Pensacola Pass Before the Booming

We've already mentioned Friday's stroll around Ft. Pickens National Seashore Park. That was when we lucked into a two-hour scoop on word that the Unified Command in the Mobile section had just authorized the booming of Pensacola Pass.

We took a number of other photographs that day which we normally wouldn't bother sharing since we were using a simple little pocket camera and there were on hand a number of far more skilled and much better equipped newspaper and television photographers at the same location. But, as it turns out, they weren't interested in what we stumbled upon, so what the heck.... Let's share.

Here are some more or less selected scenes from our walk-about to the western tip of Santa Rosa Island before the booming. (You can see a detailed view by clicking on each picture.)

At the seawall near Ft. Pickens fishing pier (above), Cheeseburger the chihuahua eagerly introduced himself with tongue and paw. He and his owner, Pensacola painting contractor Ted Dwiggins, were taking the rest of the day off to say goodbye to a healthy Pensacola Bay.

"I finished a job this morning," Dwiggins explained, "and we thought we'd come out here while it dries."

"Got treats?" Cheeseburger asked.

"There are tarballs all along the beach," Dwiggins warned.

He had brought with him a pair of binoculars. Pointing them at the bay he added, "I think there's a large sheet of oil beneath the surface out there. Can't really see it, though."

"Throw ball?" Cheeseburger inquired. "Or stick?"

"We come out here a lot," Dwiggins added. "It's our favorite place. Guess we won't be coming out for months, now. Maybe longer."

"Scratch my back?" Cheeseburger proposed.

We patted our good-byes and walked along the surf line a short distance down the beach before spotting large and small tarballs washing back and forth in the surf (below).

Most were black, crusty things variously the size of a dime to a half dollar. Others were orange-colored, oleaginous blobs of goo.

Some tarballs had been caught up in clumps of seaweed and thin plastic strings that look like cheerleader pom-poms (below).

Those that didn't cling to small bits of seaweed were amorphic in the water. Once deposited on sand above the water's edge, they assumed a somewhat more definite shape, almost like sea anemones, and glinted brightly in the sun as if to counterfeit signs of life.

Our walk along the beach was interrupted by a television crew from Mobile. They were wandering the beach, as we suppose, looking for visually compelling images suitable for a commercial television audience.

The relatively small tarballs at their feet must not have been sufficiently dramatic for the camera lens. But they found Joe Magyarosi.

Joe is a long time, colorful character who lives on Pensacola Beach. He once was a plumber in Allentown, Pennsylvania, as we recall.

Asked by the TV news reporter what he thought about the looming environmental crisis, Joe answered with a question of his own, "Why are we on defense?" he demanded. Quickly, he answered his own question: "We should be playing offense."

Before the startled reporter could respond, Joe dropped to his knees and like a field general in the midst of a battle that's going badly he started to furiously sketch out in the sand a battle plan he had in mind for positioning an entire navy of oil skimmers here, and there, and over yonder. The reporter snapped to attention and the cameraman continued filming (below).

The sun was bright. The sand was dry and powdery. Any finger-digging collapsed easily. The crucial battle lines, circles of imaginary boats, and the sweeping paths of Joe's mythical Skimmer Navy remained elusive to our eye. They probably didn't show up too well on camera, either.

Randomly scattered nearby were used oil booms and plastic garbage bags filled with clumps of thin plastic strips resembling cheerleading pom-poms (below). In the distance, around a gentle bend in the beach, we could make out what looked like a large garbage scow anchored in the water. On shore, a small group of clean-up workers were resting in the shade of a tent.

We stopped to talk with the crew leader. He didn't tell us his name, but said he was from Pensacola. He explained that he leads subcontractor disaster clean-up crews for a living.

He told us he had just arrived back in Pensacola from the Nashville flood. It was "an awful mess," he said. "Got almost no news coverage, though. I guess the media would rather watch the oil."

Farther along the beach we found more evidence of oil pollution on the surface of a discarded motor oil jug (below). The irony was evident.

Some boater, somewhere, had tossed the emptied jug overboard as if this one small addition of plastic pollution could not possibly harm the vast waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Later, fresh oil from BP's broken Deepwater Horizon well had clung to it like a life raft. Now, the whole mess had made landfall to despoil the beach.

More evidence of the transport of leaking oil through man's careless littering rested near the water's edge, fresher than the last. An old, weathered plastic bottle had washed up on the beach (below). Stuck to its underside was an orange-colored, pulpous patty of oil. Grains of sand clung to it, trapped by the sticky substance.

We passed the garbage scow, or barge, we had seen earlier. In the bow was a huge garbage container. Behind that, about midship, we noticed a meeting seemed to be taking place.

About half a dozen men were sitting around a makeshift table under a tent (below). One was writing something down. At that distance we couldn't be sure but it looked like he was dressed in a cream-colored suit and wearing a hazmat vest over it.

Others in work clothes were milling about looking for shade wherever they could find it.

We mused at the scene: a rusty old barge that serves as a meeting place for swells in suits as well as shade for workers in blue jeans dressed for hard labor. A catastrophic oil spill levels everybody.

At the western-most end of Santa Rosa Island we came upon three figures fishing (below).

"You don't plan on eating anything you catch, do you?" we asked.

The two men, both locals, said yes, they did. "Haven't seen any oil yet," one added as he baited a hook.

"There are tarballs all along the beach," we pointed out.

"Didn't see 'em," the other man claimed in a surly way as he turned back toward his pole.

The fishermen didn't seem to want company any more than the blue heron did. As we turned back to retrace our steps it occurred to us that all three of these creatures may well be the last fishers at Pensacola Pass for months or even years to come. Of the three, however, only one of them truly did not know what was about to happen to his way of life.

We turned back to take one last photo. All three were back at their labors, seemingly oblivious to the arriving oil.

Just beyond, we could plainly see the dividing line between bay and Gulf. It's where the turquoise water of the western tip of Santa Rosa island meets the deep blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico (below).

On the return trip we saw a pontoon party boat had been beached. A dozen or so women were swimming, sitting, wading, and standing in the water (below). They appeared to be of a wide range of ages, from their twenties to the sixties.

Although it was early afternoon, these women were feeling no pain. Several of them hollered out and raised their glasses in a raucous greeting as we approached.

"Are you members of some club?" we stupidly asked.

"Thas' raht, hon'," one shouted back amid a din of laughter. "We're the N'awlins Girls."

"Y'all like wimmin or men?" another asked to more peels of laughter.

Standing there at the water's edge, talking with half-dressed strangers in the midst of the largest natural disaster in U.S. history, it seemed an odd question, yes, but we have long since given up judging others for how they are reacting to the BP oil spill.

We considered a judicious reply. We answered that we liked them both but only slept with women.

"Wall, thas' all right, then. Y'all come rah't in the water."

We politely declined and wished the visitors well. That evening, She Who Must Be Obeyed mentioned that she thought she had seen some of the same women on the television news, being interviewed by another TV reporter while they partied on Orange Beach.

It was after this that we passed a Pensacola News Journal photographer. We laughed to ourselves as we contemplated him being cross-examined about his sexual orientation by the "N'awlins Girls."

It was then that we met Dusty Warner, the park ranger who told us he's section head for the Unified Command. He was marching smartly behind us as we walked toward the fishing pier where we'd first met Cheeseburger and his owner.

We stopped and the ranger quickly caught up. He was an enormously friendly, charming man -- and completely open about who he was and what he had been doing.

We were so interested in Ranger Warner's description of his decision to permit booming of Pensacola Pass that we didn't even think to ask him why he happened to be in full uniform walking the beach on such a hot day, or where he was coming from. It was only later that we realized the only place he could have come from was that old barge, the one where we had seen the indistinct figure of a man, dressed in an oddly formal way under a hazmat vest, writing at a table.

We have no way of knowing for sure, but we'd like to think our little pocket camera accidentally captured the very moment history was made on that old barge and Pensacola Pass was closed for the first time since the Civil War.

Tumorous Tarballs: June 6 Sunday BP Oil Spill Update

1. Western Panhandle.

Yesterday, the oil of doom reached Okaloosa Island, in Ft. Walton Beach. It's official: the entire 40-mile length of Santa Rosa Island, the second longest contiguous barrier island in the world, has now been thoroughly infected with BP's oil.

NOAA's oil-cast for the coming few days (above) shows the leading edge of the oil spill reaching all the way to Freeport. Panama City cannot be far behind, along with St. George's Island, Apalachicola's famed oyster beds, and soon Cedar Key.

2. Historical Endings.

These are all areas with sensitive wetlands, estuaries, and bayous. They have been one of planet Earth's major cradles of sea life for as long as Santa Rosa Island has been around, about five thousand years.

• Since the end of the stone age.
• Before the pyramids.
• About a thousand years before mankind "scratched the surface of moist clay tablet with a bronze or bone tool."
• It's two thousand years older than Homer.
• Three thousand years older than the biblical Christ tales.
• Nearly 4,500 years older than when Tristan de Luna "discovered" it.
  

3. Tarball Tumors.

BP's massive oil spill invites the cancer metaphor. It's like an aggressive cancer, insidiously invading the body of Florida's panhandle.

The first signs are seemingly so benign, as we saw Friday; just tiny little orange droplets, easily overlooked. Not even enough to discourage swimmers or surfers.

Kimberly Blair's superior news report in today's PNJ captures the sense of it:

For the most part, beachgoers on Pensacola Beach seemed oblivious of various-sized tar balls washing up around them. They sat in chairs and spread out beach towels on top of the tar balls dotting the high-tide line and hiding in clumps of seaweed.

And parents didn't seem to mind their children playing and swimming near tar balls on the beach and in the surf.
Kevin Rhodes, 37, of Piedmont, Okla., helped his son, Carter, 2, dump buckets of sand into a big pile on the surf's edge, just inches from tar balls."I'm not concerned about them," he said.

Everything seems normal. Beach life goes on:

After a swim at Casino Beach, Brittanie Heuremann washed off her baby daughter, Paislie, in the public showers.

"It's nice out there," she said. "We're visiting from Houston. We were surprised to hear about tar balls here. But we didn't see any."

Then comes the shock and surprise, like suddenly discovering an unfamiliar lump on the body:

[O]ne of her family members, Heather Burkes, yelled out, "What's that?" when she discovered a quarter-sized spot of oil on her leg.

And the terror:

At the same time, a group of women ran to the sand near the showers and began grinding their feet in the sand trying to rub the tar balls off their feet.

Farther to the east, in front of the Hampton Inn, Darcy Roberston of Gulf Breeze pushed silver-dollar-sized blobs of oil around to make a smiley face in the sand. Then she lifted her foot to show the tar ball was stuck on her

Before you know it, the toxic oil slick and tumorous tarballs are spreading everywhere:

Like so many people, Emily Keith of Hattiesburg, Miss., wanted to enjoy Pensacola Beach one more time today before more oil spoiled the beach.

"I came out at 8 a.m. and saw an oil mat that looked like a chocolate-pudding pancake," she said while relaxing on a beach lounger behind the Hilton Pensacola Beach Gulf Front. "I came back at 11 a.m. and it, and other tar balls, were still here. "About 1 p.m., two or three cleanup teams swept through. They were wearing hazmat suits, heavy gloves and boots.

The cancer has spread so fast and so far that it overwhelms all remedies. No amount of healing efforts can stop it.

They just scooped it up and threw it in a trash bag. But they were passing up many other tar balls."

About a dozen bags with tar balls sat in a pile behind her waiting to be picked up.

A quick cure is impossible:

[I]n what is expected to become the norm on the beach for some time, more tar balls continued washing in from the Gulf.

You know now that you are very, very sick. If survival is even possible, it will require painful, expensive treatments over a very long time. And all the while, there will be that temptation to deny it is happening to you:

He looked out over the Gulf and said, "I think the worse is yet to come. I don't want to believe it, though."

4. Healing the Gulf.

As with some cancers, perhaps time and extraordinary efforts eventually will heal the island. Certainly it will take at least decades, judging by the much smaller Exxon Valdez oil spill. For the sea life and wildlife of the Gulf coast, the answer is scientists just don't know. How much longer will it take to see the newly discovered coral reefs restored? The wetlands and bayous?

An even bigger question is whether this been a sufficient wake-up call for us to effectively address, at last, mankind's other great assault against nature, the rising sea levels due to global climate change? Even as the oil spill continues, the evidence mounts that the entire globe is warming, sea levels are rising, and the oceans are experiencing a diminished capacity to absorb carbon dioxide.

It's worth remembering the same "drill, baby, drill" personalities told us imminent climate change was a "myth" and mankind had nothing to do with it. If the BP oil spill does nothing else that's good, at least we can hope that, like a bad pap smear, it will shut up the deniers of reality who are so handsomely paid by oil companies and let us get on with healing the whole planet -- before the seas around Florida rise another six feet meters.


metric edit 6-06 pm

Mid-Day Pensacola Beach Oil News

From Escambia Disaster Response:

• This morning, Saturday, June 5, reports have been received that more tar balls and mats have washed ashore on Pensacola Beach. Initial reports are that the extent of this second impact is less than the initial one. Unified Command has deployed clean-up and assessment teams.

• The oil sheen is reported less than one mile off the shore.

• On the morning of Friday, June 4, tar balls and tar mats, ranging in size from 3 cm to 18 cm in size, washed ashore on a widely scattered areas on Pensacola. The unified command deployed over 300 people as part of clean-up, assessment and boat crews to the affected areas.

• Pensacola Beach is open for business.

In an earlier advisory EDR mentioned that Northwest Congressman Jeff ("Mr. Oil Spill") Miller "will have a media availability at 11:15 am" at some distant location on Airport Blvd. in Pensacola -- just about as far as one can get from the oily beaches and still be inside the Pensacola city limits.

We're sure everybody is real sorry to have missed him. Many of us were too busy wiping his tarballs off the beach.

A Trip Down the Emer-Oiled Coast: Friday June 4 BP Oil Spill Update

"I've been all over the world; even south Florida. I've seen many pretty places, but this beach is the most beautiful I've ever seen."

-- Northeastern clean-up worker, June 4, 2010.

By now the whole world knows that an advance tongue of BP's lake of oil has reached Pensacola Beach. Indeed, it is washing up on beaches along the entire forty-mile length of Santa Rosa Island.

Today we took a leisurely trip along the westernmost half of what used to be known as the "Emerald Coast." We began at Navarre Beach and gradually proceeded, with refreshment stops, all the way to the western tip of Santa Rosa Island. Here's what we found:

1. Navarre Beach Near Normal.

To all outward appearances, Navarre Beach late this morning was unusually crowded for a Friday morning but otherwise normal. Lots of sunbathers, young kids gamboling in the surf, even a surf boarder or two.

Only a close inspection of the waves as they spent themselves on the beach revealed the occasional small, orange tarball. There were not many, even at mid-day. And, most were as small as dime; a very few were the size of a quarter.

The vast majority of tarballs were small, burnt-orange in color, and gooey-soft.We looked particularly for any signs that young swimmers were coming in contact with the oil. We saw none. Everybody seemed to be having a great time.

2. BP Clean-up Workers.

We happened to arrive at Navarre Beach just as three clean-up crews were unloading from a fleet of brand-new oversized white vans. Some of the vans were so new they had only temporary plates.

The vehicles bore license plates from a variety of states -- Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina. From the looks of it, BP has rented every van they could lay their corporate tentacles on throughout the Southeast.

Just for fun, we snapped a photo of a couple of the license plates and mashed them up (below).
These plates are from two of eight vans we saw at Navarre Beach. All were disgorging workers who had been given no protective clothing. After each crew exited a van they gathered together, then headed immediately for the beach.

The crews had shockingly few tools. One or two were armed with a shovel, some with sticks and plastic bags. Most were carrying nothing.

3. Clean-up Crews Under Wraps.

Every time we encountered clean-up crews, we tried to engage them in conversation. Normally, we're pretty good at that. We're a talkative sort, fairly friendly, and even if we do say so ourselves, we've had a lot of experience, from one end of the globe to the other, at getting complete strangers to open up.

Not today. Not with this crowd. We tried talking with several of the workers at several different beaches. Almost all refused to say a word.

Some ignored us. Most merely shook their heads from side to side as if to say, 'No, man. I can't say a word' or 'Don't you get it? I need this job.'

One brave worker did tell us he wasn't "from around here." But he, too, silently shook his head when we followed up by asking where he was from.

It was obvious that all the workers were under strict instructions to talk to no one. Many seemed, frankly, terrified to be approached. One fellow referred us to what he called "the head man." He turned out to be a middle-aged guy with a southern accent and a large paunch hanging over his belt. His hands looked as soft as his belly.

He, too, admitted he wasn't "from here." But he wouldn't say where he came from. When we asked, he silently dug into his pants and, after a short struggle, pulled out a small roll of ten identical thin strips of paper, all bearing the same typed message:

"Here," he said, handing us one of the strips. "You got any questions you call this number."

"Do they know where you're from?" we asked innocently.

On the slip of paper was a Louisiana phone number. If you want to know who we were trying to talk to, give 'em a call.

4. Opal Beach, National Seashore.

At Opal Beach, a few miles down the road, we had much better success talking with two bird watchers and their family. Using a classy spotting scope, they thought they might have identified two Pacific something-or-others -- loons or gulls or whatever -- out over the water. "They're quite rare here," I was assured.

They told me that just minutes before I arrived, clean-up crews had been covering the beach in front of them.
"Then, one of them got a call," the woman said. "We heard him say something about a report of oil at Navarre Beach. They all packed up and went running for their vans. And, poof! they were gone."

In fact, the tarballs at Opal Beach were bigger and much more in evidence than anything we had seen on Navarre Beach. The average size of tarball there was a half-dollar, as one of our new found friends illustrated (up, left).

With every ebb of the surf, dozens of coin-sized black tarballs and larger patties of orange goo remained behind. With every flow, more came ashore.


5. Pensacola Beach.

Pensacola Beach was crowded, too. Partly, perhaps, due to all the national media crews that have descended on us.

Conditions there were worse than at Opal Beach. Tarballs were a bit larger and much more numerous. This didn't stop sunbathers or most swimmers, at least not while we watched.

They should have taken a look at what we saw. A CNN crew member had been handed two tarballs, so she told us, by a 'clam digger' who said he had found them at Navarre Beach. (See photo at the top of this article.) She had placed them in a 16 oz. styrofoam cup.

"But they melted in the heat of the sun," she complained.

A woman standing next to us asked if she could take a picture of the melted tarballs.

"Does this belong to you?" she asked the CNN woman.

For answer, the CNN woman snickered. "It belongs to BP, I guess."

6. Ft. Pickens.

At Ft. Pickens, on the very western edge of Santa Rosa Island, things remained much as they were yesterday. At early afternoon, the V-shaped boom planned to protect Pensacola Bay was still not deployed, although it looked like preparations were underway.

A small crew of workmen were taking a break in the shade of a small bathroom building when we pulled up. Many had been here, they told us, for more than a month. They were employed by a subcontractor of BP's.

These men were outfitted with hazmat suits and safety equipment, although we didn't see any air filter masks.

"They're coming -- tomorrow," one man said. We couldn't be sure, but it sounded as if he was quoting a boss who might have been repeating the same phrase day after day.

These men spoke much more freely than the other clean-up crews we had encountered. We asked how the oil spill was affecting Ft. Pickens. One man from the Northeast answered, "We've got it under control."

"You know?" he added. "I've been all over the world; even south Florida. I've seen many pretty places, but this beach is the most beautiful I've ever seen. Even with the oil."

We who live on Pensacola Beach know he's right. For now. Many of us also fear that soon enough he will be wrong.

BP's oil has now come ashore. It will get worse here, no matter what happens at the wellhead from now through August. The beach can be cleaned, eventually. In the meantime, we'll just have to enjoy what pleasures the beach still can give -- and pitch in to help keep it that way.

More on that last point another day.

add pic minor edit 6-05am

Tarballs at Ft. Pickens

WALA-TV, Mobile, reports tarballs have been found on the beach at Ft. Pickens, which is the National Seashore Park situated at the extreme western end of Santa Rosa Island.

At least one of the tarballs was "new" enough that it reportedly "melted" while being inspected. The station does not mention if lab tests confirm it is from the BP oil disaster.

Dept. of Amplification
5-23 am

Rick's Blog has a little more... And, he wonders if Mr. Oil Spill is "changing sides" after being run over by the truck of bad BP publicity. Too little, too late, too much of a "drill, baby, drill" record, Jeff.

Judicial End Run

Bill Post, who has become the authority on the history of Pensacola Beach lease taxation issues, has a new Viewpoint article in the Independent Sun. The weekly newspaper titles it "Ignoring 1987 Ruling."

Among other things, Mr. Post has unearthed a nugget of legislative history about the key Florida statute (Florida Statute chapter 196) that no court, so far as we can recall, has ever mentioned:

The current legislative statute's intent was clearly explained in the June 3, 1980 written state senate staff Analysis that said the leaseholds will no longer be "assessed and taxed as real property" as if leaseholders were owners, but "shall be taxed only as intangible personal property." Please again take note of the word "only."

As Post observes, this expression of legislative history rather directly undermines an argument Escambia County property appraiser Chris Jones has been trumpeting through the legal system: that the legislature was "silent" about taxation of leaseholds insofar as the alternate theory of "equitable ownership" is concerned. It is not an act of silence when a legislature says this is the "only" tax intended.

If one were able to summon faith that Florida's courts, as presently constituted, truly judge cases based on proven facts and law rather than, say, politics or power, Post's historical nugget might loom large. On the other hand, to borrow Finley Peter Dunne's famous epigram, there are some courts that "follow the election returns." In which case, of course, the facts become as inconsequential as legal precedent.

We're still waiting to see which kind of court is judging the Pensacola Beach residential leasehold tax dispute.

Dogan's Done It - Again

Being a loyal reader of the Pensacola News Journal's Reginald Dogan, as we are, is like being a Chicago Cubs fan. No matter how fervently you wish them success, over time the odds are high that you're going to have your heart broken more often than not.

Take today, for instance. Coming off a win where Dogan hit it out of the park by showing what an unnecessary extravagance an $8-$10 million parking ramp would be on Pensacola Beach, he follows up with a breathtakingly bad idea: turn Pensacola Beach into Atlantic City so there will be a need for that parking ramp.

Our team writes:

For some people, the water and sand are enough attractions to bring them to the beach for a lifetime. But others, like me, want the bells and whistles.

We have a boardwalk that should be called a "boredwalk." It takes all of two minutes to cover the entire boardwalk that stretches, at best, about 300 yards.

There is a mix of shops and restaurants, but if you've been to a real boardwalk like Atlantic City or the Baltimore Harbor, you'll see how Pensacola pales in comparison.

Why do we have a Casino Beach without a casino? What good is a boardwalk that has only a few boards and a short walk?

Dogan then goes on to extol, among other monstrosities, shopping malls, 10,000 feet ampitheaters, and ferris wheels as the apotheosis of desirable beach development. Ferris wheels! Casinos??

"Don't misunderstand me," the columnist hastens to add. "Pensacola has a beautiful beach — if all you want is water and sand."

There's no possibility of misunderstanding you, Mr. Dogan. You are a Philistine with the environmental sensitivity of a bulldozer. Not to mention, you've done it again: you zigged when you should have been zagging. You engaged your keyboard before your brain knew what to write about.

Forget the fact that the News Journal has a venerable fifty-year history of advocating to preserve, not destroy, the natural wonders of Pensacola Beach against vulgar commercialization and destructive over-development. There's nothing that says a callow columnist can't try to tear down all the commendable works of J. Earle Bowden, one of the most esteemed newspaper editors in Florida history.

First, though, you really ought to read what Bowden and his allies endured to preserve just a small part of Santa Rosa Island for you to visit. As we have recalled before:

At the time, real estate development interests had visions -- and, indeed, a very specific blueprint -- for building a honky-tonk Disneyland penned by high-rise condos and hotels all the way down the 40-mile string of sand from Fort Pickens to Destin.

Read Bowden's book, The Sands of Time. Hunt down and take a look at the aerial map that circulated among real estate brokers back in the late 1960's, with its overlay showing their nightmarish visions of golf courses, casinos and, yes, even ferris wheels on Pensacola Beach. Ask around to find out how the old giant water slide on Pensacola Beach fared when the litigation was over, the enterprise was insolvent, and that mysterious fire broke out -- perhaps the only time in recorded history when a water slide burned to the ground.

That same incubus of cheap but destructive development ideas crawled out again a little more than a decade ago when the Island Authority contracted for an architect's plan to build a 3-story shopping mall right where Casino Beach sits today. Public outrage at the scheme to wall off Casino Beach from easy public view was so strong that even the Escambia County commissioners felt compelled to reject it. Indeed, they passed a resolution forbidding future commercial development of Casino Beach.

The main reason you have a "beautiful beach" to sniff at today, Mr. Dogan, is that voters and the Pensacola public at large have repeatedly rejected your vision and opted instead for the "water and sand" that you find so boring.

Mainlanders, island residents, and tourists alike all agree on one thing: it's a "beautiful" family beach we want, not another Destin, Panama City Beach, or Atlantic City.

Cheers

Can you hear the cheers erupting all over Pensacola? People are just now reading the final line of the Pensacola News Journal's editorial this morning. "Give beach goers a break."

It's great populism. Let's vote for the editorial writer, whatever he's running for!

Paradise Road Postponed

Reconstruction work on the Gulf-front road from Pensacola Beach to the Gulf Islands National Seashore park known as Opal Beach has been postponed.

Because of shore bird nesting and sea turtle season, construction will not resume until early Fall. As they used to say in Vaudeville, "some dirty pigeon stooled on us."

The road, which formerly connected Pensacola Beach with Navarre Beach, was 'Ivanized' in 2004. The eastern half from Opal Beach to Navarre Beach re-opened last month.

The western half of the highway won't become usable until very late this year or early next.