Drive-In Christian Church

There doesn't seem to be nearly as many churches here in Florida as there was back home in Kentucky (in my old stomping grounds of Richmond, it seemed every other building was either a church or a bar) but golly, the ones we do have are special.

Take, for instance, the Drive-In Christian Church in Daytona. Not "drive-thru" like a fast food place, which is how I first interpreted it, but drive-in like a drive-in theater. You park your car in a space among neatly ordered lots, just like at the movies, and tune your radio to 88.5 FM so you can listen to the sermon in the comfort of your own voiture. Plus, they serve free hot coffee and Krispy Kreme donuts. What are you waiting for?

Not everyone is familiar with their "Portate Cross" and so the church officials are often asked, "Um... why is the cross crooked on the building??" The answer is, the Portate Cross (or "Carried Cross") represents the cross that Jesus was forced to carry on his back to his own crucifixion (but someone named Simon helped.)

Boot Hill Saloon

Without a doubt, the place to be during Bike Week in Daytona is Boot Hill Saloon, located at 310 Main Street. Not just for the beer and the biker-bro camaraderie, but for, of course, the bikini contests.

However, the Boot Hill Saloon has another claim to fame: it's allegedly one of the most haunted places in Florida. It's unclear when and how it all got started, but for many years now bargoers have reported objects moving by themselves, toilets flushing spontaneously (do ghosts use the bathroom?), and the jukebox coming to life and playing music even while unplugged. Then again, maybe everyone's just drunk.

Then again again, the Boot Hill Saloon is located right across the street from Pinewood Cemetery, which is also legendary for hauntings, and it's not much of a stretch to surmise that maybe spooks from over there come wandering over here, perhaps to watch the aforementioned bikini contests.

The bar, whose very name is a reference to cemeteries, has been instrumental in preserving and maintaining the once-abandoned graveyard. They've held fund-raisers during Bike Week and Biketoberfest in order to raise tens of thousands of dollars toward its upkeep.

Some have tried to do guerilla "ghost tours" on the grounds, but that's strictly a no-no and you must now actually pay to enter its closed gates. According to an article in the Orlando Sentinel, "Some pay to enter because the cemetery is one of the few places on Main Street quiet enough to talk on a cell phone."

Hatchet Man

Is it another hydrogen sulfide zombie attack, or just a lone nut performing some sort of misplaced act of "stickin' it to the man" and ragin' against the machine? A man in Daytona Beach is accused of wrecking an ATM with an ax, for no discernible reason.

He didn't steal any money from the machine, but he sure bludgeoned the crap out of it. Evidently he was unaware that all ATMs are fitted with security cameras, and it didn't take long for the South Daytona Police Department to track him down. Curiously, he seems to be talking on his cellphone while he smashes the machine. "What is that noise?" "Oh nothing, sorry, just checking my balance... with an hatchet."

The Carnivorous Cloud

One of Florida's biggest Fortean legends tells of a pink cloud that allegedly would appear, floating low to the ground, along the Tomoka River west of Daytona between 1955 and 1966.

But what do we really have here? A number of fishermen and hunters reported a pink haze filling the woods, that much we have for sure. But somewhere along the way the story has grown to say that the cloud eats people's flesh and leaves nothing but the bones. The evidence for this is given by way of anecdotes about human bones being found in those same woods. Is there a chain of evidence linking these bones with the cloud? Nope. And are those reports of bones even real? I did some looking into old newspapers from the period and could find no news article mentioning such a thing.

I did find a story from 2007 in which multiple human remains were indeed discovered in the Tomoka area, but I don't think a pink cloud would have put the bodies in garbage bags, as they were found.

I also found a letter to the editor from 1982 about Native American bones of the Timicuan tribe being found around Tomoka. Very interesting stuff, but again, this is of no help.

I'm filing the carnivorous pink cloud in the baloney basket, right next to the invisible pink unicorn, until a reason not to appears.

Daytona Beach Bandshell

This rather Arc de Triomphe-lookin' structure along the Daytona Beach boardwalk is actually an enormous bandshell, built in 1937. It's sufficient to hold a small orchestra, a choral ensemble, or the cast of a theatre production.

The people who put on concerts here have a website which refers to it as "the world's most famous bandshell". I might be able to counter that claim if I thought about it hard enough, but not too many other bandshells come to mind right now.

Riptides

Daytona, like Jacksonville, is one of those Florida cities that can't seem to get its act together in the restaurant department. I have no idea what Jacksonville's excuse is, but I reckon with Daytona it's the usual "Tourists are going to come here whether we make an effort or not, so we don't have to make an effort" thing. But one place that I can definitely give high marks to is Riptides, which, if memory serves me right, is actually just over the border from Daytona in Ormond Beach. (Like many, though, my usual Manual of Style M.O. is to refer to the whole area encompassing Ormond Beach, Holly Hill, Daytona Beach, Daytona Beach Shores, and Port Orange as simply "Daytona.")

Just about every positive box was checked here: delicious grouper sandwich, strong and well-made cocktails (especially the Mai Tai, which is a very good litmus test of bartender competence), friendly and knowledgeable servers, and indoor/outdoor seating. All they lacked to make me truly ecstatic, really, was a giant stone Easter Island head.

After I got back home from my Daytona visit, only then did I go through the goody bag provided by my hotel - it contained a gift certificate for a free shrimp dinner at Riptides! Argh. Next time.

Aku Tiki / Traders

In a world where most of the glorious Tiki-themed businesses of yesteryear are gone, it's refreshing to see that the Aku Tiki Inn still survives in Daytona Beach. Somewhere along the way it was conglomerated by Best Western, but kudos to them for retaining much of the place's original character. A giant Moai with red glowing eyes greets you at the entrance, and it's a replica of the original which was destroyed by Hurricane Charley in 2004. Other Tiki decorations, many by the great Witco, still remain on the premises.

The hotel's restaurant, Traders, doesn't quite recreate the splendor of old. There are no waitresses in coconut bras and grass skirts bringing you wooden platters of Ono and Dr. Sam Tee cocktails.

More photos of Aku Tiki here.

Rogue Waves

On March 11, 1861, a lighthouse on Ireland's Eagle Island was engulfed by an impossibly large ocean wave that came out of nowhere and was accompanied by no storm and no other turbulence. It broke 23 panes, washed some of the lamps down the stairs, and damaged the reflectors beyond repair. What makes this all the more shocking is that the lighthouse was on a cliff, and in order to have struck the top of the lighthouse, the wave would have had to have been at least 66 meters high.

May 5, 1916: the British polar explorer Ernest Shackleton was at the tiller of the James Caird in the Southern Ocean. To his horror, he became gradually aware that what he thought was a line of white clouds above a clear dark sky ahead was actually the crest of a single enormous wave moving towards him. There was no avoiding the giant wave, and it nearly capsized his boat when it struck. Shackleton reported it was unlike anything he'd ever seen in his lifetime of seafaring.

The British cruise ship Queen Mary was struck in 1942 by a wave 28 meters high 608 and nearly sank. The Queen Mary listed briefly at a 52-degree angle before slowly righting itself.

Everyone of a certain generation - namely, mine - knows all about the tragedy of the Edmund Fitzgerald, immortalized in Gordon Lightfoot's famous sea chantey. It sank suddenly and unexpectedly during a storm on November 10, 1975, crossing Lake Superior. It went down without a distress signal and all 29 members of the crew perished. The final Coast Guard report blamed water entry to the hatches filling the hold, possibly from damage in hitting a shoal. But a part of the story not so commonly told is that there was another nearby ship in that same storm - the Arthur M. Anderson, and it was struck by two enormous freak waves at around the same time as the Edmund Fitzgerald's disappearance. Why didn't people put the obvious two and two together back then? Because at that time, science did not accept the idea of "rogue waves".

But on July 3, 1992, a 27-mile-long rogue wave pummelled the Volusia County beaches of Florida, so wide that it struck Ormond Beach and New Smyrna Beach at the same time. The wave's crest, which was 18 feet high, was centered at Daytona Beach, causing sailboats to crash ashore onto cars. At a loss to explain the why and the how of the solitary freak wave, scientists suggested an underwater landslide must have caused a tsunami. However, such a massive landslide should have registered a blip on seismic monitors - and it didn't. And the National Weather Service confirmed there couldn't have been anything weather-related about the incident. Though even news reports invoked the term "rogue wave" to describe it, so-called experts were still skeptical.

It wasn't until 1995 that a single inexplicable giant wave, known as the Draupner Wave, occured off the coast of Norway and was captured by monitoring instruments, finally confirming among the scientists what the rest of the world's sailors already knew: rogue waves are real.

Taffy

The taffy puller on display at Zeno's World Famous Taffy in John's Pass. You can also find Zeno's in Daytona.

Daytona Nightlife, 1969-1974

Postcards from Daytona

Between the curtains of the veil of spacetime that separates now from then - 'cept it doesn't - falls the shadow of these stable constants in the form of postcards, bringing the Interzone of yesterday shambling into today.

People back then may have wondered what people later in the future would think of how things were back then, and if things in the future would have gotten so off-course that we'd reach back fondly to these portals of memory. Later is now.

Coleslaw Wrestling

The Sunshine State has made ignoble contributions to the noble sport of wrestling in many ways; not only with such figures as DT Porter, and with the classic time-honored tradition of wrestling with bears, but also wrestling with, and in, coleslaw.

Yes, that's right, you heard right. Coleslaw wrestling.

It's a common practice in Florida, especially during Bike Week at Daytona, to arrange events where two persons (almost always women in bikinis, strangely enough) wrestle for big money and prizes in a pit of yummy coleslaw, maintaining the respectability and classiness that the art of professional wrestling is world-renowned for.

I know of no one (yet) offering barbecue sauce wrestling, but I think it could be the next big thing - get on it, someone, and thank me later for the tip.