6/30/2008
Inlets come and go
A friend sent this link from the St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum site. It's an impressive animated map that shows just how shifting that part of the coast has been from 1741-present. (Didn't you ever wonder why the lighthouse was so far inland? Well, it used to be right on the coast.)
This isn't just about sea-level rise/global warming but about the shifting nature of the Florida coastline, even before there was development. Lessons: Beach renourishment is futile and this is a bad place to build pink hotels and highways.
This isn't just about sea-level rise/global warming but about the shifting nature of the Florida coastline, even before there was development. Lessons: Beach renourishment is futile and this is a bad place to build pink hotels and highways.
Labels: Environment, floridalia
5/04/2008
Book link is up!
The moment has come at last! Amazon has put up a pre-order link for my upcoming book, Sandspurs: Notes from a Coastal Columnist. (Don't ask me why there's no cover picture yet.)Sadly, the book will not be available from the fine folks at Univ. Press of Fla. until Sept. 7. But if you pre-order it, you get an extra 5 percent off and enjoy a smug feeling of inner coolness by joining the tiny band of cognoscente who own a copy before hardly anybody has heard of it. And don't go lending it out, either. Those people never return your books. Make them buy their own damn copy.
Right now, it's selling on Amazon for the absurdly low price of $16.47, hardback.
Labels: flablog, floridalia, Media, World's Most Famous Beach
4/17/2008
Gator grab thwarted
'Gatornappers hit hit Congo River Miniature Golf Course. And it's not the first time.
Labels: floridalia, World's Most Famous Beach
12/18/2007
Disneyism
The Disney Blog notes that a college course will study Disney as a religion. (Canada.com story here.)
We knew that already.
(Via Boing Boing)
We knew that already.
(Via Boing Boing)
Labels: floridalia
12/12/2007
Bad music
The Florida Music Educators’ Association went over 243 submissions for a state song and announced three finalists today.
Folks, I hate to find myself in the Simon Cowell role in this talent show, but these are aggressively awful songs.
I don’t mean just awful in a passive, boring, public-assembly way. I mean chair-creaking, clock-checking, eyes-scanning-the-exits, mind-numbingly, risibly awful. One sounds like an infomercial for a television ministry, one sounds like a 19th century Congregationalist hymn, and one sounds like something that should have been recorded on an Edison wax cylinder.
And these were chosen by people who are influencing innocent children.
I tremble for our future.
Don't believe me? Think I'm exaggerating? Give a listen.
I'm so sorry for the ridicule I've heaped on Old Folks at Home. I could not have known this would be the result.
Folks, I hate to find myself in the Simon Cowell role in this talent show, but these are aggressively awful songs.
I don’t mean just awful in a passive, boring, public-assembly way. I mean chair-creaking, clock-checking, eyes-scanning-the-exits, mind-numbingly, risibly awful. One sounds like an infomercial for a television ministry, one sounds like a 19th century Congregationalist hymn, and one sounds like something that should have been recorded on an Edison wax cylinder.
And these were chosen by people who are influencing innocent children.
I tremble for our future.
Don't believe me? Think I'm exaggerating? Give a listen.
I'm so sorry for the ridicule I've heaped on Old Folks at Home. I could not have known this would be the result.
Labels: floridalia
6/28/2007
World's Most Famous Beach car
I haven't been posting for the past several days because I was finishing up a collection of columns that -- should all go well -- be published in summer 2008 by the University Press of Florida.
The proofing and manuscript prep was excruciating and it was a good feeling to slide the thing across the post office counter.
Here is an outstanding photo from My Little Town that the Halifax Historical Museum was good enough to let me use in the book. (Click to see larger size in Flickr)
The proofing and manuscript prep was excruciating and it was a good feeling to slide the thing across the post office counter.
Here is an outstanding photo from My Little Town that the Halifax Historical Museum was good enough to let me use in the book. (Click to see larger size in Flickr)
Labels: Flickr, floridalia, World's Most Famous Beach
6/14/2007
Some roadside attractions
No-o-o! Not Americana Motor Inn in Ft. Lauderdale! At least it got a reprieve. (Nice background piece here, with an outstanding sounding by-line.) Thanks to My Florida History for the alert on this story.
In unrelated Roadside Florida news, Vintage Roadside is offering T-shirts with the logo of the fabulous Atomic Tunnel, a long-deceased U.S. 1 attraction near Daytona Beach.
In unrelated Roadside Florida news, Vintage Roadside is offering T-shirts with the logo of the fabulous Atomic Tunnel, a long-deceased U.S. 1 attraction near Daytona Beach.
Labels: floridalia
5/26/2007
Flamingo rising again
Yes, we thought the Union Products/Donald Featherstone plastic lawn flamingo was dead. But now it looks as if the noble bird will live again now that a New York company purchased the company's molds and is getting ready to resume production.
Labels: floridalia
1/10/2007
A pirate looks at beer marketing
The TallyDem's beer critic tastes Jimmy Buffett's new brew (brought to you by Anheuser-Busch) and declares it's sorta like The Champaign of Beers, "a lawnmower beer."
This is so wrong.
This is so wrong.
Labels: floridalia
1/08/2007
Florda Poem
A Florida poem is featured on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac today -- "O, Florida" by Daniel Anderson.
This is the old country,(Thanks to Tim)
A land of statuary herons,
Where chevron squads of pelicans patrol
The glittering green shallows of the gulf.
Labels: floridalia
12/01/2006
Another blog heard from
. . .Smashed Frog in Brevard County. Mostly politics, but humor and Floridalia, too. This week, she does the public service of giving the words to the jingle Be a Friendly Floridian, a bit of state propaganda from which nobody could escape in the '60s.
Be a friendly Floridian.
Put on a sunshine grin.
Take your best step forward and back again,
And make every stranger a friend.
Be a friendly Floridian.
Put on a sunshine grin.
Take your best step forward and back again,
And make every stranger a friend.
Labels: blogs, floridalia
10/16/2006
Cafe Risque and other Fla. Institutions
I have warm, fond memories of sobering up post-midnight while eating biscuits the size of pancakes sitting in a puddle of sausage-flaked gravy at a Skeeter's Big Biscuit.
Open all night. Often with somebody playing bad country music in the background. The late, lamented chain was a big part of Central Florida's roadside cultural landscape in the 1980s.
Fast forward to the present, where the son of Skeeter's founder puts billboards up and down I-75 for Cafe Risque. They are how I measure my progress when driving that route to Tallahassee. ("We bare it all!")
They are so ubiquitous they inspired Tom Gallagher to include a crusade against "adult billboards" as part of his doomed, righter-than-right platform for governor.
Well, the man who gave us that bit of roadside color now is dead and his son pledges to carry on.
(Thanks to Sayfie for straying from politics to include this bit of cultural news.)
Open all night. Often with somebody playing bad country music in the background. The late, lamented chain was a big part of Central Florida's roadside cultural landscape in the 1980s.
Fast forward to the present, where the son of Skeeter's founder puts billboards up and down I-75 for Cafe Risque. They are how I measure my progress when driving that route to Tallahassee. ("We bare it all!")
They are so ubiquitous they inspired Tom Gallagher to include a crusade against "adult billboards" as part of his doomed, righter-than-right platform for governor.
Well, the man who gave us that bit of roadside color now is dead and his son pledges to carry on.
(Thanks to Sayfie for straying from politics to include this bit of cultural news.)
Labels: floridalia
