Point of View

Every city needs a lookout point-a quiet spot where you can gaze at the metropolis from afar and get a sense of the place as a whole. In Tampa, that spot is Ballast Point.

At the very southern end of Bayshore Boulevard, where the world's longest sidewalk ends and the bumpy brick street begins, Ballast Point Park's 960-foot pier juts out into the neck of Hillsborough Bay.

Here, at the end of the pier or beneath the old moss-laden oaks, time seems to slow, even slur, and the gleaming downtown towers in the misty distance seem far away. So do the tankers and cruise ships passing by en route to the gritty Port of Tampa.

Here, even a busy person feels drawn to sit still, stare at the blue expanse of water and merely be. To contemplate nothing, to contemplate life, to contemplate the thousands of bustling workers in the distant skyscrapers.

It's a splendid spot to drop a fishing line, eat a peaceful picnic lunch or just close your eyes and listen to the lapping waves and the happy squeals of children on the playground. In the evening, when the buildings twinkle and the stars sparkle, locals say, it's a prime place to share a smooch, or two, or more.

Maybe it's Ballast Point's long history that gives it that timeless feeling.

More than 100 years ago, before the bay was dredged deep, boats stopped at the point to drop their ballast stones, making them light enough to negotiate the shallow water.

Later, before the city's neighborhoods stretched this far south, it was a semi-rural hideaway for Tampa's upper crust.

The park was created in 1894 by wealthy socialite Emelia Chapin, who lived in a Bayshore estate. She named it Jules Verne Park, after the French novelist who made "Tampa town" the launch site of man's first lunar flight in his 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon.

Today, with the presence of the Tampa Bay Yacht and Country Club, and with home prices soaring, the Ballast Point area remains somewhat elite.

Except at the park. Here, everyone can have a view.