One Bad Weekend: After Isaias, Spend Your Money Close to Home
Our "Last Mango in Paris" moment — or in this case, the last cheeseburger at Pirates Cove before every piece of equipment went up on a trailer for higher ground. My friends on either side of me - Robin Nicholson and Mark Patterson.
This one runs short. I missed last week getting ready for Isaias, and I'm still catching up.
Gratitude first. Isaias came ashore near Destin on Friday night, October 9, as a Category 2 hurricane. On the western side of Pensacola we didn't have much to clean up, and I don't take that for granted. Not everyone was spared — Escambia County lost two people in the storm, and our neighbors from Navarre to Destin are still digging out. To the emergency managers, deputies, linemen and road crews who worked straight through it: thank you.
Even a near miss costs something. On Thursday, October 8, about 2:50 in the afternoon, some friends and I placed the last order at Pirates Cove — cheeseburgers, fries and beers. The crew had already made the call to clear the place out. The food, the Bushwacker machines, the coolers, the fryers — all of it was headed for higher ground. The trailers were backed up to the door, and we watched the restaurant empty out while we ate.
They opened back up this Tuesday, and the weather's great. But that's four days closed and a whole kitchen hauled out and back in, for a storm that mostly spared us. Every business on the water did some version of that last week. Work stacked up. Nobody knew what to schedule. We're all behind.
The Storm I Got Wrong
Hurricane Sally took my pier in 2020. It took my fishing gear and a lot of my cooking equipment with it — everything I had stored down on the dock.
Sally wasn't supposed to be much. The early forecasts sent it toward Louisiana and Mississippi, well west of us. Then it turned east, slowed down, and came ashore at Gulf Shores as a Category 2 on September 16.
A day or two before, an appointment cancelled. With the open afternoon, I ran down, pulled the boat out of the slip and brought it back to my office. I didn't think I needed to. I came close to leaving it right where it was. Leaving that boat would have been a very bad idea. The cancelled appointment saved it.
That was luck, not a plan.
Now I store less on the water. I keep things cleaner all year, not just the week a storm shows up. When the cone points our way, everything comes off the dock, gets tied down or gets put away, so nothing blows off or washes away. And I keep the trees pruned much, much better.
What the Storms Cost the Calendar
Storms change our habits. They change the fall calendar, too.
The 53rd Annual National Shrimp Festival was supposed to fill the Gulf Shores public beach October 8–11. Organizers called it off Tuesday, October 6, after meeting with Gulf Shores emergency management. Shrimp Fest draws more than 250,000 people over four days — the biggest weekend of the fall. Every restaurant and vendor who planned for that crowd bought extra shirts, extra supplies and extra food for guests who never came.
Shrimp Fest wasn't the only one. Isaias, and the weather ahead of it, knocked events all over the coast off their dates — some cancelled outright, some pushed back a week or two. Before you load the cooler for anything on your fall calendar, check it again. Go to the organizer's own website or social pages, not an old flyer or a listing from last month. If you're coming by boat, call ahead and make sure the dock's open, too.
When an event comes back on a new date, go. Most of these are fundraisers — for animal rescues, schools, churches, fishing clubs and families who need a hand. Behind every one is a legion of volunteers: the people who pitch tents at 6 AM, work the gate, flip the burgers and haul the trash out after dark. Behind them are the local businesses that donate the venue, the food, the raffle prizes and their staff's time. A rescheduled date has to win its crowd back. Help it.
What It Takes to Run This Coast
We don't often think about the numbers it takes to run this coast. With the Perdido Key Chamber of Commerce leadership class, I got to tour the Flora-Bama operation and see what it takes to run the place we all call a dive bar.
In season, they have 500 team members across the Flora-Bama Lounge, the Ole River Grill, the Yacht Club, the Marina and their other properties. Year-round, 300 employees stay on the payroll. They put on 3,500 live performances a year across six stages, most of them by local or regional artists. Their big events support more than 30 local charities, with over $100,000 a year in cash and in-kind donations.
We call it a dive bar. It runs like a small town.
The Flora-Bama is a big dog on the beach. Multiply it by the hundreds of smaller businesses on this coast — the marinas, the oyster bars, the charter captains, the bait shops — and you see how one bad weekend hits all of us.
Go Spend It Here
The fix is simple, and it's on us. Go out this weekend. Eat at the restaurant that stocked up for Shrimp Fest. Buy the T-shirt from the vendor who printed extra. Tie up at Pirates Cove and order the cheeseburger — they earned it. Show up for the fundraisers that moved to new dates. Next week the Parrot Heads roll in for Meeting of the Minds, October 21–25 — be there for that, too. Tip well.
Take care of yourselves, and take care of your neighbors.