Salustri likes the small-town feel of Gulfport.
By SHAWN AVERY SPEAGLE
USFSP Student Reporter
GULFPORT – Everybody jokes about Florida.
The media, comedians and even people who have never set foot in the state have painted a narrative about the idea and dream of what Florida is. But author Cathy Salustri wants to describe what she believes the real Florida is.
“Florida is not this crazy circus the media makes it out to be,” Salustri said. “I write to show people the Florida that I see.”
Salustri, 43, has been a Floridian since she was 7. Her parents did not like the cold weather and cost of living in New York and moved to Clearwater to be near the beach.
In 2003-2005 and again since 2013, Salustri has lived in Gulfport for a life next to the water in a place with a small-town feel.
She attended the University of Central Florida and got a bachelor’s degree at the University of Tampa. In 2012, she earned a master’s of liberal arts with a focus in Florida Studies from the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.
For 12 years, she wrote for The Gabber, a weekly newspaper that serves Gulfport, South Pasadena, west St. Petersburg, and the south Pinellas beaches. She covered hyperlocal news, wrote an opinion column called “Hard Candy,” and did monthly in-state travel pieces.
Salustri, who also has written travel stories for USA Today, Visit Florida, regional magazines and local newspapers, is now arts and entertainment editor at Creative Loafing.
Salustri is writing two books, one based on her travels around Florida, the other a compilation of her best Gabber columns. The first is due out in October.
Salustri likes to say that Floridians are “beautifully flawed people.” It is a label that might apply to her as well.
In 2005, she ignored the advice of family and friends and bought a home in a black St. Petersburg neighborhood.
Things went well at first, she said, but then things started disappearing from her property – a ladder, a weed whacker, a scooter. As they did, she said, her thoughts evolved from tolerance to prejudice.
In a column that appeared on the front page of The Gabber, she described how living in the neighborhood had helped her understand how people could have racist thoughts.
She recounted going to court when a man charged with stealing her scooter appeared on drug charges. When she saw him smile and wave at people in the courtroom, most of them black, she became disgusted with every black person in the room, she wrote.
Now, nine years later, she said, “I do not carry – and did not then – prejudices and, while we’re at it, I do not now – and did not then – discriminate.
“When we talk about race and how we think and talk about it, these are significant distinctions.”
Now living in Gulfport, Salustri is outspoken – as a resident and as a journalist – about people and issues there.
In the mayor’s race earlier this year, she called out candidate Barbara Banno and defended the incumbent, Sam Henderson, and incumbent council member Dan Liedtke.
“I’m getting tired of your bulls—, Camp Banana,” she wrote on Facebook, using her nickname for Banno. “The whole town, save your ten donors who exist to seemingly intimidate, besmirch and defame anyone who supports Sam and Dan and our sense of community, is tired of your bulls—.”
She also posted photos of legal documents in the foreclosure action filed on Banno’s home.
Salustri’s first book, called Backroads of Paradise, is scheduled for publication in October. She based it on her master’s thesis, which describes her travels across Florida.
Salustri based the thesis on a project of the Works Progress Administration, one of the agencies that President Franklin D. Roosevelt created in the 1930s to stimulate the economy and get America out of the Great Depression. The WPA got writers in every state to create a guidebook of their state and chronicle what they saw on the main roads.
Following the 1939 Florida guide, Salustri wrote a narrative about her travels, flashing back to what it was like in the 1930s and what has changed today.
The 1930s predated the interstate highway system, Salustri said, “so I am going to these main streets that have now become back roads and writing about the locals.”
Gary Mormino, a co-founder of the Florida Studies Program, said few master’s theses become books, and that Salustri’s thesis was unorthodox to begin with.
“This was a very hard book to write,” Mormino said. “The thesis itself was not what most graduates write about, and they are usually not very well written. But this thesis had heart to it.”
Mormino helped edit the book and takes pride in his student’s accomplishments. He said he was shocked to discover this is the first book published by the University Press of Florida to have the F-bomb in it.
“It just shows how well written everything is if she could get away with that,” he said.
Mormino said the only thing he regrets about Salustri’s book is the way she harps on Dollar General stores.
“Stores like that are taking over the mom and pop shops,” Mormino said. “But I just felt she was a little cruel to the people who shop there.”
Salustri’s second book, tentatively titled Adventures in Small Town Paradise, is still a work in progress.
Salustri got the idea for it from a book by an obituary writer from Alaska who described meeting the families of people who had died. She said the setting in Alaska was more interesting than the stories themselves.
“We have better stories in Florida, especially Gulfport,” Salustri said.
She is compiling her best columns from The Gabber, adding the backstory for readers who don’t know Gulfport.
Salustri said she hates the idea of the “Florida bum” and how the media portrays the common Florida resident as crazy and absurd compared to people in the rest of the country.
“We are not caricatures for the world to ogle,” Salustri said. “We are all beautifully flawed people, and I want my book to reflect that mentality.”
Salustri said the narrative of “Florida is ruined” is not accurate. She wants to bring out the good still in Florida for everyone to see.
“It is all real,” she said, “and the world needs to see the real narrative from someone that lives and breathes the Florida air.”