A visit to France draws a local writer to a little French restaurant in Tierra Verde

Writer Tyler Gillespie's study trip to Strasbourg, France, through USF St. Petersburg, led him to learn of a little French restaurant right back here in our own neighborhood. He wrote about his adventure in an article in Creative Loafing. It's about David Weiss and Jean Sebastien, who opened Cordon Bleu about a year ago. It's run the traditional French way: They're open in the morning, then close from 2 p.m to 5 p.m. They reopen at 5 for dinner. If you like dining out, this might be for you.

If you have really old copies of The Weekly Challenger, USF St. Petersburg needs them

If you've been in the community for a long time and you're accumulated stacks and stacks of old newspapers, there's a chance you could help preserve a bit of the community's history. The man in the picture is Cleveland Johnson, who bought The Weekly Challenger in 1967. Today, his daughter, Lyn Johnson, runs the paper. The Nelson Poynter Memorial Library at USF St. Petersburg has launched a project to help digitize the newspaper that has served St. Petersburg's black community for nearly 50 years. So, if you have old copies of The Weekly Challenger, the library would like to copy them digitally and give them back to you. Here's a story all about it from the Tampa Bay Times that was recently published in TWC. Copies of the paper before 2000 are what is needed. Newer ones are already available. This will become a great resource for anyone interested in the history of the black community in St. Petersburg.