In early afternoon on a Saturday, we arrived at Isla del Sol, a proper Del Boca Vista community of leathery elders with a passing passion for golf. Those studious readers will know there is always something wrong at the conadio, and this year’s edition includes a balcony that has been deemed “unstable” and therefore barricaded off. At my age, I like to sit out there and watch the birds and heckle the golfers, but this cannot happen this time. Luckily, the air conditioning seemed to be functioning.
Nicole wanted to check out the largest used record store in the United States — Banana Records in St. Petersburg. In the interest of journalistic integrity, this claim cannot be independently verified, but based on their vast collection, it did seem plausible. We spent a good amount of time in there. Everything was organized according to genre and then by artist, but for someone just perusing, it was difficult to know where to start.
Fortunately, one could listen to the records prior to purchasing, and see if the random sleeve they’d pulled from the shelf was full of scratches or just bad music. I picked up a couple albums from the bargain bin including Herman’s Hermits, Mel Carter, and Chad & Jeremy. These were verified to play without skipping and popping, and Nicole snagged a few jazz albums including one called Bagels & Bongos, a Jewish/Latin fusion. All in all, I think Banana Records was a success. For being a media format that was effectively retired four decades ago and superseded by cassettes, CDs, mp3s, and streaming apps, the place was crowded. As Nicole pointed out, “And all these people apparently have record players too…”
From there, we drove to Azalea International Deli, an Eastern European market. I found it appropriate to try and get some Plombir (Soviet-style organic ice cream) in St. Petersburg, Florida — just a few thousand miles away from its namesake in Russia. Ever since I had my first taste of a slab in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, I haven’t shut up about it. Nicole was skeptical that I would find any so far from the former Eastern Bloc, but I found it immediately at this little market in St Petersburg, Florida. AND there were multiple brands and choices. I got three different types including one in a cone.
It was a relatively short drive back to the conadio, passing such beloved St. Petersburg dining establishments like . . . “Kissin’ Cuzzins.” Really guys? And it’s a family place? We dug into the first plombir, a waffle cone ice cream sandwich with the barebones vanilla ice cream recipe in between. Nicole finally agreed to try some herself. She let out an audible gasp after her first bite. She said it reminded her of “the good old days” (maybe when America was Great!) getting soft-serve in her youth. And that’s something unique about plombir — it’s not hard as a rock when you bite into it. It’s a delicate and soft mixture— all organic and less likely to give me the toots.
We had dinner at the Isla del Sol clubhouse, which was full of old people talking loudly, smoking (in a nonsmoking area), and we were ignored by the waitstaff by about 30 minutes due to our age presumably. All the while, every TV was tuned to golf. Remember of course that the World Cup is going on right now. And thus we ended our day as if we hadn’t emerged from 1978. Records, a good vintage communist recipe for ice cream, and some old timers yelling about losing bets and bragging about how many divorces they’ve had. I am actually not kidding about any of this. Tomorrow we will try to roll the clocks forward a few decades, but it’s hard when the Del Boca Vista Isla del Sol crowd keeps trying to relive the past.
passports & pepto bismol 