Downtown Plant City may look different than it did in the 1950s, but the simple pleasure of spending a Saturday wandering, shopping and visiting remains.
Imagine it is a Saturday afternoon in Plant City in the 1950s. You get dressed, leave the house, and head downtown. You are not looking for a big shopping center or deciding which chain restaurant to try. You are simply going downtown to have breakfast, run a few errands, do some shopping, and see what the afternoon brings.
The funny thing is, you could do almost exactly the same thing today.
Start the morning at The Brick House Cafe with a cup of coffee and a traditional breakfast. It is the kind of place where breakfast feels like breakfast; homey, bustling, and the air saturated with delicious smelling food. Eggs, grits, toast, bacon, pancakes, coffee. Take your time. Talk to whoever you came with. Maybe you recognize someone at another table and say “hello.”
Then, instead of getting back into the car and driving from one shopping center to another, you walk. That is when downtown Plant City starts to feel a little like stepping into another decade.
The stores are different from what you would have found here in the 1950s, of course. But the basic idea is remarkably similar. Downtown is still a place where you can shop for things you actually need, browse for things you did not know you wanted and run into people you know along the way.
Maybe your first stop is Sweet Roots Apparel to look for something new to wear. It is a modern clothing boutique, but the experience of browsing a small local shop feels much more personal than walking through a giant department store. You can look through the racks, ask questions and actually interact with the people who work there.
Then perhaps you have an errand that is a little more old-fashioned.
At Inspire! Quilting & Sewing, you can browse bolts of fabric, sewing supplies, patterns and all the little things that make a person think, “I could probably make that.” The shop is located in the historic Strickland Building, which is more than 100 years old.
Maybe you do not even sew. Part of the fun of an old-fashioned downtown is that you can walk into a specialty store simply because it is there. You can look around. You can discover something. You do not have to be an expert or have a specific item on your shopping list.
That is also what makes downtown’s antique shops such an important part of the experience.
Walk into Collins Street Junction, Rocking Horse Antiques, Miss Ruby’s, Depot Antiques, The Mercantile or one of the other vintage shops downtown and you are quite literally surrounded by the past.
You might find an old cookbook, a piece of furniture, a glass dish, a piece of jewelry or something that reminds you of your grandparents’ house. You might see an object you have not thought about in 30 years. You might have absolutely no idea what something is. That is part of the appeal.
Antique shopping is one of the few forms of shopping where the merchandise comes with a history, even if you do not know the whole story. By the time you have wandered through a few shops, it is probably time to think about lunch or a drink. Downtown gives you plenty of options without having to leave the neighborhood. Snellgrove’s has the old-school diner feel that makes it easy to imagine generations of Plant City residents stopping in for a meal. Propagation Whiskey Bar & Kitchen offers something completely different, with craft cocktails, whiskey and food in a historic downtown setting. Then, of course, there should be something sweet.
No Saturday afternoon downtown would be complete without a stop at The Kandy Shoppe.
The Kandy Shoppe has the kind of old-fashioned candy-store appeal that feels right at home in a downtown filled with historic buildings and locally owned businesses. Pick out a few candies, maybe something chocolate, and suddenly you have the perfect excuse to keep walking while eating dessert before dinner.
The best part of this imaginary Saturday is that it does not actually require much imagination.
The stores have changed. The clothes have changed. The food has changed. The cocktails have changed. We have phones in our pockets now instead of coins and paper lists tucked into them, but the idea of spending an afternoon downtown has not changed nearly as much as we might think.
You get breakfast at a local restaurant. You browse a clothing shop. You stop into a specialty store. You look for something unusual in an antique shop. You meet a friend for a drink. You buy a piece of candy on your way home.
There is no corporate chain telling you exactly what your afternoon should look like.
Instead, there are small businesses with their own personalities. There are shop owners who know their inventory. There are restaurants that have been part of the community for years. There are historic buildings that have housed generations of businesses. There are antique stores where you can lose an hour without realizing it.
Downtown Plant City is not a recreation of the 1950s, and it shouldn’t be. The point is not that everything was better back then. The point is that some things are worth keeping.
A downtown can still be somewhere you go rather than somewhere you drive through. It can still be a place to spend a Saturday without a strict itinerary. You can park the car, walk around, window-shop, have a conversation, discover something unexpected and go home with a bag of candy or an antique you absolutely did not intend to buy.
In a world that seems to move faster every year, there is something nice about having a place where a simple Saturday afternoon can still be enough.
