SouthwestPinellas.com is a website all about the area's dining, nightlife & entertainment. The area encompasses the southwest quadrant of Pinellas County beginning at Seminole and Pinellas Park down to Tierra Verde staying west of US 19.

So why this particular area? Well, there are a few reasons. But first, let me tell you about where it all started!

Although born and raised in Massachusetts, I moved here early enough to consider myself a Floridian. I absolutely LOVE Pinellas county having at times lived in Clearwater, Largo, Pinellas Park, Redington Shores and St. Petersburg.

About 15 years ago I met my now husband while he was here on business from Connecticut. When we decided to make things permanent, I moved to western Connecticut with him. Let me tell you it was a culture shock!

One of the things I found to be missing was any real way to find out what was happening in the area. Once I took a job for a beer & liquor distributor, all the bars & restaurants became my customers (and many of them friends) and I was now privy to all the fun events happening from the best karaoke nights to live music and beer & wine dinners.

So, what to do with this information? Build a website for it of course! In September of 2009 I launched FairfieldAfterDark.com to showcase all the best events & happenings in Fairfield County, CT. Years later FairfieldAfterDark.com grew to be the area's #1 website with a high percentage of it's users coming directly from top search engines like Google and Yahoo. When Fairfield County residents searched for live music, happy hour or holiday event information online they were directed to FairfieldAfterDark.com first! I even had a spot on a popular local radio station for a year providing a things-to-do list to residents every Friday.

I ran the website for almost ten years before my husband and I decided to move back to where I've always called home - Pinellas County. I sold the website in May of 2019.

At this point I had also started a pretty solid website design business on the side and that is what I planned on concentrating on once we settled in Florida. Although I still love doing that (and it's still a growing business), I got the "bug" once again. I found that I actually missed using my own website for finding fun things to do in the area. Yes, there are plenty of different papers and magazines to browse, lots of Facebook groups & pages, but not that ONE place to find it all. So it was decided - I would build it again for the place I call home. 

So now back to why this particular area? Running FairfieldAfterDark.com was a full-time job and as much as I tried, I could never quite get enough coverage in areas that were far from my home base. Fairfield County is over 800 square miles and some towns took over an hour with traffic to get there. I understood that if I posted a great live band in one town, that it really wouldn't matter to someone an hour away. I didn't want this to happen again.

Although Pinellas County is only 608 square miles, it is very elongated. Once again, there would be areas I would never truly be able to give my full attention to. And who in St. Petersburg would drive all the way up to Tarpon Springs for karaoke or trivia night? No one. I wanted to provide information on events that would be within 30 minutes or less of each other so that if it piqued someone's interest it would be a reasonable drive for most. 

Why not lower Pinellas county in general? With the explosion of bars and restaurants in downtown St. Pete there are a LOT of websites, bloggers, Instagram & Facebook accounts etc. that explore that area already. I want to give some love to THIS area - the area that I live. I finally decided upon the southwest "quadrant" of Pinellas County.

My  priority is to keep the site current and relevant and to add new content almost daily. SouthwestPinellas.com will become your #1 place for finding things to do in our area! Be sure to sign up for our newsletter so you don't miss a beat!

See you out there my Southwest Pinellas peeps!

Pam Dufour