The Tampa Tribune from Tampa, Florida • 57

THE TAMPA TRIBUNE Section Thursday, October 2, 1980 A Touch Of The Sea i i ltMiii By BONNIE D. HALICZER Tribune Fashion Writer ST. PETERSBURG BEACH -Eighth Avenue connects the Gulf of Mexico to the Intracoastal Waterway. Simple, sun-bleached, sand-colored buildings hunker on sandy lots along it, looking about the same as they did 30 years ago. Sure, the names on the storefronts have changed over the years.

But on this southernmost tip of what was once known as Pass-a-Grille Beach, the lazy, relaxed, low-key, beach atmosphere has lingered on. It's on this street that barefoot tourists stroll into a pizza shop or out of a neighborhood grocery store. It's here that residents meander along, exhaling unpolluted beach air. It's on this street that a young woman has hung an American flag and a hand-drawn sign made of sailcloth in front of a building that's so skinny that both objects clear the width of it as they wave in the gentle beach breeze. "I think the building is only 10 feet wide," said Donna Emanuel, 33, in a childlike, squeaky voice that belies her capabilities.

In this store that's so narrow it's crowded with three customers, Emanuel creates and makes clothing for men and women out of authentic, durable sailcloth. She sews the designs on one of two sewing machines that sit in plain view directly behind an old, topless, glass display case in the front of the store. A lobster trap rests on the floor. Emanuel will sell the trap or just about anything else anyone wants from the items sitting on the blue shag carpet, hanging from rope along the brown wall or lying on the antique wooden desk. Most of what she's offering are her own designs.

There are vests, sailing shorts and slacks for both sexes, plus a variety of in-between lengths for women. Fabric is stitched with sail thread. All the pants have drawstring It's not a famous designer name yet, but the Salt Stitch tag is hand-embroidered onto every item designed and made at the St. Petersburg shop. waists tied with dacron marine line.

Zippers are brass. There are skirts, halter and bandeau tops, custom-made handbags and tote bags. She custom designs large sizes she doesn't regularly sell. Emanuel's planning to expand the ready-to-wear to dresses and men's Clothes are available in camel and natural. She may add pearly gray.

Pants and skirts are decorated with three rows of zigzag top-stitching around the edges of hems and deep hip pockets. Both are available in one color or with contrasting pockets. Prices, range from $12 for a tie-top to $44 for long pants. Skirts and shorter pants average $35. Men's pants are available in sizes 28 to 38; Women's in sizes 8 to 18.

Skirts come in straight, A-line and wrap styles. Emanuel calls her small business Salt Stitch. It all came about seven months ago as a result of her sewing sail covers for the boat she and husband Bob lived on at Blind Pass. She made a pair of sailing shorts; for her husband out of leftover scraps. That's when she says she discovered how sensible sailing clothes made of.the tough fabric are.

Friends asked for similar shorts, and soon, she says, she was making them in long versions along with boat cushions people wanted. In February, she opened the shop, selling garments made of the cloth, which wears like denim, is attractive and dries quickly. The more it's washed, in cold water only, the softer it gets. It's so durable, Emanuel has offered to give customers $5 off a new pair of pants if they bring in old ones they are tired of or have worn out. So far, the only taker has been; a customer who washed his in hot water.

The pants shrank, but they were still in good condition, she explains. She wants used pairs to put in a "slop chest." See SEA, Page 2D 7777 iiii'inij in i ii. 1 1 mammmmmmmmmmsr Salt Stitch, a nautical fashion shop, is so narrow that it is crowded when more than three people gather in it (top). Owner Donna Emanuel (at left in top photo) often gets assistance from friends Sharon and Lonnie Waranuis. The women and Donna's husband, Bob (at right in top photo), model several of her sailcloth designs that range in price from $12 to $44.

Lonnie's wide-leg shorts (near right photo), are for women with full thighs. Sharon wears sailcloth sailing shorts with a bandeau top, and Bob's sailing shorts feature a drawstring waist and a brass zipper. Sharon's wrap skirt (center photo) and Ron Rickon's slacks and vest feature western-style top stitching along with the nautical theme. The design and work area (far right), where Emanuel creates patterns for the original designs she makes and sells, is even narrower than the 10-foot-wide selling area of the store. Tribune Photos by Bruce Montgomery 'SK2i5 tion Of America The Depersonaliza Via Talking Machines By GLENN COLLINS New York Times 1 c- I yt' "It's sad not sinister -that someone would buy a record to learn how to give a dinner party.

Instead of finding a friend who knows about dinner parties, you sit in your living room and listen to a record." Larry Josephson hi 3 'J 3P Josephson's collecting expeditions have led him to secondhand record stores, where he combs the racks for didactic recordings. His archive now includes close to 150 samples of the genre, including the 1960 long-playing record "Key to Superselling" You and I are going to have a session on hot-button There are language lessons, parakeet-training records ('Train Your Bird in and "How to Plan the Perfect Dinner Party" mushroom caps can be marinated, "It's sad not sinister that someone would buy a record to learn how to give a dinner party," said Josephson. "Instead of finding a friend who knows about dinner parties, you sit in your living room and listen to a record. And instead of talking to people, you use an answering machine to keep other people away." Josephson is disturbed by the increasingly commonplace practice of in-sulation-by-answering-machine. "When I try to talk to my friends, I talk to their machines," he said.

"It's particularly insidious when you start to talk into a friend's answering machine, and then, live, he interrupts, and says, 'Hello, It's become a new form of social discrimination. Now you can be condemned to social oblivion if your friends won't deign to return your recorded messages." How does Josephson get his messages? "iViubscribe to an answering ser- See TALK, Page 2D NEW YORK "This is the Story Lady," says the cheery soul with the dear-auntie voice on "Dial-a-Smile," a telephone message recorded in San Diego. "I really hope you'll tell your youngster to call again tomorrow when I'll have another story." To Larry Josephson, the Story Lady is just another sign of the talking-machine obsession that has possessed a whole society. "Parents are sitting at home, looking on as their children use the phone to call machines that tell them bedtime stories," he said. "People are using talking machines to communicate with each other, and to hide from each other, and an extraordinary depersonalization process is occurring.

There is almost no escaping the variety of devices that have something to say. And yet, no one has systematically collected them." For more than a year now, Joseph-son has been trying to remedy that situation. In his collecting zeal fueled by grants of $10,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts and $15,000 from the New York State Council on the Arts he has amassed a recording-tape library of hundreds of talking-machine sounds from a dozen states. It takes eight hours to play the collection through. His archive spans everything from the breezy Big Apple Report to more exotic specimens like Dial-an-Atheist, Dial Good News, the Mount St.

Helens Hotline, the Colorado Cattlemen's Report, the Good Looks Line, Gutline (for those who have stomach problems) and the Rare Bird Alert. There are pay-phone messages, corporate public-relations tapes and recorded political harangues. There is the insulting weight-watching message emitted by a machine that squawks when dieters open refrigerators: "What? Are you at it again, fatty? Haven't you had enough? Shut the door." There are the beeping and tweetling noises of the Sir Galaxy Radio Control Robot, the chilling. recorded voice of a $350 computer chess game, the sinister speech of Gorgor an electronic pin-ball machine as well as the exhortations of the talking Executive Teddy Bear a born leader! You're a winner! Teddy yf, hKi'gn Larry Josephson is distressed by the prevalence of talking-machines in today's society. -NYT Photo.