Now, St. Pete is a really small city when compared to Atlanta, Philly, or New York, but it's still a city. It's not some little hick town where "downtown" consists of one main street and a 3-story building.

And when I first started hanging out downtown, my mom hated it, because the only people that came out at night downtown were bums and punks. The martini bar at Jannus and the Ovo Cafe attracted some yuppies, but they usually parked as close to their destination as possible and didn't linger outside for fear of sharing the sidewalk with "those dirty people". The rich were grossly outnumbered and certainly not welcome there, so they just stayed inside their little upscale restuarants.

And that's the way it should be. Urban areas have always been populated by the lower class because that's where the most unskilled, minimum wage jobs were. The rich moved out to the suburbs because everything was clean and new and pretty, and they didn't have to deal with any untouchables.

But things didn't stay that way. Ever since they opened Baywalk, downtown has been full of yuppies because it's the "chic" place to be. It used to be that after 7 PM, the only thing open between 1st and 16th streets was the liquor store at Jannus Landing and the State Theatre, but tonight everything was open. All the art galleries were open, the junk ("antiques") stores, everything. They'd even set up a stage down the block from the Holocaust museum where some crappy alternative, college radio-type band was playing.

And there were rich bastards everywhere! Families, too. Parents would never bring their children downtown after dark because you might see a bum or an idiotic drunk guy pissing on the side of First Union.

For the first time in my life, _WE_ were outnumbered downtown. Two 30-something men in extremely expensive suits passe