In a galaxy far, far away, there's a neighborhood called Driftwood.
That's how one resident of this spot tucked away in southeast St. Pete suggested I start this story.
Made up of just 49 houses, Driftwood sits on the banks of Big Bayou, across the water from Coquina Key. Its narrow roads, which the city paved after a bitter fight with the neighborhood in the early '70s (the residents didn't want the asphalt), are lined by swooping live oaks, expensive houses and foliage so thick it hard to imagine it's ever been cut.
Driftwood is proud of itself – of its rich history (the only Civil War skirmish in Pinellas County happened here) and its dedication to staying in concert with the area's natural environment (an oak pops out of the pavement in the middle of the main road). Exempted from city landscaping ordinances, Driftwooders like their gardens – filled with azaleas, ferns and bamboo – to grow wild. With Spanish moss hanging off the oaks' horizontal branches, Driftwood looks like a neighborhood that's let its hair down.
And that's sorta what it is.
Made up of artists, museum curators, professors, doctors and lawyers, Driftwood attracts folks looking for something a little different – and very out of the way.
You won't find Driftwood unless you're looking for it – or lost. It's not on the way to anywhere. Pedestrian traffic outpaces the vehicle variety at least two to one. When houses come up for sale, they're purchased by word of mouth, and for a hefty sum. At least two Driftwood families have three generations still living in the neighborhood.
When Martha Loyd first saw the house she was going to buy, she leapt in the air. A self-described "Driftwood stalker," Loyd had been waiting for something to become available for more than three years. Though the $325,000 price tag was a stretch, "no other neighborhood would do," Loyd says. "A place that makes you feel this content – you can't put a price on that.
"It's like you're in another world," she says while giving a tour of her house, which has a courtyard in the back covered in flame vine. Hers is one of the original 19 houses designed by Mark Dixon Dodd, an artist who laid out the area in the late '30s. Dodd drew up deep, unique lots that followed the contours of the shoreline. He kept the streets narrow, the houses small, and tried to fit the community to the existing landscape – not the other way around.
Loyd, who grew up in Key West and has coconut palms from her hometown in the front yard, likes Driftwood's beach town feel. "It's just saltier down here," she says.
Like the neighborhood itself, Big Bayou is hard to spot, even once you're on Driftwood's main drag.
Concentrate too hard on the big houses and jungle-like front yards and you might miss it altogether. A dense bamboo forest lines the gated path that leads down to the bay, which is rich with mullet, snook, trout and flounder. And dolphins.
But to walk the path, or through the well-kept backyards that line the shore, law says you need to own a house in Driftwood. Once you're in, you're in – everybody knows each other here, and everybody says hello. There are community events: a Fourth of July parade, potlucks on the beach, and New Year's Eve festivities.
But Driftwood's a secluded place, and the folks who do find a way to crack its seal want to keep it that way. The guy who gave me the first line of this story didn't want his name in the paper. He wasn't bashful – we talked for a half an hour about the place he's called home for the last 57 years. And he wasn't dishing on his neighbors. He just didn't need his name in print. "It's about privacy," he told me, smiling.
Behind this particular man's house, on the shore, there is a hammock strung up between two oak trees. If he gets out there just as the tide is coming in, he can drink a beer, eat a sandwich, read a trashy novel and fish all at the same time.
Sounds like something that could only happen in a galaxy far, far away.
Following in the footsteps of last week's cover story, the Urban Explorer column will visit a different Tampa Bay neighborhood each week. Got a story we should tell about your neighborhood? Contact us at urbex@weeklyplanet.com
This article appears in Mar 9-15, 2005.