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(Photo courtesy SonyBMG)

It took me some time to come to terms with Beyoncé. I was never a huge fan of her girl group antics, the gimmicky foot stomping, the booty shaking, those “Say My Name”-style jingles she and her backup duo hawked like so much used merchandise. I never cared too much for her antediluvian posturing, either — does anyone else remember “Cater 2 U”? — or the way her careerist perfectionism seemed to creep into every smile she flashed for the cameras.

Hers was a career I thought doomed from the start. Doomed as soon as the Svengali/Momma Rose-nightmare father started pulling the strings. Doomed as the world watched him cut another cast member, and then another. Doomed!
But then a curious thing happened. Beyoncé grew a pair or something, and all of a sudden was solo and co-producing some of the catchiest dance hits I’d heard since Janet went nasty. She was “Dangerously in Love”; she was dating Jay-Z.

And when she lit up the screen as a Diana Ross-a-like in last year’s Dreamgirls (and proceeded to campily call the film “the movie of my life” on her sophomore album B’Day), that’s when I knew I was sold. Here was a true child of destiny: No more a lead singer with larger than average hair, she became the singer, hair on the side.

Because that’s the kind of “Irreplaceable” arch-diva Beyoncé is: Not only can she slice through artistic genres with the heel of a glittery stiletto — dancehall to R&B, urban slow jam to Top 40 pop, Grammy-winning projects to Oscar-nominated ones — she is queen of the self-starters, the self-pronounced “hardest-working woman in show business” (a bold moniker that might seem kind of delusional if she didn’t also look like she’d been slavishly up all night earning it).

On April 10, in honor of B’Day’s re-release as a deluxe set, Miss Knowles launched her second worldwide solo concert tour, “The Beyoncé Experience.” Gracing three continents (and a clutch of island nations), she served up all the hits to scores of screaming, bilingual fans. After Ireland, she flew to New Orleans to kick off the tour’s American leg.

On July 21, she reached Tampa’s St. Pete Times Forum.

Guess who was first in line.

“This is definitely not a big night for us,” says the Forum groundskeeper, enjoying his last pre-show cigarette outside the enormous steel, concrete and glass structure.

“How can you tell, Ron?” I ask, glancing at his nametag. It’s only 8 p.m., I argue, and while the arena may be sparsely populated now, pre-show Robin Thicke is still crooning inside. I point to the nearby smattering of preteens decked out in clubwear, college girls in halters and 30-something-year-old couples in, well, more clubwear. They are all still waiting to be let in.

Ron, however, is pretty sure attendance won’t be high. He says he’s heard “they roped off” the second tier seats, unusual for the 20,000-seat theater. Soon, he adds ominously, “they’ll probably start letting people onto the parterre.”

This all somehow seems terribly unjust — and not because I paid over $70 for my mezzanine seat: How is it possible that Beyoncé wouldn’t draw a larger crowd, especially when just a few weeks earlier, Jimmy Buffett and Dave Matthews had both sold the entire place out?

Ron shrugs. “I don’t know…I heard that she’s not gonna sing any of her old stuff, just the newer stuff off her last album.”

“You mean B’Day,” I correct him.

This was, in my fervent opinion, a sad day for the State of Florida.

*****

The St. Pete Times Forum may not be filled to capacity, but the mall-like interior of the Forum is awash with Beyoncéphiles of all stripes.
Bypassing the tabletop displays of memorabilia (lanyards: $15, unsigned 8”x10” photographs: $5, neon “cybersticks”: $10), I watch schools of young hustler-types climb over each other for flashing pins; guys in blazers chugging tallboys; a row of metrosexuals adjusting their designer shades.
Behind them, their lady friends, all swathed in the finest Ybor couture, putting on makeup, singing to themselves, pushing their kid sisters through to the bathrooms. (About five transvestites are ahead in line, resulting in one seemingly endless spat that takes two Forum employees and one spry teenage girl to diffuse. “You with them?” I ask the latter, motioning toward the bouncers and noticing for the first time that she was wearing what looked like a large butterfly costume. She wasn’t.)

With only 20 minutes to spare before Beyoncé takes the stage, I’m forced to find my place within the arena. Slinking down to my seat — not a bad location, actually — I seek out my peeps.

“We’re big Dreamgirls fans, actually,” says Ed Levine, a bespectacled baby boomer in sandals and jeans. Standing next to his now-retired wife, Rose, the USF “Industrial Psych” professor from Tampa explains that they try to make it out to “at least two shows a year.”

“We also came [to the Forum] for Neil Diamond,” he says from his parterre seat. “But we were really looking forward to Beyoncé.” He smirks, his wife pats him lovingly on the knee, and I have a brief vision of my life in 30 years.

A few others present have made the pilgrimage from slightly further away.

“Yeah, Gainesville,” said Derek Anthony, readjusting his bleach-white paperboy hat and settling in beside me. The concert was a surprise early 30th birthday present from his partner Christina White — “I’m more of a fan than she is,” said Anthony, sheepishly — and the two insurance agents are using the show to ring in their romantic weekend getaway.

“I kind of like the Destiny’s Child songs more,” he informs me as the lights dim.

The concert is, itself, a smash — all bright lights and pyrotechnics and backup dancers/strippers/belly dancers and an all-woman band (“I’m especially proud of these ladies,” says Beyoncé, detonating one atomic burst of gal power) and countless extravagant costume changes. I’d merrily recount the playlist from start to finish — but even my own self-indulgence has its limits. In brief, there are vintage Destiny’s Child moments fancifully interspersed with cuts from B’Day; there were even a few unlikely covers, Beyoncified renditions of Gnarls Barkley and Jill Scott.

Let’s just say the Experience reaches its zenith when Beyoncé, sitting on a large sofa that looks like a red, hot, juicy pair of lips and wearing this blindingly diamond-studded robe, starts singing music co-written by Shakira.

Top that.

In fact, by the time the show jiggles to its satifying conclusion, I’m left with only one regret: I still haven’t found myself a true-blue Sarasotan to share the experience with. On my way out, reeling, I give myself a moment to look over the T-shirts. There, a youngish-looking guy in a baseball hat stands next to an older woman as they discuss the stock.

“How’d you like the concert, you two?” I ask.

“It was — oh my god, it was AMAZING,” the guy says without pause. He looks at his date. “I think she danced harder than I did.”

Keone Dent, 26, introduces Jodi, his mom. It’s her first concert, Keone says, and he thought he’d break her in with one of his idols. “I’ve seen Beyoncé six times,” he brags, naming the locations: Atlanta, Wisconsin, parts of Europe…

“This was the best I’ve ever seen her.”

I’m sorry, they just don’t make fans like that in Tampa: I give you one guess where this one’s from…

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