Juvenile Night Heron

This juvenile Night Heron on Leffis Key was so mellow he didn't even mind me sticking my camera right up in his beak.

St. Armands Tommy Bahama

Let me just dash what little credibility I probably have left with some of you hipsters who cringe at how much I love Starbucks: I also love Tommy Bahama. Not just the awesome Tommy Bahama faux-Tiki-beachwear fashion or the Tommy Bahama colognes, but the Tommy Bahama restaurant. More specifically, its drinks. And even more specifically, the drinks at the one on St. Armand's Key. And even now, just the mention of it makes me want to start the car.

What you see pictured above, dear reader, is a photograph, captured for the ages, of the finest Mai Tai it has ever been the privilege to pour down the big hole in my unworthy face. Though I've chased the elusive Mai Tai spirit over hill and dale and through swamp and strip-mall, nothing I've ever caught in the wild can compare with this here elixir placed before me by one of Mr. Bahama's minions.

(The worst Mai Tai I've ever had, in case you care, was at Seviche in Louisville. It tasted like kool-aid and the waiter who we asked to take it back was rather ungracious about it. Since Seviche is otherwise perenially flawless in every other respect, however, I can afford to cut them slack on this.)

All the beverages on their dance card are fine, most notably the Painkiller, which I became enamored with at the Tommy's location at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. But it's that Mai Tai that tops them all, even the ones from my beloved Roy's Hawaiian Fusion (which run a close second.)

You know, I hear Tommy Bahama restaurants also serve food. I dunno.

Hurricane Grill & Wings

Hurricane Grill & Wings is a Florida-based chain, though it has locations in odd seemingly-chosen-at-random faraway locations as Elkton, MD; Hauppauge, NY; Surprise, AZ and Waterloo, IA. It was with a certain degree of desperation that I sat down at the San Marco (Jacksonville) location, because my luck with restaurants in Jax has traditionally been putrid. (Like the Tiki Bar that had no frozen drinks, or the Chili place that served me chili with practically no meat in it, or the Cuban place where I sat at the bar for an eternity waiting to be served and finally gave up and wandered back out into the night.)

Fortunately, there are exceptions to the Jax-area curse. The Chart House is one, North Beach Fish Camp is another, and, in a pinch, Hurricane Grill will do. Partially because they offer a superb Philly Cheesesteak sandwich, but mainly because their cocktails are quite potent.

Tube Dude

When I first started hanging around Siesta Key a couple years ago, I noticed this nice metal stick-figure guy posing with the Turtle Beach sign. Then I saw another one, and another. And now the damn things are everywhere you look in this part of the Gulf.

At first I was disappointed that the first one wasn't unique, and thought "oh, it must be some generic store-bought thing that's everywhere like those horrifying air dancers that give me nightmares."

Well, it's true they are from a store now, but it wasn't always so. Scott Gerber was in the yacht business but went under in the 2008 recession. Just for something to do, he whipped up one of these metal tube people and placed it on his dock. Next thing you know, other people are asking him to make one for them too, and they began spreading around the area so fast, it became a local "what the heck is up with these things?" mystery. Now he has an actual thriving business selling them and a gallery displaying them on St. Armand's Key - and they're catching on nationwide! To date more than 15% of all Tube Dude production has gone to support fundraisers, golf tournaments, and other charitable events.

Molly

I've never eaten at the Bridgetender Inn on Anna Maria Island, but I have often been intrigued by this crudely painted sign outside.

Peeking through the window, however, provided nary a glimpse of any of these purported Molly products.

John D. MacDonald

There's a lot of Florida-based crime/detective fiction out there, some of it good, some of it bad, some of it seemingly written by people who've never set foot in the Sunshine State in their life. Some of it bends over backwards to make Florida seem like an insanely dangerous hell-hole, which I obviously can't get behind. Others simply hint at the wackiness that makes our state so great without making the sensationalist tail wag the dog.

In fact, "Florida Crime Fiction" has literally become a genre unto itself, and I must plead this isn't what I had in mind when I wrote The Bartender and then subsequently moved to Florida, but hey, who am I to argue with the way the Matrix is programmed?

This genre of Florida detective-noir goes back to the grandfather of it all, John D. MacDonald, who penned twenty-one Travis McGee novels for two golden decades between 1964 and 1984, as well as a slew of other novels and stories including some science fiction and even westerns. Like the best of the classic "quantity is quality" pulp fiction authors, ol' J.D. was all over the place with his all-seeing eye.

His literary career began when his wife, unbeknownst to him, submitted a story he wrote to a magazine and it was published. MacDonald then threw himself into writing, conjuring up a word-hoard of 800,000 words, typing 14 hours a day, seven days a week, for four months straight. In the process, he lost 20 pounds and probably much of his sanity as well. But in the fifth month, he made a sale to the pulp magazine Dime Detective and so began a long career in the pulps which led to an even longer career in the paperbacks. Perhaps his biggest inroad into popular culture came when his novel The Executioners was made into the classic film Cape Fear starring Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck.

MacDonald's real literary claim to fame, though, is Travis McGee. He's a private investigator who lives in Ft. Lauderdale, on a houseboat called The Busted Flush, which he won in a poker game. Unlike some hard-boiled detectives who are bored, bitter, callous and world-weary, McGee is very outspoken about his own philosophical ideals and causes - especially preservation of the environment. An example of McGee's ahead-of-his-time thinking, from the 1965 novel Bright Orange for the Shroud:

"Now, of course, having failed in every attempt to subdue the Glades by frontal attack, we are slowly killing it off by tapping the River of Grass. In the questionable name of progress, the state in its vast wisdom lets every two-bit developer divert the flow into drag-lined canals that give him "waterfront" lots to sell. As far north as Corkscrew Swamp, virgin stands of ancient bald cypress are dying. All the area north of Copeland had been logged out, and will never come back. As the glades dry, the big fires come with increasing frequency. The ecology is changing with egret colonies dwindling, mullet getting scarce, mangrove dying of new diseases born of dryness."

Carl Hiassen, another notable Florida writer who followed in JDMD's footprints in the sand, said MacDonald was "the first modern writer to nail Florida dead-center, to capture all its languid sleaze, racy sense of promise and breath-grabbing beauty."

The Crescent Club, located on the southern end of Siesta Key near Stickney Point, was an especially beloved joint of MacDonald's, to the extent that almost every Florida dive-bar depicted in his books was a thinly veiled variation of it. It's dark, it has no theme or gimmick, it's neither seedy nor straight-laced. It's not filthy but it's not spotless either. It's not aimed at raucous youth, nor is it aiming to be an "old man bar". It's just.... a bar. But MacDonald saw in the Crescent Club a certain archetypal specialness that continues to resonate today.

According to Sarasota P.I. Bill Warner:

Nobody understood a place like the Crescent Club better than famed mystery writer John D. MacDonald; and, indeed, he used some version of it over and over again. It appears most prominently in his great Sarasota novel "Condominium". Here's his description of the Crescent Club: "Inside the ceiling was hung with nets, with glass and cork floats. Harpoons were chained to the walls. The low-power wall sconces held orange bulbs with orange shades. Overhead prisms shone puddles of white light down on the black Formica bar. The front edge of the bar and the barstools were upholstered in red Naugahyde, spotted with cigarette burns and old stains." With just a few minor changes, MacDonald's description still fits. The nets have been replaced with banners from various colleges, but they still hang from the ceiling. During the day two shafts of lights stream in from the open doors -- to me that's always been the mark of a real, old Florida place: doors open with the air-conditioning on -- and there's a drive-up window to purchase liquor, another old-timely touch.

Sugarloaf Key Bat House

One mile northwest of U.S. 1 on Lower Sugarloaf Key (mile marker 17) is where you'll find this kooky old structure. It's the Sugarloaf Key Bat Tower, built in 1929 by fish camp owner Richter Clyde Perky. Perky's idea was to raise bats in hopes they'd help control the problematic mosquito problem there. He purchased the plans from a Texas bat enthusiast named Charles Campbell, but unfortunately the tower didn't work - as soon as Perky installed the live bats he had shipped in, they flew away and never returned.

According to Wikipedia:

There are three Campbell bat towers still standing (out of an original fourteen world-wide) in the United States: the Perky Tower; one in Comfort, Texas; and one at the Shangri-La Gardens in Orange, Texas. At least one of the Texas towers has been internally reconstructed so that bats currently roost in it. The ruins of a fourth Campbell tower, in Temple Terrace, Florida, burned in 1979 and now consists of the concrete base/legs. Temple Terrace is in the process of rebuilding their 1924 tower.

Perky intended to found a city named after himself, but gave up after his inability to cope with the swarms of mosquitos. It's a shame his bat population program didn't work out - bats love pineapple and back then, the predominant pineapple was the "sugarloaf" variety from which the island gets its name. The sugarloaf pineapples are soft and easily broken into, and the fruit inside (white, not yellow) is said to be so tender you can eat them with a spoon, like watermelon. Sadly, the sugarloaf was almost entirely phased out of modern agriculture in favor of today's firmer-fleshed types that are more durable for travel. (It's making a comeback though, and can be easily ordered from African and Hawaiian sources!)