfare for the city’s African American residents, a ten-block strip . . . brimmed with businesses, professional offices, grocery stores, a movie theater, a hotel, funeral homes, a hospital and bars and nightclubs.”
Now the Brayboys are working to preserve some of the original architecture and structures along the Deuces.
Many of the businesses closed when segregation ended in the 1960s because black residents could now live, attend school, and shop in once-forbidden places.
About the same time, the drug culture and violence “showed up on 22nd” and greatly contributed to the neighborhood’s downfall, Wilson wrote in the St. Petersburg Times in a 2002 article titled “To Know This City – First Know This Street.” Then in the 1970s, the construction of Interstate 275 displaced numerous businesses and homes in what some old-timers call the death blow to the community, Wilson wrote.
One of the biggest hindrances to the restoration and historic preservation of African-American neighborhoods is that “banking has not embraced the black community,” said Mr. B. “Financial institutions generally don’t see Midtown as a good investment market, but eventually this will change—it will happen.”
The new St. Petersburg College Midtown Center on 22nd Street S, scheduled to open in 2015, will boost nearby commercial redevelopment, he said, because students will shop near campus.
In the meantime, the Brayboys are among those opening up channels for more investment and restoration in Midtown. In addition to their new restaurant, they have started an art gallery, a consignment store, and an ice cream parlor. Their daughter, Ramona Reio, owns a hair salon and their son-in-law, Damon Reio, owns a fitness center in one of their buildings.
The Brayboys are happy with the neighborhood.
“We purchased our first building on the 22nd Street S corridor in 2008,” said Mr. B. “In six years, we have not had a single incident . . . no break-ins, robberies, vandalism, or graffiti.”
On Sept. 30, Sidney Harden’s granddaughters, B.J. Harden and Shirley Newsome, were among the Brayboys’ special guests at a dinner to celebrate the past and the imminent opening of the new restaurant. They worked at Harden’s grocery when they were teenagers, sometimes until midnight because “Big Daddy” – their affectionate name for their grandfather – kept the door open until there were no more customers, they said.
“It’s very good – I know real Creole cooking and the gumbo hit the mark with just the right amount of spice-kick,” said April Drayton, 45, a local fashion designer who attended the dinner. “I usually don’t eat anyone’s potato salad but my mom’s, and I liked this. And the décor is unexpectedly nice.”
Chief’s Creole Café has two lead chefs – Craig Blanding and Rodney Rayford – and five other employees. Mr. B said that “all seven people are paid a living wage” with no one at minimum wage.
“It’s like having a newborn baby,” Mr. B said when asked what was hardest about the restaurant venture after 30 years in the rental house business. “Now that it’s ‘live,’ it takes a lot of physical and mental stamina . . . 10 to 12 hours on-site and it’s still on you mentally when off-site . . . Hopefully, we will soon have a life again.”
In addition to regular operating hours – Wednesday through Sunday, 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. – the Brayboys hope to host special events and private parties, Mrs. B said.
On election night, 12 visiting African journalists were at the restaurant for re-election victory parties for Pinellas County School Board member Rene Flowers and State Rep. Darryl Rouson.
“There was dancing and a lot of fun,” said Mrs. B. “We hope to have more of these special occasions.”
Courtesy of Melissa Lyttle Earlier this year, Tampa Bay Times photographer Eve Edelheit took this photo of Melissa Lyttle in front of a mural at the Wynwood Walls exhibition in Miami.
By KARLANA JUNE NNB Student Reporter
When authorities discovered her in July 2005, the little girl was living in a tiny room in a filth-filled house in Plant City. Her swollen diaper was leaking down her legs. She was emaciated, covered with sores and lice, and unable to speak. She was almost 7.
The St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) put two of its finest on the story. Reporter Lane DeGregory and photographer Melissa Lyttle began the five-month process of piecing together the powerful story of a feral child and the remarkable couple who adopted her.
The article was titled “The Girl in the Window” and ran in the Times on July 31, 2008. The photos Lyttle took captured the essence of a child who didn’t know how to live as a human. In 2009 the project won a Pulitzer Prize in feature writing and a first-place award for best published picture story from the National Press Photographers Association.
Lyttle’s pivotal role in that project typifies her 14-year career as a photojournalist. She has won a slew of prestigious awards. She has established herself as a mentor to countless photographers around the county. And over a decade at the Times, she forged what she calls “an enduring and extraordinary partnership” with DeGregory.
“Lane writes like a photographer sees,” said Lyttle, 37.
***
On a Tuesday this summer, Lyttle spent a busy morning in the Times newsroom.
Outside her cubicle was a single color photograph of a baby lying next to a dog, cuddling. On the back wall, a Society of Professional Journalists plaque rested next to a paper fan adorned with a picture of a man who looked like Jesus.
“You are probably wondering why I have this fan,” Lyttle said.
She picked it up and waved it. “This is the ‘hot Jesus,’” she said with a laugh.
Lyttle and DeGregory did a story earlier in the year, titled “Easter Every Day,” on the Holy Land Experience, an amusement park mecca for Christians in Orlando. There were several Jesus look-alikes, but one named Lester had ripped jeans and a white T-shirt with rolled-up sleeves. The two journalists deemed him the “hot Jesus” and decided to bring home a box of fans for colleagues.
Lyttle grew up in Jacksonville and attended community college with dreams of becoming a veterinarian. She needed an elective that was far removed from the dense academic material she was taking for prerequisites. A darkroom photography class sounded appealing.
“It woke something up in me,” Lyttle said. “Photos really force you to be outside your head.”
She decided she wanted to be a photographer, not a veterinarian. So she passed up a full soccer scholarship to Auburn University and transferred to the University of Florida.
After graduating from UF with a degree in journalism, Lyttle landed a job in Fort Lauderdale at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, where she stayed for 4 1/2 years. She got restless there and began looking for other opportunities.
For years Lyttle had followed the work of Jamie Francis, an award-winning photojournalist at the St. Petersburg Times.
“You see who is doing the work and you want to emulate them,” Lyttle said.
In January 2005, she got a call from the Times offering her Francis’ position. He had just left for the Portland Oregonian.
She had arrived.
For nearly 10 years, Lyttle specialized in documentary projects, news and portrait photography at the Times. Her work was recognized by United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, the Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism, Pictures of the Year International, the National Press Photographers Association Best of Photojournalism, the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar, the Southern Short Course, and the Alexia Foundation.
She is the founder of an online photo community called “A Photo a Day,” which started in 2001 with a daily email exchange between Lyttle and a photographer friend and has grown to more than 2,500 members worldwide. She also mentors younger photographers on Twitter via hashtag #dearyoungphotographer.
***
Lyttle excused herself and turned toward her laptop to choose a photo for the Times Tumblr blog. She was responsible for picking a picture daily from a queue where her colleagues dump their favorite images from the day before. It is called, for now, One Compelling Image. The purpose of the photo blog is to bring more traffic to the Times website.
A large part of Lyttle’s day was spent in the newsroom, hunkered over her laptop doing research on stories or going to meetings. On Tuesday mornings, she attended a meeting of the enterprise team, a specialized group of journalists who focus on stories that often take more than a year to report and write. Some of the team’s work appears in the Floridian, a monthly supplement. At the Tuesday meetings, the team throws around story ideas.
Lyttle wants to go back to Haiti. January 2015 will mark the fifth anniversary of the devastating earthquake that brought the tiny country to its knees. She was one of the Times journalists who covered the disaster in 2010. She wants to explore how the people with disabilities and mental illness are coping five years later. She talks about the children fitted with prosthetics; are they getting new limbs as they grow? Are the mentally ill living in better conditions than they were before?
Lyttle has traveled around the country and to many parts of the world, capturing images, telling stories through the lens of her camera.
She and DeGregory worked together for nearly a decade.
“At this point we’re such a good team that we are totally in sync with where we need to be when… so she [DeGregory] can hear things best and I can see them best,” Lyttle said this summer. ”If she tells me I should really go see something, I trust it’s going to make a good photo.”
In September, that partnership ended. Lyttle left the paper to move on to her next challenge.
“This wasn’t how I pictured my career at the TBTimes ending. My heart hurts for the newspaper industry … took the buyout, Lyttle announced on her Twitter feed Sept. 24. “I love(d) being a newspaper photographer and I love(d) telling stories in my community. I don’t intend to stop doing either (for long).”
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Emily Wehunt I NNB Tomeka Oliver dreams of opening a storefront business
ST. PETERSBURG – Tomeka Oliver sells vegan-health smoothies at the Saturday Morning Market in downtown St. Petersburg and the Deuces Live Market in the Midtown area on Sundays.
She dreams of opening a storefront for her business, Performance Enhancing Smoothies, but she can’t afford the rent. Loans don’t seem like an option for her.
“I don’t try to get loans because I feel like I’m not going to qualify,” said Oliver, 41. Right now, her operating expenses exceed her profits. “I’m not even paying myself a salary yet.”
Access to loans is often difficult for entrepreneurs, according to Jessica Eilerman, the small-business liaison for the city of St. Petersburg. When starting business owners lack credit, banks deny their requests for loans.
“Businesses are not always bankable,” Eilerman said. “The folks who can get the loans are the ones who don’t need them.”
The city of St. Petersburg and the Tampa Bay Black Business Investment Corp. want to help entrepreneurs like Oliver because their businesses would help expand commerce in the neighborhoods of Midtown.
Jennifer Nesslar | NNB The incubator, at 1125 22nd St. S, will provide small loans and other services to business start-ups
A business incubator is scheduled to open this fall at 1125 22nd Street S. It would help local entrepreneurs get services they need – meeting space, mail delivery locaton, phone answering service, software, counseling and loans of up to $5,000.
“It was something that we kind of proposed as our way of getting back involved” in the low-income, economically stagnant area around Midtown, said Albert Lee, president of the TBBBIC.
The incubator would give business owners the experience of securing loans and building their credit score.
“We’re doing it in a way that prepares them to be able to repay a loan,” said Nikki Gaskin-Capehart, the director of urban affairs for the city of St. Petersburg.
TBBBIC owns the building at 1125 22nd St. S, which is home to the Esquire Barber Shop and Nation Tax Services. When the third office space opened, Lee said, TBBBIC decided to create another business incubator rather than leasing the space to a small business. About 10 years ago, the entire building was a business incubator, but budget cuts forced the TBBBIC to pull out.
The project has faced setbacks. It was included in St. Petersburg’s 2020 Plan, which is intended to reduce poverty in the city by 30 percent by 2020. City officials requested $1.625 million from the state. The Legislature approved the appropriation, but Gov. Rick Scott vetoed it.
Jennifer Nesslar | NNB Small-business liaison Jessica Eilerman
“The grant would certainly have gone a long way,” Lee said. “Nevertheless, we’ll move forward with it.”
The estimated completion time has been delayed until sometime this fall. Less money will be available from the city, but Gaskin-Capehart said the city is still committed to the project.
Most of the funding will now come from the TBBBIC, which relies on a capital fund supported by local financial institutions and private contributors. Lee said he is trying to raise more from corporate partners.
Entrepreneurs are ready for assistance. The Deuces Live Market is open on Sundays from 1 to 6 p.m. at Ninth Avenue and 22nd Street S, a once-bustling but now-struggling street known as “the Deuces.” It features the fare of local business owners like Oliver. (The market is closed for the summer and will reopen Sept. 14).
“We have an absolutely captive talent pool right now, because of the Deuces Market,” Gaskin-Capehart said. “They’ve already tested the market and are ready to grow.”
But not every entrepreneur believes that loans are the solution to the problems of the business community around Midtown.
Virginia Bautista, 70, has been an entrepreneur since she was in her 20s. She recently moved from San Antonio and is the seamstress at Elihu’s Consignment at 913 22nd St. S. She believes in starting with the resources she has, and working from there.
Taking a loan, she said, starts a process of owing others money, and she doesn’t think that is a good position for a new business owner. Starting slow and gradually building a client base is her business strategy.
“That’s the most logical thing to do,” Bautista said. “It’s worked for me.”
But Bautista is a firm believer in supporting small business in the area.
Tony Macon, the owner of Esquire Barber Shop and president of Deuces Live, a Florida Main Street organization working to restore 22 Street S, believes small businesses go beyond the Deuces and shape the community of St. Petersburg.
“I believe in not just 22nd or the Deuces,” Macon said. “I believe in building the whole community up.”
