You can still see a genuine Greek fishing village in this city where nearly one-third of the population is of Greek heritage, but it’s fading fast, being replaced by gaudy shops with plastic trinkets, hawkers waving menus in front of restaurants and tacky T-shirts everywhere.
What’s left of the Tarpon Springs that Greek sponge divers made famous early this century when they came from the island of Kalymnos and other parts of Greece can be seen in places like a few remaining kafeneions, simple Greek coffee shops where old men sit late at night playing cards, and Zorba’s, a night club where young Greek women take to the dance floor and move like liquid silk, their proud, haughty faces looking upward as the bouzoukis blare.
“Manoula mou!” you can hear men yell exultantly, mockingly calling for their mothers because they are so overcome by the music and mood and beauty they have to express themselves.
That’s late at night, and on the side streets, away from the seven-block downtown historic district, which still has some century-old buildings that house shops, art galleries and restaurants. Today, many stores have facades that look like tourist shops anyway, the goods spilling onto the sidewalks. Those stand in stark contrast to the remaining storefronts of the historic buildings, and the tree-shaded brick sidewalks and old-fashioned street lamps.
And Tarpon Springs doesn’t sit directly on the ocean, despite its location halfway up the west coast of Florida, just north of Clearwater. The harbor is really a bayou inland from the Gulf of Mexico.
Katerina Simeon, whose family opened an arts store in 1934, which today still has the stark feel of a Spartan stucco building, says she’s disconcerted about the changing appearance. She says many old-time merchants are selling out. Those buying, she says, are replacing art and genuine goods with plastic.
“It’s really sad for me to watch this,” she said. She walked over to a painting of a small place in Greece. “This is a Greek village,” she says, adding that Tarpon Springs could look like that.
On the wall of her store are pictures of the city in the 1920s and 1930s, showing Greek men in big mustaches, and a city without adornment. Tarpon Springs was a working-class city then. Those who owned the sponge-diving boats kept them out almost year round. “A working boat tied to the dock does not produce,” they said.
If that is history, and has been lost, there is still an undeniable charm to Tarpon Springs because many of the families are the ancestors of those who came in 1905, and they still work the stores and restaurants and boats, and tell tales of their families.
As you walk down through the center, starting with Pappas’ famous restaurant, you can hear the rapid staccato of Greek being yelled, and an occasional punctuation of a fist on a table, emphasizing a point. Greeks are most passionate about politics and debating. And there’s the wafting smells of lemon and lamb and oregano coming from the streetfront restaurants.
Angelo Billiris, who runs a sponge boat that gives daily diving exhibits, graduated from high school here in 1958 but left after college to work in Atlanta and South Carolina before coming back 10 years later because he wanted his family to grow up in a Greek-American environment of church and friends.
“They were losing the customs and traditions we grew up in,” he said. When the Greeks first came, they even stayed within the families of their homeland islands. “It was unheard of for someone from Kalymnos to marry someone from Halki,” he said. “It was unheard of to marry an American.”
Mayor Anita Protos says Tarpon Springs is still the most Greek of all the communities in which Greeks settled in the United States.
The center of social life is still St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, built in 1943. On Jan. 6 each year, there is the festival of Epiphany, a religious holiday that attracts 40,000 visitors to watch Greek boys dive in the harbor for a cross.
And on nearby Hope Street, there is the Shrine of St. Michael Taxiarchis, built by a family to honor the saint they believe delivered a miracle in saving their son from an illness in 1939, and which they say still delivers miracles to the ill.
Tarpon Springs, about 30 miles north of St. Petersburg, was settled in the mid-1800s by native Americans and some newcomers attracted by its safe harbor and plentiful fishing and hunting.
In 1881, northern developer Hamilton Disson bought 4 million acres of land from the state around the area and began turning the town into a winter resort and health center, helped by the arrival of the Orange Belt Railway in 1887, which brought in many wealthy families, who built mansions that still stand.
Tarpon Springs’ transformation began around 1905 with the first arrival of the Greek sponge divers. Before that, sponge diving had been done by Caribbean and South American fishermen who trolled shallow waters and tried to scoop sponges off the bottom with hooks.
The sponge industry was started by the first Greek to settle in the city, John Corcoris, who traveled back to Greece to find the expert divers while his brothers bought–for $180–a boat, the Pandora, which they renamed Hope.
The first trip out was on June 18, 1905, after they had built a house and a warehouse for the sponges. The word quickly spread back to Greece and the Dodecanese Islands of the sponge cornucopia. Soon, those who weren’t in the diving industry opened restaurants and shops.
By the 1930s, there were 200 boats, mostly operated by Greeks and Greek-Americans. But then came a bacterial blight, and in the 1940s the industry almost became extinct. There was a slight resurgence in the 1960s, and again in 1985 when a hurricane stirred up egg larvae, which made the sponges flourish again.
Today, on the docks, you can see hundreds of sponges hung on drying lines, and buy varying qualities in the stores, from those hard enough to scrape pans with, to those that feel as soft as lambswool and can be used to gently cleanse your face.
Auctions are held twice weekly for buyers and wholesalers, and the industry now brings in an estimated $6 million to $8 million annually for the sponge boat operators. And while many of those diving are still of Greek heritage, they have taught others, like Sean O’Donnell, who works for Billiris and takes part in the exhibitions for tourists.
Even in the shallow waters, it’s enough to make tourists run to the side of the boat and peer over, watching the bubbles rise from under the water, and cheer when O’Donnell emerges on a shallow bank, waving a sponge on a hook.
And, for all its sometimes too-overt commercialism, the heart of Tarpon Springs is still a pleasant place to stroll and browse, and stop at one of the many Greek restaurants and watch people while you eat.
Duchess Arfaras, who is president of the merchants association and who has run a curio shop on Dodecanese Boulevard since the 1950s, said there is concern about the changing face. “It has gotten more commercialized,” she said. “But how can you tell people you’re taking away from the authentic Greek village? They will say you want everything for yourself, and that’s not true.
“The ethnic stores are all keeping their ethnic merchandise,” such as linens and goods from Greece, she said. Meanwhile, the merchants are moving on a plan to put out flags identifying the 12 Greek islands from which most of the original Greek settlers came, and to beautify the boulevard.
“There’s only one place in the world like Tarpon Springs,” said Arfaras, stopping briefly to add: “And that’s right here.”
———-
For more information about Tarpon Springs, contact the Tarpon Springs Chamber of Commerce, 813-937-6109, or the Florida Division of Tourism, 904-488-7300.
