Yeah. To me the primary advantage to riding St. Pete is ease of use. Every wind direction is within 5 minutes of my house and none of the spots have any real current, so a down winder (although fun) is far from necessary to have fun.
I just got back from riding for a couple of hours.
It took me 5 minutes to get to the beach, a few to rig and BAM.... riding . Because the current is so weak here on most days (strong NWs on second day,excluded), I can ride by myself and have an awesome time holding ground (jumping at will) and coming back to where I started.

In St. Augustine, the current was strong enough that just holding ground could be a challenge on a lot of days along the beach. I personally like the waves much better than this flat/choppy stuff, and was really looking forward to riding waves in S.A.
BUT, if you weren't planning a D/W with a buddy, many times riding in the waves/current was sort of a drag cuz it wasn't always easy to come back from where you started, or at least, not jump at will.
That limited my ability to just "show and go" without planning the D/W, driving one guy's car upwind, etc. On days we did do downwinders, man... they just smoked what we do here, no comparison. Real waves

Matanzas allows for butter flat water on the inside, waves on the outside, and a "conveyor belt" to carry you upwind to ride the waves when the tide is nuking out. It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does, it's pretty epic.