Fall/Winter 2023 Explore Issue

L E T ’S SHINE.

Find your perfect spot on a picture-perfect beach and raise a toast to the emerald Gulf coast in St. Pete/Clearwater.

Soak up the sun and sand by day, then venture beyond the beach for lively nightlife when the sun goes down.

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Fabulous dining if you

can get to your

reservation

When you’re busy admiring art in galleries, museums and throughout the streets of The Palm Beaches, your reservation time may slip your mind. That’s ok. The walk-in options are equally spectacular.

THE REVOLUTION OF THE GROOVE MURAL

BY STREET ART REVOLUTION / WEST PALM BEACH

HENRY MORRISON FL AGLER MUSEUM / PALM BEACH

NORTON MUSEUM OF ART / WEST PALM BEACH

MORIKAMI MUSEUM & JAPANESE GARDENS / DELRAY BEACH

Endless arts & culture awaits.

Discover masterpieces, breathtaking performances, inspiring events and more in The Palm Beaches.

Sitting down for a fabulous meal sounds exquisite, any day of the week. But with so many arts and cultural experiences ready to elevate your weekend in The Palm Beaches, those dinner reservations might have to wait.

Visitors of all ages can find dozens of adventures to dive into. Home to 47 miles of coastline and 39 distinct cities, The Palm Beaches are filled with loads of cultural attractions, events and destinations to enjoy.

In The Palm Beaches, myriads of museums, theaters, historical landmarks, gardens and galleries are just waiting to be explored.

From captivating performances at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts to discerning art galleries at the Norton Museum of Art, vibrant street murals and breathtaking

KRAVIS CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS / WEST PALM BEACH

historical sites like the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum, the inspiration is endless.

If you’re looking to stay overnight so you can fit even more into your itinerary, we’ve got you covered. After all, The Palm Beaches is also America’s First Resort Destination™.

From budget-friendly accomodations to luxury resorts, you can stay just steps away from it all.

No matter how many times you visit The Palm Beaches, there will always be more arts and culture to experience and more lifelong memories to be made. Start planning your trip to Florida’s Cultural Capital® by visiting palmbeachesculture.com.

— fall/wi n ter 2023 —

CONTENTS F E AT U R E S

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THERE’S A FEELING IN THE AIR

WHERE TIME STANDS STILL

THE PROTECTORS OF PARADISE

BY JAMIE RICH

B Y S T E V E D O L LA R

BY CRAIG PITTMAN

THE SHOW MUST GO ON!

Find out what it is about this enchanting North Florida barrier island that makes it the perfect getaway for the foodie, the history buff, the outdoor enthusiast, the mariner and even the hotel snob.

Hop into a Chevrolet Silverado with fine-art photographer Jimmy Nicholson as he travels deep down Panhandle back roads, on a mission to chronicle five decades of rural life on 35mm film.

Join television personality Chad Crawford behind the scenes of his latest documentary series that looks at the environmental threats to our state’s most vulnerable habitats.

BY ERIC BARTON

Go backstage to see “The Greatest Show on Earth” rehearsed, reimagined and reborn as this daring troupe prepares for opening night of Florida’s iconic circus, after a six-year hiatus.

Cover Photography by MARY BETH KOETH On the cover: Models Chelsea Brooks and Nicolas

Vansteenberghe take a breezy bike ride under the mossy oaks at Fort Clinch State Park.

Clothing: Styling by Penelope T boutique for Chelsea and T-Dub’s Mercantile for Nicolas Hair and makeup: Kayle Shoals and Robert Sugden

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D E PA R T M E N TS

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48

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WADING IN

COLUMNS

ON THE FLY

20 /// THE SPREAD: This Floridian host inspires Southern hospitality with her entertaining boxes that have everything one needs for a party.

48 /// C APITAL DAME: Diane Roberts reflects on her family home and the stories still alive inside it.

98 /// BIRD’S-EYE VIEW: Uncover the best of Amelia Island.

24 /// M ADE IN FLA: This Central Florida design studio makes us map-happy.

28 /// T HE STUDIO: A Destin-based painter creates art fresh off the boat.

32 /// FLEDGLINGS: Outlaw country inspires a Clearwater musician.

37 /// G ROVE STAND: A Cinderella story begins in India and ends in Jacksonville with love, family and Kerala curry.

91 /// PANHANDLING: Prissy Elrod’s art-filled adventure turns into a frazzled foot fiasco.

96 /// F LORIDA WILD: Up close and personal with one of Florida’s friendly and fearless flyers

100 /// DESIGN DISTRICT: A Palm Beach designer ponders what makes a house a home.

104 /// ONE-ON-ONE: Meet Representative Maxwell Alejandro Frost, of Orlando, Gen Z’s first member of Congress.

109 /// T HE TIDE: Events to keep you busy from October to February 112 /// F LORIDIANA: Tallahassee back roads lead to a long-standing country cooking staple.

42 /// JUST HATCHED: Twelve new places where you can eat and retreat around the state this fall

On this spread: The sun sets over the Intracoastal Waterway near Amelia Island.

Photography by MARY BETH KOETH

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EDITOR’S NOTE

Play It Again muse. We first wrote about the icon in the fall of 2017, back when the magazine was just getting started. Our article examined how Buffett created an entire genre of music and with it a magic that no one else has been able to match. What began in the bars of Key West in the 1970s spilled out into the world like a too-full margarita glass overflowing with pure joy.

Right before we went to print for this issue in early September, that oversize margarita glass shattered with the announcement of Buffett’s death. How could someone who lived life so full throttle be taken so soon? If you’re like me and my family, the news sparked a resurgence of Songs You Know by Heart playing in the house, the first finger pick of Buffett’s guitar instantly transporting us to happy times. Not surprisingly, an international outpouring of love erupted, and Flamingo readers were no exception. The comments on our social media post were so many and so heartfelt that we decided to pay tribute to the man who made “Margaritaville” a global phenomenon by sharing some of those memories on our Flamboyance page.

You can also take a trip down memory lane with us and read the article, “Gone Coastal,” from our Fall 2017 issue which still holds true today.

That’s the thing about great stories and songs, you want to read and hear them over and over again. I hope the same is true for this issue of Flamingo: that you’ll continue to come back to Volume 23 and all the ones before it because there’s a special feeling in the air when you hold one in your hands and turn the pages.

E di tor i n Chi ef & P u b lish e r

Let us know what you think. Email me at jamie@flamingomag.com

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MARY BETH KOETH

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ell there’s a feelin’ in the air.” That’s the opening verse to a song called “This Time of Year” by the band Better Than Ezra that’s been playing on a loop in my head throughout the production of this Fall/Winter Explore issue. It’s also the inspiration behind the headline for a feature story I wrote in this edition, something I don’t do often these days.

The tune taps into the crisp new energy that arrives with fall, Fridays and football games. It’s a sensation I find difficult to describe in words, although songwriter Kevin Griffin captures it perfectly in the lyrics and melody of his song.

Even in Florida, fall is a welcome time of change. The temperatures drop, a degree or two, and there are certain activities, food, music and places that evoke the essence of the season. For me, one of those places is Amelia Island in Northeast Florida. It’s a place I gravitate to in the chillier months of the year, with its Victorian-era town center, mosscovered oaks and twinkling lights (oh, and don’t forget the Christmas store). I have memories of cold-weather boat trips to the harbor with my family and weekends wrapped in blankets roasting s’mores by a firepit in the dunes at the Ritz-Carlton.

The island is at once heavy and light, rich and relaxed, fresh and historic—like leaves swirling in the street before an approaching storm, there’s a stirring of the soul that happens there.

Inside the pages of this issue of Flamingo, we invite you to explore Florida and experience this big fall energy with us. First, walk the storied docks at Fernandina Harbor Marina, sail up the Amelia River, bike the fort and stay in a restored Victorian home, on a perfect getaway to Amelia Island. Then venture west across the Panhandle for a nostalgic look through the lens of fine-art photographer Jimmy Nicholson, who has documented rural life in the region on blackand-white film for more than 50 years. His images of small-town Southern life in places like Quincy, FL depict more than just faces and spaces but convey the true spirit of the people and culture there. Then we strike out on a more serious mission and go behind the scenes of a new documentary created by Chad Crawford, of “How To Do Florida,” that uncovers some of the biggest environmental threats impacting our state—from algae blooms to sea-level rise. And finally, we relish in a ringside seat at the revamped Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, a classic Old Florida cornerstone rooted in Sarasota lore. Watch the cannon blast and hear the trumpets march as an international cast of performers defy expectations in this modern interpretation of “The Greatest Show on Earth.” Elsewhere in the state, we eat Indian food in Jacksonville, discover a seafaring artist in Destin, check into luxury digs in West Palm Beach and tap our toes to new music from Clearwater.

Music is not only an inspiration for how we present stories, it’s also a pillar of our content. Maybe you’ve noticed there’s a proverbial Flamingo soundtrack playing in the background of every print issue, and to that end Jimmy Buffett has been a major

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Fa-la-la-la-la

Into a Victorian Christmas Celebrate a Victorian-era Christmas at Amelia Island’s signature holiday festival full of can’t-miss seasonal merriment.

By Emilee Perdue

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on your top hats, bonnets under the stars—and inside a snow and petticoats and stroll globe! The Dickens Enchanted Village the streets of downtown houses eight life-sized transparent Fernandina Beach, where Charles igloos, hosting you and up to five other Dickens’s classic novel A Christmas guests for a magical evening of dining Carol comes to life. Living in a state and dazzlement. Graze on curated of perpetual sunshine and warm charcuterie boxes and sip from your temperatures can sometimes make favorite wine, beer or bubbly, all while it difficult to get into the traditional in the comfort of your own personal merry-making mood. But at Dickens snow globe. on Centre, an immersive Victorian holiday experience, even the biggest Naughty and Nice of Scrooges will be belting out a carol Need to make sure you’re on the nice or two by the end of this jolly, jamlist? Meet jolly St. Nick himself at packed four-day festival.

Tiny Tim’s Kid Zone, which includes The ninth annual Dickens games, holiday movies and stationery celebration combines Christmas to write letters to Santa. And once the cheer and Southern charm to honor children are all snug in their beds, Amelia Island’s historical links to those on the naughty list can sneak off Victorian England. Also known as to Dickens After Dark, an exclusive 21 the Isle of Eight Flags, this small and older Victorian-era costume party seaport has been ruled by eight held in the historic Lesesne House different governments, including on Centre Street. Built in the midGreat Britain—the island was named 1800s, it’s one of the oldest residences after King George II’s daughter, in Fernandina Beach and has formal Princess Amelia. During this time, dining rooms and parlors perfectly many iconic holiday traditions came decorated for Christmas. Toast to about, such as caroling, gift giving winter wonder—and to an open beer and tree lighting. With so many and wine bar—while enjoying live music Dickens on Centre’s 2022 drone show above Centre Street in downtown Fernandina Beach historical buildings still intact, plus and circus performers. At the end of a picturesque downtown, there’s no the night, catch a glimpse of the Ghost better place in Florida to host Dickens on Centre’s several spirited fetes. of Christmas Past on a walking ghost tour led by the Amelia Island Museum of History.

Dining and Dazzlement More Yuletide delights include the Illuminated Procession, a walking A collection of free theatrical performances and musical numbers take parade with homemade lanterns and custom decorations that kick off the place across two stages throughout the festival. Entertainment includes weekend, and the Run Like the Dickens fun run, a one-mile race on the a one-man A Christmas Carol performance, an Alice in A Christmas beach the morning of Saturday, Dec. 9. With four days full of festivities Wonderland ensemble production, appearances by the Amelia Community and a quick conversation with Ebenezer Scrooge about the true meaning Theatre and the Amelia Island Opera, and a new show, The Little Toy of Christmas, you and your loved ones will be counting down the days until Shoppe. The merriment expands off the stages and onto the sidewalks Dec. 25. But just like buying presents, you won’t want to wait until the last with jugglers, acrobats and stilt walkers, all decked out in Victorian garb minute to make reservations or buy tickets for these spirited soirees—they and milling about with festivalgoers and vendors. fill up fast! Transcend time, and fall into seasonal enchantment at Amelia Between shows, commemorate this year’s holiday season with a night Island’s Dickens on Centre, happening Dec. 7-10.

Visit AmeliaIsland.com/Dickens for more information.

CONTRIBUTORS

COLE LOCURTO is a national commercial photographer, specializing in food, lifestyle and corporate photography. Raised in Northeast Florida, he’s passionate about capturing the people, places and pastimes of his community. LoCurto began shooting professionally at age 16 and hasn’t put down his camera since. He’s a regular contributor for Edible Northeast Florida, documenting the First Coast’s finest cuisine, chefs and restaurants.

In this issue of Flamingo, his first, he photographs chef Saji George of Jacksonville’s Mesa for our Grove Stand department on page 37.

ERIC BARTON, Flamingo’s senior writer and contributing editor, reports in this issue about the mighty return of “The Greatest Show On Earth”— the Ringling Bros.—as they assemble the Big Top and gear up for a reimagined performance on page 78.

Plus, Barton chronicles a chef’s journey across oceans and state lines to open her dream Indian eatery in our Grove Stand department on page 37. Barton’s work has appeared in Bicycling Magazine, Food & Wine, Outside and more. Most recently, he reported and wrote the fourth season of “Over My Dead Body: Gone Hunting,” a Wondery podcast. When he’s not dining in Miami, you can find him hiking the North Carolina mountains or renovating his cabin.

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JULES OZAETA is a Ponte Vedra Beachbased graphic designer and multimedia artist, who is also a native of the Philippines. When she is not behind her computer designing magazine spreads, Ozaeta is either holding a paint brush putting the finishing touches on a pet portrait or molding a wire sculpture.

Ozaeta’s graphic design work and artistry can be seen throughout this issue. The latest Bird’s-Eye View travel guide on page 98 features her watercolor paintings of Amelia Island’s landmarks, while our Capital Dame column on page 48 showcases her line drawings.

ELLEN SWANDIAK is a New York City native, accomplished art director and graphic designer. She contributes her talent to Flamingo along with dozens of notable national magazines such as Yachts International, PassageMaker, Ocean House, Greenwich, New CanaanDarien & Rowayton and more. Swandiak has also designed several cookbooks for CBS star Rachael Ray and authored the internationally acclaimed travel book 500 Hidden Secrets of New York. Today, she is immersing herself in all things Southern from her new home in Charleston, South Carolina. Swandiak’s work can be seen throughout the pages of this issue of Flamingo, which showcases her keen eye for art and design.

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COURTESY OF THE CONTRIBUTORS

CARRIE HONAKER is a Florida-based food and travel writer who is not sure where she will land next, but it will involve messy eating, a spicy tempranillo and finding the local farmers market. Her work has appeared in Bon Appetit, Condé Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine and many more. In her Flamingo debut, Honaker introduces us to Harley Van Hyning, a Destin-based artist making a memorable impression on the local fishing community, on page 28, as well as Krista Watterworth Alterman, a Palm Beach interior designer and HGTV star, on page 100.

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STAYS WITH YOU

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TH O UG H TS FRO M T HE F LOCK

IS SUE

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For Floridians. By Floridians.

• FOUNDED IN 2016 •

ReflectiNG on the life of Jimmy Buffett On Sept. 1, 2023, singer-songwriter and Florida icon Jimmy Buffett died surrounded by family and friends. The coastal country castaway left many footprints on our Sunshine State sands, as well as a global musical legacy. He will be missed, but through his music, he will live on forever in our hearts. These are some of the memories shared by our readers on what this Son of a Son of a Sailor meant to them.

Great photo! I spent some time in Key West in the early ’70’s & I have always had a place in my heart for Jimmy’s music. He touched millions of souls! There will be a beach in Heaven for you! —@king_pola_b3ar

— fa l l / w i n t e r 20 2 3 —

EDITORIAL Editor in Chief and Founder JAMIE RICH jamie@flamingomag.com Consulting Creative Director Holly Keeperman holly@flamingomag.com Assistant Editor Emilee Perdue emilee@flamingomag.com Contributing Designers Jules Ozaeta, Ellen Swandiak Senior Writer & Contributing Editor Eric Barton eric@flamingomag.com Contributing Editor Kelsey Glennon Cont ributin g Writers Ben Arthur, Steve Dollar, Prissy Elrod, Carrie Honaker, Craig Pittman, Diane Roberts, Maddy Zollo Rusbosin, Carlton Ward Jr.

RIP Jimmy. I’m so grateful that I grew up listening to you. My fav was “Why don’t we get drunk...and go to SCHOOL.” I always changed the words as my (at that time) very young son was around. —Stephanie Spradley Thompson

Contributing Photographers & Illustrators Beth Gilbert, Mary Beth Koeth, Josh Letchworth, Cole LoCurto, Stephen Lomazzo, Jules Ozaeta, Carlton Ward Jr. Copy Editors & Fa c t-C h e c k e rs Patty Carroll, Amanda Price Editorial Interns Ben Arthur, Cristina Angee

I can’t listen to his music, I heard the “Tiki Bar is Open” and started crying. He has been a part of my life since I was a young teen. It is tough to see Joy leave the planet. Jimmy you will be misssed for a long long time. My thoughts and prayers are with his family. —@smiller1077

— Catherine Faes

Advertising Sales Director Janis Kern janis@flamingomag.com Advertising Sales Megan Zebouni megan@flamingomag.com

It’s a sad day … Growing up here in Florida, most of my childhood memories correspond with a Jimmy Buffett song. From driving over the 10 Cent Bridge here in Stuart while listening to “Coconut Telegraph” on the way to the beach. Or sitting with my dad listening to “Little Miss Magic” after dinner before hitting golf balls on the Martin County course at dusk. Or listening to “Margaritaville” in the Keys on the boat while diving for lobster or fishing the bridges at night! So many memories.

—@christine_rader_benedetto

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! Join the flamboyance (a flock of flamingos) by signing up for our weekly newsletter at flamingomag.com and tell us what you think.

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Marketing & Promotions sales@flamingomag.com Contact Us JSR Media LLC 13000 Sawgrass Village Circle, Bldg. 3, Suite 12 Ponte Vedra Beach, FL 32082 P: (904) 395-3272 // E: info@flamingomag.com All content in this publication, including but not limited to text, photos and graphics, is the sole property of and copyrighted by JSR Media and Flamingo. Reproduction without permission from the publisher is prohibited. We take no responsibility for images or content provided by our advertisers.

SCAN THE QR CODE TO READ A STORY FROM THE FLAMINGO VAULT ON HOW BUFFETT GOT HIS START IN KEY WEST AND HIS JOYOUS IMPACT ON THE WORLD

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Publisher JAMIE RICH jamie@flamingomag.com

JSR MEDIA

TOM CORCOR AN

I just saw him live on February 15th at the Hard Rock Hollywood, FL. He was Awesome! He talked about having cancer and told the audience he was soooo happy he could still play and would continue to play as long as he could. RIP Jimmy.

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miami SLICE P R O D UC TS + EVENTS + PROMOTIONS

FOOD, WINE and FINE ART are three perfect reasons to head to MIAMI this season.

Matheson Cocktail from loews, coral gables 2 ounces spicy tequila 1/2 ounce Cointreau 1/2 ounce lime juice 1/2 ounce Guajillo syrup

FROM GLAMOROUS STARLIT BEACH PARTIES to intimate culinary workshops, the 22nd annual South Beach Wine & Food Festival presents a weekend of fetes and feasts that capture the essence of the Magic City’s effervescent, multicultural vibe. From Feb. 22–25, attend demonstrations hosted by Food Network personalities, savor roses and reds from around the world and snag samples from more than 100 mouthwatering events. Don’t forget to don your chicest attire just in case you run into celebrity guests from the likes of Neil Patrick Harris, Guy Fieri, Eva Longoria, DJ Khaled and more. Prepare to be swept away by a wave of culinary excellence, where everything from the atmosphere to the appetizers contributes to this celebration of all things flavorfully exquisite. To purchase tickets, visit sobewff.org

INSPIRED BY OUTDOOR PARISIAN EXHIBITIONS, the Coconut Grove Arts Festival celebrates 60 years and bids a happy retirement to beloved president Monty Trainer (aka the Grovefather). The open-air juried art festival explodes with an abundance of mediums including clay, glass, metal, mixed media and more, as 240 international artists gather in the heart of this historic neighborhood, Feb. 17–19. cgaf.com

FEEL THE BIG ART ENERGY at this year’s Art Basel, an exhibition of modern and contemporary art from around the globe that welcomes collectors, connoisseurs and the culturally curious for a weekend of avant-garde masterpieces and bold breakout creators. From exclusive VIP previews to the impromptu street parties that spill into the neon-lit night, Dec. 8–10 will be a genrebending weekend that envelops the entire city in a tsunami of creativity. artbasel.com/miami-beach

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SOBEWFF, COCONUT GROVE ARTS FESTIVAL, ART BASEL, LOEWS COR AL GABLES

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[ — Flor idians, far e, f inds —

WADING IN — The Spread —

Pa rty in a box for t he Sout he r n hos t

— MADE IN FLA —

C a rtogra p hy c ar t oons of our favori t e t owns

— the studio —

D aily d eep -s e a c at che s l e ave an i m pr e s s i on

— Fledglings —

A G u l f Coas t c ount r y c r oone r

— grove stand —

A ca reer f ue l e d by c ourage and c ur r y

— Just Hatched —

Tw elve n e w addi t i ons ar ound t he s t at e

AMELIAISL AND.COM

This page:

[

The Intracoastal marshes of Amelia Island

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ADVERTORIAL

A WINDOW INTO

The Medici Era

Take a trip across oceans and time to the Florentine baroque period to experience Beyond the Medici: The Haukohl Family Collection at the Rollins Museum of Art in Winter Park.

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hen standing in front of Harlequin and His Lady by Giovanni Domenico Ferretti, you can almost hear the lively staccato of a lute, smell a freshly roasted pheasant and feel your feet start to dance the corrente. The whirl of whimsical colors, the supple curve of rosy cheeks, the painted balance of light and darkness—each piece in the Beyond the Medici: The Haukohl Family Collection at the Rollins Museum of Art whisks viewers across seas and centuries to the 1600s in Florence, Italy, where the Medici dukedom reigned.

The affluent banking family commissioned painters and sculptors from around the globe to make a pilgrimage to Florence and create some of the most influential pieces of the era. Luckily, thanks to the generosity of Sir Mark Haukohl—who comes from a long line of collectors—residents of Winter Park have the rare opportunity to experience this transatlantic adventure through time and culture.

The portraits, narratives and sculptures comprised in the collection straddle the line between religious devotion and sensual exploration, often depicting divine interactions through a gilded, dreamlike lens. An epitome of the baroque style,

The Annunciation to the Immaculate Virgin by Alessandro Gherardini, is a detailed oil painting of the Virgin Mary’s encounter with the archangel Gabriel. The sky swirls around God the Father and other flying angels, its vertex creating a sense of juxtaposition and intimacy between Mary and Gabriel, who are seemingly frozen in the moment.

In Saint Michael the Archangel, created by an anonymous sculptor from north-central Italy, a polychrome wooden archangel Michael, known as God’s warrior, passes between the boundaries of movement and restraint, of violence and glamour. The sculpture—whose colors remain intact, a rarity for a piece from the 17th century—is dressed for battle, with detailed garments blowing in the wind and wings set to soar. However, Michael’s soft body is posed to dance, his feet light and arms up, ready to twirl in carefree joy.

According to Ena Heller, Ph.D. and museum director, this tension between youthful beauty and harsh strength is a theme that connects the

exhibition. The Florentine baroque period is filled with diverse influences showing both soft grace and cosmic force, a product of a quickly changing society. As a teaching museum, the RMA considers it important for gallerygoers to see more than the painting before them. “We look at art not just as art,” Heller said, “but as a window onto the society that created it.”

Beyond the Medici: The Haukohl Family Collection will be open from Sept. 9, 2023, through Jan. 7, 2024, at the Rollins Museum of Art. Catch a glimpse of what life was like in the 17th century and hopefully walk away with a better understanding of the past and the present world around you and a dream for the future. “Not only for the history of art, but for history in general, it informs our present moment,” Heller said. “Understanding our history, and other people’s history, makes us so much richer because it gives us a bigger context of the world around us.” For more information on the exhibit visit rollins.edu/rma.

Above from left: Giovan Domenico Ferretti (Italian 1692–1768), Harlequin and His Lady, c. 1745, oil on canvas, 23 5/16 x 19 31/64 in, Haukohl Collection, Photo Credit: MNHA/Tom Lucas; Alessandro Gherardini (Italian, 1655-1726), The Annunciation to the Immaculate Virgin, oil on canvas, 13 x 31 x 24 1/64 in., Haukohl Collection, Photo Credit: MNHA/ Tom Lucas

WADING IN :THE SPREAD FLO RIDA-F R ESH BITES & BEVS B y M a d dy Z o l l o R u sb o si n

Sunshine Delivered

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ith a business name like SUN COOKERY, you would never guess that its founder is currently living in Milwaukee, a place known for its blustery cold winters. But it was exactly this lack of vitamin D that inspired Michelle Mize, a former Tampa dweller and Florida State University graduate, to create her curated boxes of Southern hosting essentials.

“Living in the Midwest for twelve years is pretty much what drove this for me,” explains Mize. While she brought her Southern hospitality with her, she found it hard to connect within her new community. Back in Tampa, she was accustomed to a constant carousel of casual neighborhood happy hours.

“I began wondering, ‘why isn’t anyone hosting?’” she says.

Determined to figure out why her nice neighbors weren’t keen on having people over, Mize began to have dinners to inquire about just that. With responses ranging from “it’s overwhelming” to “I can’t do what I see on social media” to “I don’t have the right stuff,” she realized it was more intimidation than anything else. This triggered her to start dreaming up what would be in a starter kit for aspiring hosts unsure of where to begin.

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Above: Sun Cookery creator, Michelle Mize, unpacks the Foundations Box.

Mize says she finds inspiration from beautiful, tangible goods that are versatile in the home. The brand’s first concept, the Foundations Box, is a selection of items that—when assembled together— create an inviting tablescape. Think: gray cloth napkins, sea grass napkin rings, a linen tablecloth, woven placemats, glass candleholders and a beaded oyster shell bauble. Box contents are always curated with quality, sustainable materials meant to last. “I don’t want us to consume things we don’t need or we can’t use for a lifetime,” said Mize. She chooses a neutral color palette so the table settings will work within anyone’s home. After showing the early prototype around, she knew she was onto something: “It really resonated, and everyone was impressed you could mix and

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match it with anything.”

Sun Cookery boxes make the perfect gift for almost anyone, from newlyweds to neighbors. The kits, which are sold for about $200, offer a different style of hosting in each edition. A new box comes out seasonally while their starter set, the Foundations Box, is a classic and always available for purchase.

Their current seasonal box is about fall hospitality. This curation is bursting with color, from its four stemmed glasses to its custommade wooden serving board. For a lagniappe (a Cajun-French term meaning a little something extra) the box includes two handmade clay trinket dishes, each imprinted with Mize’s grandmother’s doily.

Mize always tries to include a personal recipe or two in Sun Cookery boxes.

“I have a deep passion for food and its roots and true origins of food, so I have cataloged everything that’s a favorite, triedand-true or unique,” she explains. “I try to keep my recipes lined up with each box as well so that it makes sense to people.”

Before founding Sun Cookery, Mize’s career was centered around marketing. She attended the Kendall College in Chicago for their culinary arts and hospitality management program and ran a key lime business in Florida selling everything from key lime crusts to cookies and fudges in St. Petersburg.

“Repeat customers would come back

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COURTESY OF SUN COOKERY

channel your inner hostess thanks to SUN COOKERY, a Florida-inspired brand that’s all about good ol’ Southern hospitality.

What’s Inside Each box comes with at least one item from each category.

VESSELS

Interchangeable glassware for drinks, florals, candles, food presentation and more

TEXTILES

Cloth napkins or versatile, well-made kitchen towels

FOUNDATION

Trays, tablecloths, place mats or wooden boards

FOOD INSPIRATION

Curated edible items, such as teas or crackers or cookbooks

ARTISANAL ELEMENTS

Handcrafted elements that may fit into more than one of our box categories

LAGNIAPPE

A Cajun-French word for “a little something extra,” like a wine charm, stir sticks or mini dishes, which are always gift wrapped

SUNSPIRED INSIGHTS

An insert highlighting details of each item, two to four recipes and a music playlist

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WADING IN :THE SPREAD

This page:

The seasonal contents of the Fall Into Home Box

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and tell me about the friends or family that they hosted or the gathering that they went to where they shared my key lime pies,” Mize explains. “The joy that people get when they host others and share stories over food and cocktails is exactly why I started this business.”

While the boxes are centered around beautiful elements, Mize is hoping Sun Cookery inspires togetherness, not Pinterest perfection: “Our real mission is to get people connecting again in person,” she explains. “And I don't want you to cook food that you think is going to impress—I want you to cook your food.

If you're a peanut gal, throw out the peanuts and your favorite bottle of wine. I feel like everyone's FOLLOW their true self, their best self in their home.”

FLAMINGO Check out suncookery.com for the latest FOR PRODUCT GIVEAWAYS boxes, detailed descriptions, blog and more.

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COURTESY OF SUN COOKERY

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[ WADING IN :MADE IN FLA B y Ma d dy Z o l l o R u sb o si n

MIND THE MAP Winter Garden’s A.B. NEWTON AND COMPANY is out to put their hometown, and other cities, on the map.

C

[

A .B. NEW TON AND COMPANY, ADOBE STOCK

lose your eyes and think of a map of Orlando and its major landmarks. Does Disney come to mind? Of course. Is the University of Central Florida there? Probably. How about a barbecue joint named Pig Floyd’s? Eh, unless you’re a foodie, probably not, but that’s the point of Winter Garden-based A.B. NEWTON AND COMPANY’s City Series Art Print Collection. While their colorful maps and cards have universal frame appeal, the attention to detail and insider approach to cartography sets them apart.

Hometown pride is exactly what got this Central Florida-based design shop started back in 2014.

Two of the three A.B. Newton This page: An Orlando map design owners grew up in Winter

by A.B. Newton Garden, a historic industrial and Company the City town less than 20 miles west of showcases Beautiful from a local’s eyes. downtown Orlando.

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@T HEFLA M INGOMAG

GET LOST

L I T T L E PA L M I S L A N D . C O M | 8 6 6 . 2 2 8 . 4 4 2 4

WADING IN :MADE IN FLA “My grandmother was in the first graduating class of Lakeview High School, so my family’s been there since the early 1900s,” says cofounder Will Blaine. His business partner, Andy Crabtree, grew up with Blaine, and his family’s roots date back in the city just as long.

“People used to call Winter Garden ‘Winter Garbage.’ It was not a destination. Then they turned the railway into a bike path, and that turned everything around,” explains Blaine. Before long, a clock tower

People used to call Winter Garden “Winter Garbage.”

It was not a destination. Then they turned the railway into a bike path, and that turned everything around.

—Will Blaine

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dog. They sold them at the farmer’s market, and their side hustle grew from there. With Crabtree’s background of owning his own design firm, Crabtree Ink, and Blaine’s graphic design degree from Florida State University, the twosome began as more of a grassroots design shop, selling their goods around town.

As for what to call their endeavor, Crabtree came up with the idea to call the project A.B. Newton and Company as an ode to the founding father of Winter Garden, Arthur Bullard Newton (or A.B., as people knew him). A.B. was instrumental in the town’s

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This page: A.B. Newton and Company graphic

maps and local prints show the best of Florida cities like Winter Garden and Miami

beginnings, serving as its first postmaster and mayor, and had a hand in numerous undertakings, including a rival general store of Blaine’s great-grandfather. “We love that kind of creative and entrepreneurial spirit,” says Blaine.

About two years into launching A.B. Newton, they caught the attention of Matthew Peacock, the founder of a digital design studio called Anonymous Creative,

@T HEFLA M INGOMAG

A .B. NEW TON AND COMPANY

was constructed in the city center, buildings and restaurants underwent renovation projects and the doors opened to Plant Street Market, Winter Garden’s always bustling indoor artisan market.

“Andy looked at me one day and said, ‘We’ve got a lot to celebrate here—we should start getting behind what’s going on,’” Blaine said. “So, we truly started out as a hyper-local thing, and A.B. Newton became our side hustle.” The duo, both graphic designers, began selling Winter Garden branded T-shirts with recognizable and well-loved local symbols: the bike trail, an orange, a

WADING IN : MADE IN FLA working just a few doors down. Blaine and Crabtree had worked with him on previous projects, so when he asked to join in, it was a no-brainer. “He’s got a lot of business acumen, and he was always asking why we aren’t doing this or that,” explains Blaine.

“Andy and I were just artists, having more fun than anything, but Matt said let’s make this a legitimate business. Since then, we’ve been growing.”

According to Blaine, they threw all their ideas out there to see what would resonate with the community. One stuck: a whimsical map of Winter Garden. With digital renderings of local haunts and locally known “You get so much local color when you’re icons (such as the Tire Lady statue that once driving,” he says. “I’m into everything from stood outside Clark Tire & Automotive), the doughnuts and pinball to old record stores art print collection took off. “We realized and bookstores. Of course, I try to it was a thing,” continues Blaine, sample stuff renowned by locals and soon their city prints became IN STORE too, so if somebody says to check a cornerstone of their business.

— ADJECTIVES — out a cheesesteak, we listen.”

Fifteen of their maps highlight 137 W. PLANT ST. WINTER GARDEN A.B. Newton also pays tribute Florida cities, with Sarasota most — HOURS — to geographical hot spots with recently added to the roster.

SUN.-FRI.: 10 A.M.-7 P.M. a series that features landmarks Another 19 cities showcase SAT. 9 A.M.-7 P.M. and theme parks. These metropolitan neighborhoods abnewton.com collections spotlight singular across the U.S. places such as Winter Garden’s The creative process behind Railroad Museum, New York’s their popular City Series starts on Washington Square Park and various Disney the ground. Blaine loves to get behind the princess castles. wheel of his car to explore a A.B. Newton isn’t just dabbling in home new place and dig up and wall decor, they’re experimenting with what the locals love.

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different products as well.

“Matt is always stirring the pot with what to do next,” explains Blaine, crediting him for coming up with items such as candles, solid colognes and soaps. While body care may seem like a departure from the brand’s bread-and-butter prints, they’re all infused with A.B. Newton’s signature Florida flair. I mean what Sunshine State native wouldn’t get a kick out of room scents such as Swamp Ass, featuring a blend of cypress and balsam, or Florida Man, with a cool pine forest scent?

Even as A.B. Newton’s presence grows throughout Florida and the U.S., their roots are still firmly planted in Winter Garden. Not only are they still a presence at the weekly farmers market, but it’s the highlight of Blaine’s week. “We really get great feedback,” he explains—and sometimes inspiration.

One encounter with a Milwaukee transplant even led to a new city print. “She was so enthusiastic about her city and sent me the background on it. When I started looking into it, I was like wow,” explains Blaine.

“Before I knew it, a Milwaukee map had come together. I think that’s the magic of our company, being a touchstone for what’s good about the place you call home.”

From left: The

A.B. Newton team: Matthew Peacock, Andy Crabtree, Will Blaine

From left: Florida-inspired soap and room spray,

Magic Kingdom mugs and a Sunshine-Statescented candle

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WADING IN :THE STUDIO FLORIDA ARTIST PROFILES B y C a rri e H o n a k er

A Fish Tale With acrylics, cotton canvas and sometimes a blow-dryer, HARLEY VAN HYNING CELEBRATES THE LIFE ESSENCE OF FLORIDA FISH in the World’s Luckiest Fishing Village.

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@T HEFLA M INGOMAG

HARLE Y VAN HYNING

B

right Florida sun blankets Harley Van Hyning, an avid surfer and fisherman, as he slathers a 434-pound blue marlin with paint. A growing crowd forms on the Destin docks while he towers his 6’3” frame over the fish, pressing the cotton canvas against its flesh and fins, battling the elements to finish before the paint dries. He lifts the canvas and a true-tolife image emerges, all the way down to the fanning of the fins.

Van Hyning is practicing Gyotaku, the Japanese art of fish blocking. The ancient tradition of Gyotaku began in the 1800s as a way for fishermen to record their catches, while also documenting the animal’s life essence as a sign of respect.

Van Hyning works to tell the ocean’s stories while also preserving memories for those who fish Florida waters. Traditional Gyotaku artists utilize sumi black inks and washi paper, but Van Hyning employs canvas and acrylic paint in a myriad of colors. He started dabbling in Gyotaku in 2014 while making T-shirts for his lifestyle brand, Live Like Destin, but a conversation with his mother, also an artist, fueled his passion for the medium.

Her directive? “Screw the bloody T-shirts; do more of this!” That, on top of a friend’s insistence that he sign up for the Destin Fishing Rodeo in 2016, set him on a new creative path. Countless hours of canvasstretching lessons from his mom helped him

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WADING IN :THE STUDIO FLORIDA ARTIST PROFILES

Previous page: Detailed impression of a mako shark Above: A glimmering wahoo holds its colors forever in this one-of-a-kind piece.

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ways. The snapper looks like what you imagine from fish markets, with vibrant red flesh and elegant fins. The sunfish goes deeper, revealing the texture of the scales, the flaring on the fins and the outline of the body. The raw print comes to life as Van Hyning highlights the sea creature’s natural features and anatomy.

He keeps a catalog of marine animal images on his phone to study for inspiration, but often artistic decisions happen in the moment, when the fish first comes off the boat.

“Sometimes I’ll get the mouth all flared open. Some fish have smaller scales, so I’ll use different (paint) consistency versus say a marlin that has more of a textured type skin and bony scales—I want to capture that sharpness that makes them move so fast in the water,” he said.

He strives to keep everything smooth in color so it blends without showing brush strokes or thick lines of paint. All of this happens out in the elements on Destin’s busy docks, where he works quickly to make the fish’s impression on canvas before returning the fisherman’s catch so they can

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clean and process the fish.

That relationship with Florida fishermen inspires Van Hyning. “To share that memory or experience, to see the excitement and capture it for them, it’s special,” he said. His passion is also fueled

Above: Van Hyning posing next to his life-size tarpon painting Left: An octopus impression

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HARLE Y VAN HYNING, TANNER O’KEEFE

hone the supporting skills. Late-night phone calls with boat captains bringing in extraordinary catches, like that 434-pound blue marlin he imprinted, helped build his reputation with the fishermen as a serious artist. While short windows of intense concentration sitting in “nonstop yoga holds and poses,” sometimes with a blow-dryer to speed the process on cloudy days, became his daily routine.

Just across the street from the dock lies his studio. Here he decides whether to leave the prints in their raw form or add detail to enhance the basic fish block.

A raw print of a scarlet red snapper hangs just inside the door, adjacent to a detailed sunfish. Both capture the species in different

WADING IN :THE STUDIO FLORIDA ARTIST PROFILES

by those moments when a rare catch comes in. He added, “An 800-pound marlin gives you perspective. I’ve got my hands on this giant fish that probably swam through the Atlantic, maybe the Azores or Brazil, maybe it’s gone all the way up the East Coast and back around—it’s wild to think about a fish like that, a nomad of the ocean.”

Like with his love for surfing, the constant churn of printing keeps him engaged. “You’re always being challenged or always being humbled. I can paint an octopus 20 times, but none will ever be the same. I keep diving more into the technical details. It’s a never-ending learning experience.”

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Whether you meet him on the docks in the Panhandle, call him from the boat or make an appointment to peruse the ample inventory at his studio, Van Hyning is always eager to talk about his respect for the ocean and its inhabitants. He added, “Gyotaku obviously requires things to be deceased. Of course, you’d love to see it still living, but there’s beauty in being able to honor that life form—how it looks, its colors—with paint.

Appreciating the life form keeps me coming back to the docks.”

Scan to watch a video of Harley Van Hyning printing in the century-old Japanese art form of Gyotaku.

Above: Van Hyning painting a fresh-off-theboat catch on Destin’s fishing docks.

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WADING IN:FLEDGLINGS FLO RIDA MUSICIANS ON THE R ISE B y B en A rt h u r

Gulf Coast BLUES Meet LEON MAJCEN, a Clearwater songwriter with a captivating story, picking up where the outlaw country legends left off.

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of Montana mountain peaks. It’s surprising then to learn that the 24-year-old musician’s journey began among the baroque churches of Prague, not the foothills of Montana or Appalachia. Born in the Czech Republic to two Bosnian refugees, Majcen moved to Clearwater, Florida, with his parents before

Above:

Majcen’s new album releases this fall.

@T HEFLA M INGOMAG

R ACHEL WEBER

l

eon Majcen is a modern highwayman.

Rolling down long, unyielding roads, crisscrossing the nation in pursuit of his songwriting craft, Majcen often seizes the moment when inspiration strikes by stopping his truck, hopping on the tailgate and strumming his guitar against a backdrop

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WADING IN:FLEDGLINGS Left: Majcen was inspired by the original

highwaymen from a young age.

I wrote this song, “Black Crow” off my last album, Back ’till I’m Gone. I have this family friend that owns a coffee shop called the Black Crow, and his son was working there. We were buddies, and I just came in one night right before I left for New York. He was closing up shop, and I was kind of distracting him … they had an upright piano there, and I sat and played and then he took a break to help me. We ended up writing that song on the back of a brown paper muffin bag.

YOU WERE ON SEASON 18 OF “AMERICAN IDOL” FOR A BRIEF STINT. TELL US ABOUT THAT EXPERIENCE AND WHAT YOU LEARNED.

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR FIRST INTRODUCTION TO COUNTRY MUSIC.

Leon Majcen: My dad was a pretty big Bob Dylan and Kris Kristofferson fan.

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5 TOP TUNES

1 2 3 4 5

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R ACHEL WEBER, LEON MAJCEN

turning two. It was his father who loved outlaw country and introduced the young Majcen to the original Highwaymen (Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson). Some might call him an old soul, given his mature demeanor and reverence for folk music greats such as Guy Clark and Bob Dylan. Majcen already has a decade of experience behind him, cutting his teeth playing the bars and coffee shops of St. Petersburg at age 14. But in 2018, he left home to study at New York University.

Two years later, homesick and ready for a break, he returned to the Sunshine State looking for a change. It was then that he wrote and recorded his first album, Back ’till I’m Gone. For the first six months of 2023, he toured the country, staving off highway hypnosis by playing his favorite songs up and down the East Coast and throughout the American West. Flamingo recently caught up with Majcen at his Nashville home, where he lives, writes music, and is preparing to release his next album this fall.

LM: I was in New York at the time, and they have people that are scouring Instagram and Facebook and YouTube.

This lady reached out and asked me if I would be interested in auditioning, and I was definitely up for it. I took a bus to Washington, D.C. I had auditioned Even back in Bosnia, he had all these for some of these shows when I was vinyls and stuff. He kind of got the super young, so I didn’t expect it to go ball rolling on that when I was young. anywhere. Like before, And then there was I hadn’t even gotten in one Townes Van Zandt front of the real judges, performance out of you know, you’re just that movie, Heartworn auditioning for producers Highways. I saw this clip and all the people behind of Van Zandt just picking the scenes. But this was “Pancho and Lefty” in the the first time I had gotten kitchen with his friends in front of the celebrity who were hanging out Leon Majcen judges, and two of them in the back. I think I was “WORLD GONE BY” said yes. Lionel Richie 15 when I saw that for Single, 2021 said no, but Luke Bryan the first time, and I was and Katy Perry said yes, immediately hooked.

“WANDERING FAST” so I had two out of three I was like, “Who’s this Single, 2023 … going to Hollywood! guy?” I just fell down the A few months later, rabbit hole.

“I’LL BE HERE IN THE MORNING” I made it past the first Back ’till I’m Gone, 2020 round in Hollywood. After HOW HAS YOUR TIME IN FLORIDA that, they did the group INFLUENCED YOUR MUSIC? BARS, BEDS & CARDS” “ round. I partnered up LM: You know, when Back ’till I’m Gone, 2020 with Lauren Mascitti. She you’re younger, nobody was super talented and thinks where they grew “SEPARATE WAYS” a killer songwriter, too. up is cool. It kind of took Single, 2023 We were both into the leaving for me to see same kind of music, so we that. I guess I’m just more ended up singing “Jackson” by Johnny proud and appreciative of where I grew Cash and June Carter Cash together. up. Now, I really love Florida, and every She ended up going through to the next time I leave, I remember how much I do.

round. I got sent home and unfortunately, that was the only part they showed, just me getting sent home. But you know, shit happens. [Laughs] I think my main takeaway was that I didn’t want to sit in the audition room for that long anymore. But it was a really good experience. I met a lot of great people, and it was kind of cool to just see how things work behind the scenes.

ONE INFLUENCE THAT’S PRETTY EVIDENT IN YOUR MUSIC IS JOHN PRINE. CAN YOU TALK ABOUT HOW HE’S MOLDED YOUR SONGWRITING?

LM: Yeah, I wrote “World Gone By” about John Prine when he passed away [in April 2020]. I was pretty bummed out about that. I actually remember when I found out he had passed. I was out fishing with my dad. We were just hanging out, talking, and he saw something that came up on American Songwriter magazine that John had passed and at the time I had a Below: The Czech Republic-native verse written. Like the moved to Clearwater as a toddler. first verse of that song, “The kids are running around, climbing the trees / Picking the flowers and chasing the bees.” My sister was about to have her first kid at the time, and I was super excited to become an uncle.

Initially, I kind of started writing the song about, you know, my niece being born in the middle of a pandemic. And then when John Prine died, I kind of figured, well, this sounds like a John Prine song. I want to really, you know, pay my respects and tip my hat, kind of thank him for all the inspiration he gave me.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU?

LM: I have an album that’s coming out in the fall. I got a few more singles I want to put out before then. A lot of those songs have references to Florida and my upbringing there, and some of them are a little more tongue-in-cheek. And then, I’m playing Americanafest in Nashville ... I’m super excited about that. I’ve applied for it a few years now, so it feels good to be on the lineup.

Know a band with Florida roots?

SCAN THE CODE AND TELL FLAMINGO!

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WADING IN: GROVE STAND SEASON’S EATINGS

By Eri c B a rt o n • P h o t o g ra p hy by C o l e L o C u rt o

The Cinderella of Kerala

Chef Saji George of Jacksonville’s Mesa grew up finding joy in the hard work of cooking and turned it into an outstanding restaurant.

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WADING IN: GROVE STAND SEASON’S EATINGS

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This page from top: Mesa’s manager makes their Golden Hour saki cocktail; Cardamom cake with lemon chantilly and strawberry compote Previous page: Chef Saji George and her son Brandon at Mesa

floor. They had no refrigerator. She learned how to cook, helping her grandmother grill fish on the makeshift stove and mix buttermilk with rice to make kadhi.

It might sound like a hard life to some, but Saji loved it. She discovered the joy of making her grandmother proud by fetching milk. She developed a sense of accomplishment, pride and self-worth from serving her family a curry dish and watching them enjoy it.

She returned home one day from the market to find her father there for a visit. He was there to pack up Saji and her older brother and move them to upstate New York. It was 1980, and Saji was 13 with almost no education in the English language. The three of them lived in a small apartment, and she eventually began cooking all the meals. Her beef curry became her father’s favorite.

Watching him enjoy it was one of the simple joys in her life. To help with expenses, she worked at Burger King, earning $3.35 an hour. She laughs thinking back

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at how much she loved that, too, rushing from the busy cash register to bus tables. “I acted like I owned Burger King.”

After high school, Saji went to college to become a dietitian and then moved with her family to Palm Bay, Florida. The warmth, the palm trees, the fish market—it felt like home.

She was in her mid 20s, and it felt like the struggles of her childhood were behind her as a new life took shape in the Sunshine State.

Then Saji’s father told her he was arranging a marriage for her: a stranger from India. She would not meet him until their wedding day.

Saji wanted none of it, but how could she refuse the father who had raised her alone?

Saji will never forget the call after her grandmother met him.

“My grandmother was mostly blind. But she said she knew once she hugged him. She said, ‘This is your reward.’ She felt something. And he has been my reward.”

Saji and her husband, Anil George, couldn’t be more different. “We’re the complete opposite.

@T HEFLA M INGOMAG

KENDALL FERRIER

hen Saji George was young, living with her grandmother on the coast of India, she did all the chores the other kids ignored. She woke up at 4 in the morning and savored simple tasks, such as fetching fish from the market and carrying a sack of flour on her head from the mill.

For all her hard work, Saji’s grandmother promised: “You’ll be blessed someday.”

It came in a single phone call. Saji was an adult, living in Florida. Her grandmother had news— her blessing had arrived.

If you’ve heard of Saji George, you might think the blessing is Mesa, her always busy restaurant in Jacksonville. But no, her blessing came before that, after years of toil and trial.

“I’ve been through all stages of social class,” Saji says today. “People say I’m a classic Cinderella story.” That story begins in Kerala, India, a former Portuguese colony on the Arabian Sea. It’s tropical there, like Florida, and Saji lived a life of luxury for her first few years with a father whose wealth was well-known in town.

It all changed after her mother died when Saji was just a child. Soon after, her father lost his rubber tree business, and he had no choice but to send Saji off to live with her grandmother in another town.

It was a different way of life. Saji slept on the

Mesa Chicken Curry Serves 4

FOR THE CHICKEN: 1 pound boneless chicken thighs 1 tablespoon Kashmiri chili powder 1 tablespoon ginger garlic paste 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1/2

teaspoon garam masala

2 teaspoons lemon juice 1/2

cup whole milk yogurt 1 teaspoon salt

FOR THE SAUCE: 3 tablespoons coconut oil 1 large onion, chopped 1 inch of ginger, chopped 8 garlic cloves, minced 4 roma or small tomatoes, chopped 2 bay leaves 1 cinnamon stick 6 cardamom pods 3 cloves 1 tablespoon cumin seeds 5 curry leaves 1 tablespoon garam masala 1 tablespoon ground coriander can organic coconut milk (13.5 ounces) 1/2

This page:

Mesa Chicken Curry

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PREPARATION: Dice the chicken into two-inch chunks. Add chicken to a bowl with chili powder, ginger garlic paste, cumin, garam masala, lemon juice, yogurt and salt. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before grilling or broiling the chicken over low heat for 15-20 minutes.

Add three tablespoons coconut oil and onion to a large frying pan and sauté over medium heat until translucent. Lower the heat so as not to burn the spices. Add the ginger, minced garlic, tomatoes, bay leaves, cinnamon stick, cardamom pods, cloves, cumin seeds, curry leaves, garam masala, coriander and coconut milk. Add salt and pepper to taste. Stir to incorporate and turn off heat. Once the sauce has cooled, add to a blender and blend until a smooth paste has formed. Return the sauce to the pan and heat over medium heat. Add the cooked chicken and simmer for 10 minutes.

Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve with rice, roti or parotta.

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WADING IN: GROVE STAND SEASON’S EATINGS

He is as calm as calm water. And I’m the say, “Mom, instead of complaining about it, do Kibbles ’n Bits puppy that goes and jumps something about it.” up on top of him. He’s the steady one.”

She walked into the space that would become They’ve been married 30 years, with two kids: her restaurant in March 2021. Long neglected, Brandon, 27, who works beside his mom at the kitchen was a wreck. Even the knobs on the the restaurant; and Brittany, 23, stove were missing. So, the family who is currently a law student got to work. “Here I am with no MESA in Austin, Texas. business plan. Never ran a restau— LOCATION — When the kids were growing rant. No clue of the next step or 4260 HERSCHEL ST. JACKSONVILLE up, Saji would combine dishes anything,” Saji recalls.

— HOURS — from back home with flavors Few people believed she could TUES.–SAT. 5 P.M.–9 P.M. from the United States. Tikka do it. “Everybody discouraged CLOSED SUN.–MON. pizza was one of their favorites. me. They’d say, ‘You’re 55 years @mesajax Saji would wake up early in the old, and you’re going to go open a — SPECIAL— BOOK A SPOT AT MESA LAB’S morning to sketch out menus restaurant now?’” Anil knew if she 12-SEAT PRIVATE EXPERIENCE

BY BRANDON GEORGE. for the family meals she’d make tried, it would be successful, but @mesalab that day. he worried the long hours on her Often, Saji and Anil would feet would exacerbate the back talk about why restaurants don’t do more and knee pain that had plagued her for years. to cook healthy things. Anil practices funcIn September 2021, Mesa opened in tional medicine, meaning he looks for the root Jacksonville’s Avondale neighborhood with a causes of illnesses, often finding an answer in tasting menu for 20 people in those first nights. his patients’ diet. When they went out to dinThe exclusive nature made it immediately popuner, they couldn’t stop talking about how the lar. As they expanded, new customers kept floodfood didn’t make them feel as good as Saji’s ing in. As for that nagging backache that had home-cooked meals. Brandon would often plagued her, it faded. Saji wonders if it’s because

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of the constant movement or maybe the realization of a long-held dream.

Still, running a restaurant came with learning curves. Brandon encouraged her to write down recipes rather than winging it, as she had done cooking for her children. As she created a menu, she went back to the dishes she had made throughout her life. Her grandmother’s curry can be tasted in her take on shrimp and grits. The beef curry loved by her father also appears in her lineup. And her husband’s influence landed in the desserts, thanks to the Bengali sweets from his hometown of Kolkata.

“Brandon always says it’s our version of it.

Some of the things are very traditional [Indian dishes], but some things we have adapted to the melting pot here.”

Saji and Anil are empty nesters now. When Saji comes home late from the restaurant, her husband often has a meal waiting for her.

“When he says he made Kerala fish curry, I drop everything and run home.”

Asked what he thinks of the restaurant now, Anil says to his wife, “As long as you’re happy, I’m happy.”

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JACOB DUFF

Above from left: A cozy spot to sip a cocktail at Mesa; Saji and Brandon George in the kitchen; a medley from one of Mesa’s popular tasting menus

EXPLORE THE BOUNTY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA

Citrus grown 10 minutes away.

Locally sourced egg from just up the road.

Traveled 150 miles to enjoy this meal.

LOCAL FLAVOR LIVES HERE. What’s more “local” than enjoying a meal made with ingredients sourced from just up the road? We welcome hungry people from anywhere and everywhere to pull up a seat and find out just how delicious Central Florida truly is.

Because at our table, everyone is a local! Learn more about the local food scene at VisitCentralFlorida.com NINETEEN61 :: LAKELAND, FL

WADING IN :JUST HATCHED DEBUTS TO PER USE (NORTH)

TAVERNA OCEANA JACKSONVILLE

Husband-and-wife team Sam Efron and Kiley Wynne Efron are no strangers to the Jacksonville culinary scene.

Since 2009, they’ve run the popular San Marco staple Taverna, a modern Italian eatery.

Now they’re combining their love of European fare and their own coastal culinary culture with the introduction of Taverna Oceana, a raw bar and seafood restaurant that opened in May with understated elegance next door to Taverna. Southern favorites like smothered tater tots topped with salmon roe, sour cream and chives, speak to the couple’s range and creativity. Choose from saltwater mains like lobster thermidor and miso glazed Chilean sea bass or belly up to the raw bar for small plates of oysters and ceviche tostada, and wash it all down with a glass of champagne. oceana.restaurant

his passion for the dishes of his homeland to the First Coast.

For a new twist on an old-world favorite, try the locally sourced Mayport shrimp skewers or the dry-aged rib-eye cooked in a charcoal oven for the main. Top off the evening by ordering a few desserts to share because who can choose just one from a menu of classic tiramisu, whitechocolate panna cotta with passion fruit and simple scoops of gelato. salumeria104.com

LILY HALL

P E N S A C O LA

Lily Hall is Pensacola’s newest boutique hotel and restaurant situated in the historic Old East Hill neighborhood. Anchored by a sophisticated lounge space called Lily’s Parlor, the lobby welcomes guests with leather sofas and arched bookshelves.

Co-owners Nathan Weinberg,

Troy Stackhouse and Steve Mabee reimagined the former Baptist church built in the 1900s into a road-trip-worthy Panhandle outpost with 15 rooms. The hotel’s restaurant, Brother Fox, named for the church’s former pastor, and its menu takes influence from the wood-fired cuisine of Spain, where Chef Darian Hernandez grew up. For guests looking to unwind with a custom cocktail and some ambience, the Sister Hen speakeasy takes cues from the Prohibition era with an entrance through the ice box. lilyhall.com

DAYTRADER TIKI BAR SEASIDE

Seaside’s newest offering, a picturesque tiki bar overlooking the Gulf of Mexico and painted in pastels, opened in May. In his latest venture, Chef Nikhil

Abuvala brings the Polynesian islands to the Panhandle, transporting guests to tropical island paradise. Start off with an order of boiled peanuts, seasoned with star anise and togarashi—a perfect fusion of Southern and Asian flavors.

Polynesian influences abound with dishes like spam musubi, tuna crispy rice and the Sloppy Koa, a riff on the sloppy joe topped with grilled pineapple and Asian slaw. It’s the cocktail menu that truly shines at this shabby-chic spot. Many boozy concoctions feature Florida flavors like citrus, guava, ghost pepper and Munyon’s Paw-Paw—a Sunshine State liqueur. Overserve yourself?

Try a Daytrader Remedy, aka a medical mai tai, served from an IV bag. Take two and call us in the morning. daytradertiki.com

SALUMERIA 104 Named for the butcher stores that populate Milan and Verona, Salumeria 104 brings traditional Italian cuisine to this seaside community. Chef Angelo Masarin’s culinary journey began in the foothills of the Dolomites, a place known for cultivating prosecco and radicchio. Now, the chef brings

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Above from left: A flower-adorned tuna dish from Taverna Oceana in Jacksonville; Lily’s Parlor lined with dark green

bookshelves, vintage typewriters and plush orange chairs at Lily Hall in Pensacola

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@T HEFLA M ING O MAG

JENSEN HANDE, LILY HALL

AT LA N T I C B E A C H

Pretty. Unexpected.

Fascinating arts and culture, world-class cuisine, and a vibrant events calendar – all this and more await you in Tallahassee.

This fall, experience Florida’s Capital City, a dif ferent side of the Sunshine State.

@TH E FLAMI NG O M AG BLACK ARCHIVES AT FAMU

MIMI’S TABLE

WADING IN :JUST HATCHED DEBUTS TO PER USE (C E N T RA L ) CANE & BARREL

ESTUARY

St. Pete’s fresh new rooftop dining experience, Cane & Barrel, is inspired by the colorful culture of Cuba with its small plates and cocktails straight out of Havana. Think: empanadas, street tacos, ceviche and Bacardi-based mojitos as you sip and savor from up on the roof of AC Hotel. Rum is at the heart of the menu, which chronicles the spirit’s journey from sugarcane to barrel. Find it in the signature communal citrus punch, said to derive from the ancient East Indies and brought to the Americas by “sailors of yore.” From a boozy weekend brunch to a special night on the town, their Cuban cuisine and tropical cocktails raise the bar in paradise. caneandbarrelstpete.com

Estuary is the definition of a neighborhood restaurant—perfect for newcomers and locals alike. Started by Clearwater restaurateur James Renew of the wildly successful Little Lamb Gastropub, Estuary is his newest venture that, true to its name, celebrates local Florida fare from land and sea. The casual yet sophisticated chef-led menu focuses on modern seafaring cuisine from the Gulf Coast and is always changing to accommodate what’s fresh and in season. Start with an order of their fried okra or their raw oysters topped with a mignonette sauce. From the bright lights of Vegas to the harbors of Sydney, Chef Renew takes his training and experience from across the globe

ST. PETERSBURG

Above: Find Cane & Barrel on the roof of AC Hotel in

downtown St. Petersburg.

NEW PORT RICHEY

Stir your sensorial curiosity

@135EastGin 1917

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Imported by Marussia Beverages USA / Cedar Knolls, NJ / ABV: 42% / PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY

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@T HEFLA M ING O MAG

CANE & BARREL, K AYA

OPEN UP TO THE UNEXPECTED

WADING IN :JUST HATCHED DEBUTS TO PER USE (C E N T RA L ) and beyond and infuses them into his Gulf Coast creations. estuarynpr.com

FOREIGNER RESTAURANT O R LA N D O

At the helm of Foreigner Restaurant, Orlando’s latest 10-seat fine-dining experience, Chef Bruno Fonseca taps into his upbringing as a Brazilian immigrant with Spanish, Portuguese and Italian roots.

What started as a series of pop-up dinners inspired by his multicultural background, grew into this intimate culinary concept where guests enjoy curated wine selections alongside dishes reflective

of Fonseca’s personal story and travels. Chef Fonseca and his partners, Johnny and Jimmy Tung, created a permanent residence for Foreigner Restaurant after four years of successful pop-ups.

Expect a masterful fusion of world cuisine and wines artfully presented to patrons seated around an ultra-chic bar for a bespoke experience unlike any in the state. foreignerrestaurant.com

KAYA

O R LA N D O

Kaya, a Filipino restaurant tucked inside a renovated Old Florida bungalow within

Orlando’s historic Colonialtown South neighborhood, is all about community. Old family pictures of the two founders hang on the walls. The menu reads like a lineup of the finest locally sourced ingredients with cameos of some vegetables and herbs picked straight from the restaurant’s garden.

In the kitchen, Lordfer Lalicon, who studied at the University of Florida before working at New York icon Carbone, conducts the nightly culinary performance. Since last year, he’s broadened his focus to include recipes from his native Philippines while continuing to elevate Sunshine State

staples such as Cape Canaveral shrimp, Seminole squash, Ponce Inlet tilefish and gourmet mushrooms grown by Orlando’s Fungi Jon. kayaorlando.com

Above: Kaya’s menu has Filipino

staples and Florida favorites.

Akashi city - Hyogo product of japan yonezawa family, distillers since 1917

@hatozakiwhisky Imported by Marussia Beverages USA | Cedar Knolls, NJ | ABV: 40%-46% | Please Drink Responsibly

@TH E FLAMI NG O M AG

FA L L • W I N T E R 2 0 2 3 /// FLAMINGOMAG.COM

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WADING IN :JUST HATCHED DEBUTS TO PER USE (SOUTH) ANA’S KILLER EMPANADAS D E L R AY B E A C H

KOKO MIAMI

With 8-foot cacti flanking the entrance, the smell of fresh tortillas grilling in the skillet, the clinking of glasses and the strums of a guitarron, guests will be whisked away to an authentic Mexican experience without ever leaving Coconut Grove. Koko, Grupo Bakan’s latest concept, is a 170-seat indoor/outdoor restaurant and bar, serving dishes such as crispy chicken tacos, flavorful tostaditas de atun and, if you have an adventurous palate, toastada de chapulines— toasted grasshoppers with guacamole and Cotija cheese served on a wood-fired blue corn tortilla. To round out

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Above: AKA West Palm’s outdoor pool, overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway, and aqua-tinted windows create a

modern tropical paradise.

the fare, Koko prides itself on “pairing the meal to the mezcal” from their extensive 400-bottle spirit collection. Grab a seat at the bar to catch a glimpse of the cherry wood-fired flames through the open kitchen. kokobybakan.com

AKA WEST PALM

W E S T PA L M B E A C H

Don’t make the tough call over whether to stay at a business hotel or someplace cool.

Choose to have it all at the international hotel group AKA’s latest location in West Palm Beach. Situated in the heart of the business district, it’s easy to work a 9-to-5 remotely in their upscale designer suites, host a client meeting in their conference room, followed by a happy-hour toast to the weekend on Clematis Street.

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Relax poolside and take in sweeping Intracoastal views or burn off some steam in their Technogym fitness center, complete with free weights, dumbbell racks, treadmills and smart bikes. Feel free to take your furry friends along on this bleisure journey and drop them at the pet spa for a day of canine pampering. Their 215 suites were created to be an haute haven, rather than a residency or a temporary stay. stayaka.com/aka-west-palm

BRANJA MIAMI

From the cutting-edge creativity of 2016 MasterChef Israel winner Tom Aviv, comes Branja—an out-of-the-box Israeli culinary experience.

This oasis of Mediterranean flavor is hidden within the

bohemian Upper Buena Vista neighborhood, showering guests with jewel-tone rays of sunshine through its stainedglass ceiling. Branja transports gourmands to Tel Aviv markets as they dine among the sounds of conversation mingled with chopping knives and the aroma of Middle Eastern spices while sitting on reclaimed synagogue benches. A blend of Mediterranean flavors and Chef Aviv’s personal travels have created signature dishes like Fishwarma, a twist on traditional shawarma, which includes fish melange, labneh tahini and mango amba.

Branja’s culmination of culture and innovation invites guests to momentarily escape the confines of the city and break bread together. branjamiami.com

@T HEFLA M ING O MAG

AK A WEST PALM BEACH

It’s the scent that hits you first. Savory, herbaceous and unexpected decadence wafts through the air of the unassuming Delray Beach storefront that’s home to Ana’s Killer Empanadas. After nearly a decade of catering to high-end clients in Beverly Hills, Ana Brice arrived in South Florida looking to return to her Latin roots and opening an empanada store in March 2023. The menu consists of three fan-favorite recipes— including a classic Argentineanstyle empanada with all-angus beef marinated in malbec wine­­—and a rotating variety of pastries filled with ingredients like pepperoni, meatballs and brisket. “The empanadas are just like Ana: fun,” says John, her husband and store coowner. Ana’s popularity in the market has given way to a second location, which opened in late September in West Palm Beach. anaskillerempanadas.com

DISCOVER FLORIDA'S HIDDEN GEM FROM AWARD-WINNING GOLF TO PRIVATE BEACHFRONT ACCESS, SAWGRASS MARRIOTT IS YOUR IDEAL LOCATION

EXQUISITE OUTDOOR VENUES

RENOVATED EVENT SPACES

EXCLUSIVE BEACH ACCESS

AWARD WINNING FULL-SERVICE SPA

WORLD FAMOUS GOLF

CURATED EXPERIENCE

www.sawgrassmarriott.com @TH E FLAMI NG O M AG

[ — Unf ilter ed Fodder —

Capital Dame

By Di ane R o b ert s • I l l u st ra t i o n by Ju l es O za et a

A Life Collected

Diane Roberts honors her childhood home by preserving the things inside that best tell her family’s stories.

Gilbert, married my father, Milton Roberts, they began to build a house in a grove of pecan trees. My mother lived there from the age of 26 to when she died at 89 in 2020. Until we left for college or for places of our own, my brother and I knew no other home. Lately, I’ve been going through this house, my mother’s house, which is now my house, looking at the things, deciding what to keep, what to give to friends or charity shops or sell. It’s a slow process as every bowl, every candlestick, every picture, every book, every saucepan has a place in my emotional geography.

You may be familiar with Neil MacGregor’s wonderful 2010 book A History of the World in 100 Objects, in which civilization is epitomized and illuminated by some artifact from The British Museum: an Olmec stone mask from 900 B.C. to 400 B.C.; the chronometer from the HMS Beagle, the ship that took Charles Darwin to the Galapagos Islands in 1831 or a plain old credit card. While I can’t say I own items a museum might covet, nevertheless I can trace the history of my house in our objects.

Here are only five, I promise, and in no particular order.

[

A HOUSE INEVITABLY FILLS WITH OBJECTS, visible manifestations of those who inhabit it, a conglomeration of dreams and desires and all the stuff you need—or once needed or thought you needed—to get as close as possible to the life you imagine for yourself.

My mother grew up on a farm in West Florida.

Her family disapproved of throwing things out.

The result is I am now the proud possessor of a railroad safe, a cauldron once used for boiling sheets and towels clean, approximately 50 cane fishing poles and no fewer than three bone saws.

In 1956, two years after my mother, Betty

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@T HEFLA M INGOMAG

The Kitchen Table I’ve considered dragging it out to the side of the road and abandoning it. The table, with a grey and white Formica top on wood, is ugly as sin and weighs more than 150 pounds. My parents bought the table and its matching chairs—known back then as a dinette set—in 1956, before the house she and my father were building was quite finished.

It would be four years before we had real dining room furniture, so the kitchen table was the center of family life: meals, art projects, jigsaw puzzles by candlelight when a thunderstorm knocked out the electricity. I think about Christmas breakfasts of scrambled eggs, grits and red mullet roe; dogs lurking, hoping for a handout; cats—generation upon generation of cats—jumping up on the table to assert dominance over the dogs; the table spread with newspaper so my mother could glaze various pieces of ceramics; the cases of honey; the 50-pound bags of clay; the assorted power tools parked on the table on their way to the cabinet, the studio or the workshop; and I decide that if this table didn’t break or even buckle under 67 years worth of heaviness, I couldn’t possibly ditch it.

Big Mama’s Rocking Chair My great-grandmother Mary Elizabeth Broadwater Gilbert brought the rocking chair to her new home at Gilbert’s Mill when she married my great-grandfather in 1889. The chair originally belonged to her mother and was probably made just before or just after the Civil War. It’s country furniture, nothing fancy: oak, with arms curled under themselves and an arched cresting rail. There are photos of Mary Elizabeth rocking my great-aunt Charlsie and my grandfather Bradford, as well as my cousins Katherine and Fred Jr. and my

@T H E FLAMI NG O M AG

mother at age 3, wearing ruffles, white socks and white slippers, a ribbon in her hair and clutching a striped kitten to her chest. Mary Elizabeth wears one of those draped 1930s dresses and a string of pearls. Everyone called her Big Mama.

From the age of 12, beeswaxing the chair was my job. I didn’t mind. The beeswax was smooth as custard and scented like a meadow.

My mother told me that Big Mama had informed her that nothing else would do to bring up the shine. Under no circumstances was I to use modern crap like Pledge furniture polish.

When Big Mama died, my grandfather inherited the chair; when my mother finished college at FSU, took a job with the City

The Mantel is a reminder of my parents’ commitment to beauty and their delight in the natural treasures of North Florida. of Tallahassee and moved into her own apartment in 1953, he handed the chair onto her. She was glad. She owned no furniture other than the bed she’d got out of the Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog. After our house was finished, the chair migrated to our living room, and was placed under a big window where it remains today, featuring in more pictures, color this time, of my mother with my brother or me or a cat or two.

I like to sit there on rainy afternoons with Dexter, my mother’s irascible Tonkinese cat. He’s 18 now and will still, on occasion, station himself in my mother’s room and howl. He perched on her bed as she lay dying, rarely moving. He jumped in her lap every Christmas morning, playing with the ribbons as she sat in Big Mama’s chair, trying to open

her presents. He liked for her to rock him.

Now, that’s my job. And I still beeswax the chair; its wood still smells faintly of honey.

The Ecosystem Floor I suppose a floor isn’t, strictly speaking, an object, though it’s composed of many objects.

In early December 1999, my brother went to the house, moved the refrigerator into the dining room, pushed the kitchen table and chairs into the carport, hauled the family room furniture to the back of the house and started ripping up linoleum. It was two weeks before our family Christmas party, including all the aunts and uncles and cousins. I was horrified.

But he’d decided my mother’s present that year would be a new Italian terracotta tile floor for the kitchen, the breakfast room and the family room, the parts of the house without wooden floors. So that was that.

My mother, who was not (unlike me) unnerved by a major construction project so close to a holiday, gathered leaves from the trees and plants that grew on the property: live oak, sweetgum, magnolia, dogwood, black cherry, fern, wood violet, holly, pecan and palmetto. She painted them with thick white glaze and pressed them onto 10 cedargreen ceramic tiles. Then she rounded up the animals one by one, the Labradors—Sam, Cinda and Merlin—and the cats—Boodle, Carter and China. She’d grab a front paw, stick it in a bowl of paint, and mash it (gently) onto a tile. The dogs weren’t bothered—all attention is good attention—but the cats swore vengeance.

We fired the handmade tiles, ghostly images of paws or leaves, white against the green.

My brother incorporated them into the floor design, auburn-red terracotta tiles punctuated with green ones. The animals whose prints adorn the tiles are gone now, but the plants and the trees remain, growing taller, reaching up toward the ever-hotter sun.

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Capital Dame UNF ILTER ED FODDER

The Silver Sugar Bowl Every year when I came home from college for Christmas, I’d give the silver its annual cleaning. I’d spread old towels on the floor, get a dishpan of warm water and sit on the floor in front of the TV watching soap operas, smudging myself with tarnish as I deployed dollops of Wright’s Silver Cream.

My favorite was the large sterling sugar bowl, a wedding present to my parents from one of my father’s engineer friends at what was then called the State Road Department. The sugar bowl was extravagantly curvy, with graceful backward-S handles and a pattern of tiny roses around the base. When properly rinsed and buffed, it shined like moonlight.

My parents married at the First Presbyterian Church of Chipley, FL. It was a formal wedding with six bridesmaids in old gold tulle and groomsmen in tropical dinner jackets and gardenia boutonnieres.

In the days before the ceremony, half the town called on my grandmother to see the nuptial loot spread out in the dining room.

My mother thought it was kind of barbaric, displaying what people thought she was worth as a marital catch. “It might as well have been goats or cattle,” she said. But it was the custom of the time, so the three toasters, the two chafing dishes, the Old Master sterling flatware, the monogrammed bath towels, the crystal ice tea glasses, the dozens of doilies, the huge and hideous glass vase with pink polka dots (my mother actually had a cupboard in our house for the worst wedding presents where this thing went to live), as well as the lovely sugar bowl sat on tables draped with my grandmother’s best white damask for the world to admire.

In our house, the sugar bowl came out for Garden Club teas and showers. At one end of the table you had the petit fours with icing roses (for a bridal shower) or pink and

50

blue umbrellas (for a baby shower), stacks of little plates and dessert forks, and at the other, the Royal Doulton coffee cups, the Old Master demitasse spoons, a porcelain cream jug and the sugar bowl. The ladies in their linen shift dresses always exclaimed over it. “So elegant,” they’d say. “And so big.” Then they’d settle down to playing Would She Rather? and Guess the Dress.

I watched these ladies, as a 9-year-old, assuming all this would one day be my world too: the matching handbags and shoes, the watermelon pink lipstick, the parties, the flower arranging, the china, the silver, the slow sunny days. That world is gone, and I’m not sorry. Yet I polish the sugar bowl, every December, without fail.

The Mantel My grandfather’s family had a sawmill in West Florida. The oak for most of our house’s flooring was milled there, as was the black walnut for the mantel. The builders laid the floor; my father made the mantel to go over the broad, low fireplace in the living room. It’s 9 feet long and defies the laws of gravity.

The outside of this house is nothing special: ranch-style, stretched out, picture-windowed.

The inside, however, is a mid-century modern glory of pine, stainless steel, asymmetrical builtin pine shelves and exposed brick. It was my parents’ reaction to the houses they grew up in.

My father’s was a cypress cabin in a swamp with an outhouse; my mother’s was a rambling 1920s manse of dark paneling and tall sash windows hung with venetian blinds. One cold night I was watching Daddy build a fire in the living room, making a lattice of fat lighter and logs. Once it got going, he turned around and said, “All right, Missy, why doesn’t the mantel fall down?”

I considered the mantel. It was supported on the left side by one black walnut bracket. There was no support on the right. Clearly it ought to fall down. “Glue,” I said. I was 9 years old.

My father laughed, “Nope.”

I guessed nails, cement and finally—

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exasperated—magic. My little brother Bradford came in, and Daddy asked him the same question. He thought about it.

“I think it’s magic,” I said.

Finally, my brother pointed at the right side of the mantel and said, “There’s a hollow place with a piece of wood inside holding it up. You can’t see it but it’s there.”

My brother was 5.

My father smiled. At least one of his children could think like an engineer. Daddy promised to one day take the mantel down and show us the internal bracket.

But eight months later, he died of a rare blood disease. He was 37.

Over the years, the mantel has supported garlands of cedar and holly and absurdly large red velvet Christmas bows; Easter lilies in pastel foil-covered pots; my mother’s collection of folk pottery face jugs, often with bird feathers she picked up in the yard stuck in them; easels with watercolors by my godmother; antique Japanese porcelain plates; and a portrait of Sam, Mama’s favorite black lab, painted in the style of the Flemish masters. Most recently, we put all the condolence cards up there, sent after my mother’s passing. The mantel is a reminder of my parents’ commitment to beauty and their delight in the natural treasures of North Florida, where they spent their lives: the walnut trees, the pecans, the pine cones, the carnelian-colored clay, the unstoppable honeysuckle, the ancient oaks, the young shoots of cattails, the blue jays and blackbirds and red-shouldered hawks. I still think the mantel is held up by magic.

Diane Roberts is an eighthgeneration Floridian, educated at Florida State University and Oxford University. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian and the Tampa Bay Times. She has also authored four books, including Dream State, a historical memoir of Florida.

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BABY

CORALS

BIG HOPE

N A M E : Corals, Baby

B O R N : Fall 2023

W E I G H T: Healthy

L E N G T H : Just right

It’s been a bleak summer for Florida’s Coral Reef. But our underwater world just got a little

brighter thanks to the arrival of thousands of baby corals! Born at the Florida Coral Rescue Center, these bundles of joy are tiny, adaptable, and an essential part of the future of Florida.

This is just the start of their journey to rebuild our reefs, and we need your help raising them.

Welcome baby corals into the world by donating today.

There’s A Feeling in r Air Amelia Island’s storied Streets, Victorian architecture, nautical escapades, historic fort, vibrant shopping and culinary SCENE make IT the perfect getaway.

By JAMIE RICH // Photography by MARY BETH KOETH All clothing by PENELOPE T AND T-DUB’S MERCANTILE Hair & makeup by KAYLE SHOALS & ROBERT SUGDEN Models CHELSEA BROOKS & NICOLAS VANSTEENBERGHE

J

ust south of the Florida-Georgia border lies one of those not-sosecret, secret spots, quietly calling you—like a sailor to the sea— to shove off. To navigate its maze of marshlands, to stroll its fossil-strewn beaches, to meander its Main Street and get lost in its lore stretching back more than 400 years.

Amelia Island’s origin story is as complex as a John Grisham novel, and perhaps that’s why the famed author built a home there more than 25 years ago. Also known as the Isle of Eight Flags, Amelia Island has been ruled by eight different governments, including the British, French and Spanish monarchies, since its founding. Today, strolling through Fernandina Beach, situated at the heart of the island, a sense of history rolls off the Intracoastal like fog and peeks out from every window of the Victorian-era houses dotting the village.

The southernmost in the chain of Sea Islands, Amelia Island is a haven for history buffs, wildlife enthusiasts, anglers, foodies, weekend adventurers and anyone just looking to experience a piece of Old Florida with a touch of quiet, laid-back luxury. What makes the place so endearing is its humble charm and the feeling of a place still undiscovered.

On this quintessential weekend getaway, discover the allure of the 13-mile key through its quaint bed-and-breakfasts, nautical escapades, storied fort, vibrant shopping district and culinary delights that promise to leave you hoping, albeit in vain, to keep this spot all to yourself.

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For the ROMANTIC As the sun casts a warm morning glow over the island, start your journey at THE WILLIAMS HOUSE B&B, tucked just a couple of blocks from Centre Street in Fernandina Beach. Architect and New York native Veronica Byrnes purchased the historic property in 2020 and renovated nearly every space and spindle of the old Victorian inn, imparting a combination of chic modern style and cozy finishes all while maintaining the inn’s 19th-century grandeur.

Original plate-glass windows and wood floors adorn the first floor. The carefully appointed and spacious guest rooms feature period antiques alongside contemporary comforts like king-size beds with fine linens, refreshed bathrooms and an inviting atmosphere that transports you to a bygone era. Swing on the front porch, solve a puzzle in the parlor, savor a gourmet breakfast in the formal dining room or pour

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yourself a glass of wine and mingle with guests during the nightly happy hour. Just right for a reunion with friends or a romantic weekend, the Williams House offers the perfect mooring from which to set off for a day of exploring.

AMELIAISL AND.COM AND BURLINGAME

For the SEAFARER Few vantage points offer a better perspective of the island and the surrounding landscapes than the deck of a sailboat. If it’s a sea breeze and marsh view you’re after, then embark on a sunset cruise with captain Bud Brasier and his wife Miriam Zoole aboard FOLLOW THAT DREAM, a 41-foot catamaran that departs from the Amelia Island Marina for a three-hour round-trip journey north along the Amelia River past Fort Clinch and up to Cumberland Island, Georgia,

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where the legendary wild horses run. Sip a rose and nibble charcuterie as the co-captains raise the jib and hoist the main while sharing tales of their life and travels abroad before starting the charter business in the spring of 2022.

For a longer sojourn, head south for a four-day trip to St. Augustine. Whether sailing aboard Follow That Dream for an evening or an entire weekend, the couple’s wealth of maritime knowledge and hospitality enriches the experience and echos the spirit of the island’s seafaring heritage.

For the HISTORY BUFF Back on the island, delve into the rich history at FORT CLINCH. This well-preserved Civil War-era fort offers a glimpse into a tumultuous past while showcasing

Previous spread:

Models Nicolas Vansteenberghe and Chelsea Brooks biking the canopied road that cuts through Fort Clinch State Park Above from left:

Grilled romaine with smoked salmon roe from Burlingame; Nicolas and Chelsea enjoy a moment outside Eight Flags Antique Market; Victorianera architecture lines Centre Street, bustling with shops, restaurants and breweries.

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Clinch State Park on Amelia Island is a Civil War time capsule that offers visitors more than a glimpse into the past with its sweeping ocean views and surrounding beaches; Enjoy private chef-led dinners at Omni Amelia Island Resort’s The Sprouting Project.

breathtaking views of the coastline. Walk along the fort’s wall and imagine the soldiers who once stood guard. For history buffs, the onsite museum, guided tours, exhibits and reenactments vividly depict life during the Civil War. Today, the fort’s strategic position, perched on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, offers more than a window into the past.

The surrounding park’s 1,400-acres of natural beauty with canopied roads, pristine beaches, quiet trails and full-service campsites are an outdoor enthusiast’s playground. Pitch a tent, cast a line, hike a trail, bike the path or simply wander the grounds of the historic site for a fresh air reset.

For the SHOPPER At the heart of Amelia Island lies the quaint village of Fernandina Beach, anchored by a harbor bustling with

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serious fishing boats and luxury cruising yachts and bisected by a vibrant Main Street. Moss-covered oaks and flower boxes line Centre Street, which in winter exudes a special magic under the soft glow of twinkling lights that wrap every tree branch and outline every roof. Centre Street buzzes with dozens of independent and locally owned boutiques, art galleries and shops to peruse.

For the keen-eyed collector, LINDY’S JEWELRY specializes in one-of-a-kind pieces and fine jewelry created by independent designers that reflect the sentiments of the area’s coastal culture, while THE BOOK LOFT bookstore caters to the discerning bookworm, with rows of shelves lined with New York Times bestsellers, and of course, curated works by Florida authors. In the heart of town, FANTASTIC FUDGE won’t be hard to find. Just follow your nose to the corner of Centre Street and Third

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AMELIAISL AND.COM

Above from left: Fort

Street, where hungry patrons spill outside the shop’s door eager for a taste of their homemade gourmet confections, ice cream and fudge. Interior design fanatics will want to stop at CAPE HOUSE for a master class in southern hosting and high-style home decor. While EIGHT FLAGS ANTIQUE MARKET is an absolute must-see with its maze of stalls overflowing with vintage treasures and nostalgic finds ranging from old typewriters and Coca-Cola crates to imported hand-dyed indigo fabrics and reclaimed farmhouse tables.

For the FOODIE Shopping isn’t the only artisanal experience. The island’s restaurants specialize in regional fare and offer a plentiful seafood bounty. At BURLINGAME, farm-to-table craftsmanship reaches its peak with signature dishes such as shrimp and grits and tomato and peach salad, an artful ode to locally sourced ingredients. Craft beer enthusiasts find solace at FIRST LOVE BREWING, where creative brews such as A Beacon of Light milk stout and A Cardinal Truth west coast IPA meet a cozy atmosphere, perfect for sipping away the afternoon.

For seafood lovers, TIMOTI’S SEAFOOD SHAK is no frills and all fun with its yard of picnic tables and freshoff-the-boat shrimp served in brown paper baskets. If a European bistro ambience appeals, CAFE KARIBO beckons with a touch of Parisian flair mixed into its menu of classics like the Mediterranean couscous salad topped with

Above: A fresh-off-

the-boat spread from Timoti’s Seafood Shak Right: Amelia

Island is a mariner’s dream with endless waterways to navigate along the Intracoastal and out to the Atlantic Ocean.

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RESORT APPEAL A short 15-minute drive from the historic town center, find two world-class resorts offering one-of-a-kind culinary experiences.

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Omni Amelia Island Resort

Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island

The luxury oceanfront resort is known for its annual Fish to Fork culinary weekend, as well as its apiary and farm-to-table private dining at The Sprouting Project. The hidden gems lie not only in the organic garden but in the shopping village, where signature shops such as Marché Burette Southern Table, Salty Threads and The Queen Bee have undergone a reset worth seeing. omnihotels.com

Set among the dunes of the Atlantic, the resort turns the beach into a gourmet gathering place this fall with its Amelia Island Cookout. Enjoy six gastronomic events hosted by the Ritz-Carlton’s head chef from Salt and in collaboration with other regional stars. Then top things off with a signature chimenea experience roasting s’mores and sipping bourbon by your own personal beachside fire. ritzcarlton.com

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house-made crabcakes. At T-RAYS BURGER STATION, a repurposed gas station family owned and operated since 1972, classic American fare meets nostalgia with a menu of standards like sausage biscuits, burgers and fries.

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For the EXPLORER While the island’s long-standing entrepreneurial spirit elevates its culinary and retail scene, Amelia Island’s true character emanates from the waters surrounding it. The city’s century-old shrimping heritage still flourishes alongside the modern-day maritime tradition on display at FERNANDINA HARBOR MARINA. You don’t have to arrive by boat, although you certainly can, to appreciate the atmosphere. Sparkling tuna towers

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and sailing masts punctuate the skyline while anglers spray down their hulls after a productive day on the water.

Walk the docks and ponder the stories of the gold-leaf names glimmering from transoms, sip an Old Fashioned at BRETT’S WATERWAY CAFE as an endless stream of vessels come into port or just simply marvel at the horizon’s changing colors as the sun sinks behind the old town.

There’s a feeling in the air here, especially on the docks.

A feeling infused by the adventures of the seafarers and merchants that came before and one that will endure with the explorers yet to come. Whether you simply stay for a weekend or come for a visit and never leave, Amelia Island is calling. And when you answer, it just might sweep you up into its story.

Above from left: The

Williams House was completely restored in 2021; Chelsea and Nicolas enjoy a sunset cruise aboard Follow That Dream charter catamaran.

Opposite: Horseback

riding on the beach is a popular island activity.

Highlights: All clothing

worn by Chelsea is provided by Penelope T boutique in Jacksonville Beach; All clothing worn

by Nicolas is provided

by T-Dub’s Mercantile in Atlantic Beach.

For more places to explore on Amelia Island, see our Bird’s-Eye View travel guide on pg. 98.

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Where

Stands Still...

Jimmy Nicholson has captured five decades

of portraits and images of rural life in the heart of Northwest Florida that go beyond documentation and into the realm of fine art by freezing in time the essence of the American South.

By STEVE DOLLAR Photography by JIMMY NICHOLSON

B

right and early on a late spring morning, Jimmy Nicholson fires up the engine of his Chevrolet Silverado work truck outside his Panhandle home in Quincy, Florida.

Beside him, he has a trusty, twice-rebuilt Nikon FM2, a 35mm analog camera model last manufactured in 2001. Over the next couple of hours, Nicholson will navigate all manner of back roads and twolane highways that crisscross his patch of rural Northwestern Florida, a place he’s known all his life yet continues to discover anew.

It’s a routine for Nicholson, a former special education teacher. Since his retirement in 2014 he has returned full time to the passion he first discovered as a teenager— photography. The broad-shouldered 69-year-old focuses on the immediate world around him. His black-and-white

If you don’t photograph it,

you may not get a second opportunity.

—Jimmy Nicholson

images capture sunbaked agricultural workers; worshippers at church services and tent revivals; the vernacular signage of pawn shops, small-town groceries, weather-beaten gas stations, juke joints and roving sideshows; country people fishing off riverbanks; and the quiet elegiac stillness of cemetery statuary.

“Pretty much everything I do is curiosity about what’s here,” Nicholson said. “That’s what drives everything. My work is my diary. It’s all of the places I’ve gone, people I’ve met, things I’ve seen. I don’t go out with the intent of creating art. I go out with the intent of creating a literal recording of what I’ve seen. A lot of them transcend to an aesthetic thing, but that’s not my primary purpose.”

DIRT-ROAD DETOURS AND MAKING THE EPHEMERAL PERMANENT His photographs have appeared in shows at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans and other regional museums and galleries. His works are collected by The Do Good Fund, a Georgia-based public charity that owns an encyclopedic assemblage of postwar Southern photography.

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vanish overnight. “If you don’t photograph it,” he said, “you may not get a second opportunity.”

On this particular day, we’re headed toward Chattahoochee, a town infamous as the site of the Florida State Hospital, a still operating facility that, since 1867, has housed committed patients deemed incompetent for trial or not guilty by reason of insanity. We won’t be stopping in.

Instead, Nicholson pulls into a quiet park—the historic Chattahoochee Landing Mounds by the Apalachicola River, and rolls up next to Victory Bridge. Built in 1922, the bridge used to convey automobiles across the river. It has been unused for decades and only portions of the bridge remain.

Victory Bridge’s foundations are covered in graffiti and discolored by flood lines and mossy grunge. The ground is mushy and scattered with empty beer cans, the foliage laced with clumps of poison ivy. Thick humidity calls forth the dank, fishy scent of the river, while scores of black-headed vultures chatter far overhead.

A LINEAGE OF PHOTOGRAPHERS AND FINDING THE ORNATE

Previous spread from left: Family

at the Boat Basin, Bainbridge, GA, 1980; Jimmy Nicholson selfportrait Opposite from top:

Vera’s Seafood Oyster Bar Bait, Eastpoint, FL, 1982; Tomato farmworkers, Gadsden County, FL, 2022 Above: Water Street

Looking West, Bainbridge, GA, 1979

But the work’s wider exposure is via Instagram, where Nicholson has posted over 400 images, he says in pursuit of “making the ephemeral permanent.” The Instagram log is both a tightly curated distillation of thousands of negatives dating back 50 years, and a body of work-in-progress. The array constitutes a historical perspective of this particular corner of the world, one in which time appears to stand still.

What guides Nicholson’s photographic eye is an eagerness to stray off familiar routes, take detours down red dirt roads, ramble neglected pockets of enterprise and see what’s there. Despite the molasses-drip pace of Panhandle life, times do change and even the most familiar landmarks can

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Nicholson drags out a tripod and looks for something with his medium format camera. He finds it in the footing of the bridge and the repeating pattern of the arches overhead, a glimpse of the river in the background. “I’m looking for unique things,” he said. “The ornateness appeals to me.

Those bridges were handmade. They have that stateliness about them, that physical presence.”

Nicholson’s process doesn’t end with the shutter’s click.

As we climb back into the truck and head out, he picks up a running anecdotal regional history, an expansive narrative of notable floods, details regarding bridge constructions, the decline of once-ubiquitous juke joints and hand-painted signage, the terrible impact of Hurricane Michael—which ripped apart the nearby city of Marianna and decimated the namesake trees in Torreya State Park—and the incredibly complex nature of the tomato industry, which long ago replaced tobacco as the area’s big money crop and now faces an urgent challenge from new anti-immigration legislation signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Nicholson isn’t working in a vacuum. There’s a deep lineage of photographers who have traveled the American South shooting work that has come to define a kind of visual shorthand for the region. People tend to think immediately of Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange and their Depression Era travels for the Works Progress Administration. In the 1950s, the Swiss immigrant Robert Frank traversed the country immortalizing in his book “The Americans” a

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Above:

Florida Theatre on Monroe Street, Tallahassee, FL, 1978 Below:

Raymond Under the Tapper Bridge, Highland View, FL, 2015 Opposite:

Tillman Brothers Packing House, Bainbridge, GA, 1977

nation of jukeboxes, rodeos, racial and class divides and the lonely gray ribbon of the open road. Later, in the early 1970s, it was Memphis-born William Eggleston who pushed the envelope as he captured everyday sights both banal and beatific in vivid color—once considered vulgar by the art establishment. Alabama native William Christenberry likewise explored color, which helped him articulate the visual potential of rusty tin roofs atop decaying shacks, vacant landscapes and roadside attractions. A generation of photographers followed.

THROUGH THE EYES OF THE MIGRANT WORKER OR CHURCHGOER

my life. He altered how I saw everything in the world.”

Kwilecki loaned Nicholson books from his collection, and encouraged him to study the work of great photographers—Evans, Berenice Abbott, W. Eugene Smith, August Sander, Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson—and then come back to talk about them.

Kwilecki would critique Nicholson’s work. “Very little of it was technical,” he said. Instead, there were fundamental questions: Why are you making these images? What are they about?

“He was teaching me how to see in a way I didn’t see previously. It was a world-class education.”

Alan Rothschild, founder of The Do Good Fund, aligns Nicholson with the tradition of Southern photographers that are in the organization’s collection, a tradition “of documenting a way of life in the South that has been in slow decline since World War II, including farmers, mill workers, fishermen and miners, and the structures that supported these traditional trades for more than a hundred years,” he said. “Yet Nicholson’s work has an authenticity, an empathy for the subjects he photographs, that goes beyond documentation. And this respect shows when you spend time with his work. Look in the eyes of the migrant worker, churchgoer or fisherman, and you’ll see it. To me, that reverence to a place—North Florida and Southwest Georgia—and its people, is what

Nicholson was introduced to photography at age 12 when his parents gave him a Polaroid Land Camera for Christmas.

A few years later, his path in the Southern documentary tradition was greatly accelerated by his association with Paul Kwilecki (1928-2009), a self-taught South Georgia photographer who ran his family’s hardware store until he sold it in 1975, and devoted himself full time to his photographic practice. He maintained a studio in downtown Bainbridge, and spent five decades documenting daily life and its rituals across the social strata of his native Decatur County.

Kwilecki, an intently thoughtful man whose work exhibited a compassionate bond with his subjects, took on Nicholson as a student in 1976. At the time, Nicholson was newly graduated from Florida State University and living back in his hometown. “I had a total transformation,” Nicholson recalled. “He was probably the most influential person in

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To me, that reverence to a place ...

is what makes Nicholson’s work so special.

—Alan Rothschild

makes Nicholson’s work so special.”

That foundation is evident even in some of Nicholson’s earliest photographs. One of his most memorable is of a young African-American woman preparing to gut a hog as it hangs upside down at the Tillman Brothers Meat Packing Company in Bainbridge. The year is 1977. Nicholson worked at his father’s grocery store which did a lot of business with the local commercial slaughterhouse. They were happy to give him access. “I don’t think today you could even get near a slaughterhouse,” Nicholson said.

CAPTURING GRACE AND SHEER PHYSICAL EXERTION What resonates in the image is not the abattoir setting so much as the grace displayed in the worker’s almost classical posture as she stretches toward the stark white body of the pig, knife at the ready. The calm, devotional cast of her face suggests she might otherwise be gazing at a flower or a cross.

“The position of her hand and the way her body extends outwardly, it’s almost like she’s a ballet dancer,” Nicholson said. “I call her the nun, because of the contrast of her black and white clothing. But she has that same kind of beauty in her body’s position. A lot of times what attracts me to people is how they move.”

Nicholson’s photographs of agricultural workers, which comprise a significant portion of his work, address both the dignity of the laborer and the hardship of their task. “These are people that are marginalized in many ways, and these are jobs that the average American would not ever want to do,” he said. “The sheer physical exertion … the oppressive humidity. It’s a high-pressure job. You work by the bucket.”

The new legislation, in effect since July, has triggered “a mass exodus,” of workers fleeing the state. “Every aspect of tomato farming is hand labor,” Nicholson said. “The law’s going to have a major impact. I’m trying to document it

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65

Sometimes the subject is larger than the picture.

—Tricia Collins

This page from left:

North Broad Street, Bainbridge, GA, 1978; Ruth in a Pecan Grove East of Climax, GA, 1981

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before it all turns south.”

Despite the contemporary backdrops in his portraiture, Nicholson tries “to just make it about the person, and not necessarily include a lot of context that would relate to time.” As we sit, on another morning, in his living room Nicholson has placed a print of a contemporary tomato picker alongside his 1970s portrait from the slaughterhouse.

“They’re made 40 years apart, but you wouldn’t know that.”

Rothschild likens Nicholson’s photographs, especially those taken after he retired from teaching, to a visit home after being away for two decades. “The Black field workers of Paul [Kwilecki’s] day were now various shades of brown—Haitian, Guatemalan and Mexican. The fishing docks and seafood processing buildings that once defined Apalachicola’s riverfront, now frozen in time, abandoned

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like the way of life of generations of watermen along the upper Florida coast,” Rothschild said.

DEATH, DYING AND THE DEEPER MEANING Time’s passage is perhaps most clearly marked in the cemeteries and graveyards that are some of Nicholson’s favorite places to explore. Our brief sojourn by the Apalachicola River is bracketed by visits to a pair of cemeteries. The first is the Union Burying Cemetery in Chattahoochee. Many of the graves appear neglected or wind-damaged, some markers or stones bear hand-scrawled inscriptions to memorialize the interred. In one corner we discover something tragic and oddly celebratory, an infant’s grave, festively arrayed with

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little American flags and other patriotic emblems. “I take a lot of pictures of children’s graves, they’re very poignant,” Nicholson said. “I’m curious about how [the parents] deal with that grief and how they put memorials around the grave. That was fitting for the 4th of July or Memorial Day.” Nicholson’s fascination with cemeteries is rooted in a couple of inspirations. At FSU, he took Sally Karioth’s celebrated course on death and dying. His project was a series of cemetery photographs. He then discovered the work of Eugène Atget, the 19th-century French photographic pioneer whose studies of garden statuary captured his imagination, and later Eudora Welty’s work in the field. “The closest thing we have to really formal gardens are cemeteries,” he explained. “And I’ve found there are just a million things to learn by going into cemeteries—and [there are] just beautiful objects.”

Tricia Collins, a longtime Tallahassee resident who pioneered New York’s East Village gallery scene in the 1980s,

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is a fan of Nicholson’s work. She reflected on a circa 1980 photograph of four adults and a baby fishing on the banks of Flint River, their bodies turned in postures akin to those of classical sculpture. A patch of reeds rising before the glassy surface of the water.

“Sometimes the subject is larger than the picture,” she said, thinking of Nicholson’s works. “Sometimes the subject seems opposed or incompatible with beauty. Sometimes the subject is the commonplace, the overlooked. Sometimes the subject is graphically dynamic with a formal beauty, resonant with the ordinary—with an image that is direct and transcendent. And some days the fish are biting.”

For Nicholson, this modest North Florida terrain is as abundant as the whole wide world.

“You can spend several lifetimes investigating a single place,” he said. “There are photographs to be made anywhere you go. You don’t have to travel to the ends of the earth to do it.”

Below: Larry’s Car,

Bainbridge, GA, 1978 Highlight: See more

of Nicholson’s work on Instagram @jimmy.nicholson. photographer

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Paradise

PROTECTORS

The The

Behind the scenes of the latest show by Florida documentarian and TV producer Chad Crawford, who tackles some of our state’s most dire environmental crises

PROTECTORS

Paradise

By CRAIG PITTMAN

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I was raised in a family that encouraged us to be outside all the time ...

I did everything you could do in Florida.

—Chad Crawford

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PREVIOUS SPREAD: ISTOCK; THIS PAGE: ISTOCK , CR AWFORD ENTERTAINMENT, JOSH LETCHWORTH

T

he first scene shows a man with a short white beard and sunburned cheeks driving a boat through the water with tall palms rising behind him.

“My name is Chad Crawford,” he says in a voiceover. “For the past 15 years, I’ve introduced viewers to Florida’s wild beauty.” The screen flashes scenes of Crawford: he’s holding a Florida flag, he’s standing by a canoe, he’s hiking through the woods.

“But right now,” Crawford tells viewers, “the paradise we know and love is being threatened like never before.”

Cue the shots of a massive fish kill amid a toxic algae bloom.

“We are way better than this,” Crawford says in disgust as he eyes a slimy mass of blue-green algae.

This is the opening of a remarkable new six-part documentary series called “Protect Our Paradise,” airing in syndication on television stations around the state and on the Discover Florida Channel this fall.

The series displays glorious views of Florida from the Panhandle to the Keys. It offers stunning footage of panthers, bears, manatees and other seldom seen creatures, as well as affecting interviews with the people trying to save them— scientists, artists and activists.

It also shows some of the things that are destroying the wild beauty of the state. Viewers will see an excavator gouging holes in the lush landscape, cookie-cutter homes sprawling every which way, roads slicing through formerly natural areas and glops of toxic algae fed by pollution. In the end, the series shines a bright light on our state’s environmental threats, but there is a much darker side that could lead to disaster for many of our habitats if Floridians don’t pay attention to what’s going on behind the scenes.

and scuba diving from an early age.

He enlisted in the Navy at 19 and wound up in Antigua, where he took every opportunity to do more fishing and scuba diving. After his honorable discharge, he used the GI Bill to enroll in Full Sail University, where he earned a degree in video and film.

Starting out in the movie industry, he fetched coffee for the crews working on feature films, while making ends meet by running a pizzeria. Once he bought his own camera, he paid the bills by shooting everything from weddings to corporate promotional films. Finally, as he put it, he “got sick of doing stuff for other people.”

Crawford decided what he wanted to do was create a show that would make viewers fall in love with the Florida outdoors he knew so well. He came up with the title “How To Do Florida.”

The objective was simple: show off the state he knew to be “part ridiculous, part genius.” But that left one problem: Who would be the face of the show?

“Over two days, I had 40 people come in and audition to be the host,” he said. “Then my wife said, ‘YOU need to be the host.’” He tried her idea for the pilot episode, “and I realized we could save some money if I didn’t have to pay some

Below: The opening

shot from Crawford’s new docuseries, “Protect Our Paradise.” Crawford grew up surfing, hunting, fishing and scuba diving, and eventually found a way to turn his love of the outdoors into a successful career as a storyteller.

Part Ridiculous, Part Genius

“Protect Our Paradise” was conceived, co-written with and stars Crawford, a native Floridian. He was born in Sanford and now lives in Lake Mary with his wife and four children. He can’t remember a time when he wasn’t soaking up the richness that wild Florida offers to the adventurous.

“I was raised in a family that encouraged us to be outside and outdoors all the time,” he said. “I was always the kind of person who did a little bit of everything. I did everything you could do in Florida.” That included surfing, fishing, hunting

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Below: Behind the

scenes shooting an episode of “Protect Our Paradise” in the aftermath of a prescribed burn.

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A Moment of Clarity

In 2018, a toxic blue-green algae bloom covered 90% of Lake Okeechobee and soon spread to both the Atlantic and the Gulf

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Coast. The bloom, thick as a bowl of guacamole, chased away tourists and anglers with its stench and the waves of dead fish it tossed ashore.

Meanwhile, another toxic outbreak, this time of red tide, exploded along the state’s Gulf Coast, killing still more marine life—not just fish but also sea turtles and manatees.

While the algae blooms are natural occurrences, scientists say they were worsened and prolonged by pollution from farm and yard fertilizers, leaky sewer systems and faltering septic tanks. In other words, human failings were fueling the disaster.

Crawford had been alarmed by what he read in a 2016 report called “Florida 2070/Water 2070.” That report—produced by the smart-growth group 1000 Friends of Florida working with the University of Florida GeoPlan Center and the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services—said that if the state continued with its current trend of rampant development, by 2070, more than a third of Florida’s remaining natural lands would be turned into houses and stores. At the same time, development-related water demand would more than double.

Crawford referred to the blooms and the report as “my ‘Oh, shit!’ moments.” How could he continue promoting Florida’s wonderful outdoors and never mention the dire threats it faced?

“I’ve gotten to travel and see Florida the way few have, and that gives me an interesting perspective,” he said. “I wanted to be more honest with my fans.”

That’s where he got the idea for this limited-run series. It would be devoted to detailing the threats facing Florida.

His hope would be to galvanize viewers to take action to save their state.

“You should feel the weight of it, the way you feel when something you love is sick and not feeling good,” he said.

To get it on the air, however, Crawford knew he’d need a partner, one who would lend

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teeth-and-hair host.” It would become a successful formula.

Over 12 seasons, Crawford has shown viewers how to catch lobsters in the Florida Keys, surf the waves in New Smyrna Beach and camp in the Ocala National Forest. He has seen plenty of highs, such as reeling in a 440-pound swordfish near Islamorada, and he’s also seen a few lows, such as falling out of an airboat in gator-infested waters.

He ends each episode by urging viewers, “get out and do Florida!”

Around 2018, during what’s become known as the Summer of Slime, Crawford started to realize that some of the things we humans were doing to Florida weren’t good for the state.

Eventually he launched a second show called “Flip My Florida Yard,” about how Floridians can create beautiful and environmentally safe landscapes at home.

him credibility and access.

Rather than turning to the old guard of activist organizations such as Audubon Florida or the Sierra Club, he went with a newer one—one that was founded by the son of two of Florida’s most famous environmental advocates.

Keeping Florida Wild

One of the earliest environmental battles in Florida was over the Cross Florida Barge Canal. The canal was an attempt by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to bisect the Florida peninsula with a ditch designed to cut the travel time for ships. It had been planned for a couple of centuries, but the Corps began to build at a time when truck traffic had superseded shipping to carry cargo.

A Florida scientist named Marjorie Harris Carr led the drive to stop it, citing the danger to the underground aquifer as well as the rampant destruction it would cause aboveground to the Ocala National Forest and Ocklawaha River. In the end, she won.

Today the former canal route is a 110-milelong recreational trail known as the Marjorie Harris Carr Cross Florida Greenway. It also serves as a wildlife corridor, the first in Florida to have a land bridge across a major interstate that’s utilized by both trail users and wildlife.

Carr’s husband, Archie, was a pioneering naturalist who taught zoology at the University of Florida. A talented writer— one of his short stories won an O. Henry Award—Archie Carr used his scientific knowledge and skill with the written word to draw international attention to the importance of the declining population of sea turtles.

In 1989, Congress honored him by naming a 20.5-mile stretch of Florida’s Atlantic coast the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge. That beach, between Melbourne and Wabasso, attracts more nesting loggerhead sea turtles than virtually anywhere else on Earth.

Marjorie and Archie Carr had five children. In 1999, one of them, David, founded what was originally called the Conservation Trust for Florida.

Other national organizations, such as The Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land, try to preserve pristine parcels such as swamps and forests that might become part of the state park system or state forest system. Whereas this new organization would focus on protecting Florida’s working rural landscapes, which includes farms, ranches and timberlands. In 2018, the organization shortened its name to

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You should feel the weight of it, the way you feel when something you love is sick.

— Chad Crawford

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Conservation Florida.

The current CEO of Conservation Florida is Traci Deen, a vivacious, blonde-haired sixth-generation Floridian. She was born in Homestead, where her dad was an Everglades airboat pilot and, she says, the family kept a pet alligator in their apartment.

That wild part of her childhood ended when her parents split up and she went to live with her mom, a bank teller. She wound up in a more civilized area, Coral Gables, but was still that girl who had live anoles dangling from her ears like earrings.

By the time she finished her Florida State University degree and was in law school at Barry University in Orlando, she “knew [she] wanted to focus on nonprofit, public sector law,” Deen said.

One of her mentors steered her toward environmental law, first at Barry’s own environmental law clinic. That mentor was Clay Henderson, former president of the Florida Audubon Society and the Florida Trust For Historic Preservation.

Henderson makes an appearance in every episode of “Protect Our Paradise,” as does Deen. He said of Deen, “She’s the real deal.”

Deen took the post as CEO of Conservation Florida in 2017, and says she finds it quite satisfying. “One of the best feelings in the world is when you’re standing on property you’ve just preserved,” she said.

Under Deen, Conservation Florida has taken on one of its most high-profile tasks ever: establishing the Florida Wildlife Corridor. The corridor, first promoted by photographer Carlton Ward Jr., consists of nearly 18 million acres of contiguous wilderness and working lands crucial to the survival of many of Florida’s 131 imperiled animals, including panthers and bears.

Crawford collaborated with a team from Conservation Florida in designing each episode of the “Protect Our Paradise” series. The first episode is about the Florida Wildlife Corridor and features Ward and some of his trap camera images shot while wildlife passed by, including a remarkable sequence of a bear scratching its back on a tree.

“We could have done a two-hour episode on each topic,” said Deen, noting that each episode was limited to just 21 minutes. They aimed to show Floridians things that few people have ever seen before, such as deep inside a freshwater spring.

“I’d never worked on a TV show before,” she said. “I had no idea how much work goes on with this.”

Making the series took a total of two years from start to finish, with 50 days of production followed by nine months of

You can’t talk about growth without talking about how our state’s growth policy has changed.

— Clay Henderson

post-production work, Crawford said.

Henderson, the author of a new book on land conservation in Florida called “Forces of Nature,” shows up in each episode to provide some historical context on what’s being discussed.

His portions of the series were shot in a historic home with no air-conditioning.

“My interviews were done in two full days of taping,” he said. “That was eight hours a day under the hot lights. I was sweating worse than Nixon in his debates with Kennedy. They got bags of ice and stuck them in front of a fan to keep me cool.”

A missing piece

In addition to highlighting the corridor, the show tackles such issues as water pollution, the coasts, wildlife and the dangers of uncontrolled development. But something was missing.

In 1985, Florida passed the Growth Management Act, one of the strongest and most comprehensive planning measures in the country. The law required each county and municipal government to adopt a local comprehensive plan for growth that was consistent with regional and state plans. It also established a process for the state to approve local plans and amendments, and created a formal state hearing process for challenges to the plans. There would be sanctions for noncompliance, and Florida’s citizens were given legal standing to file a challenge to

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Above: Crawford

and Tessa Skiles, Conservation Florida’s conservation programs manager, free dive into Blue Hole at Ichetucknee Springs State Park.

any changes in the plans.

While the program drew raves from growth management advocates, the development industry disliked it. Developers especially disliked the state agency in charge of administering the law, the Department of Community Affairs. In 2011, just 25 years after its creation, the legislature abolished the Department of Community Affairs and since then has been dismantling the rest of Florida’s growth management system.

One person interviewed for the series episode on growth was Jane West, a former Conservation Florida board member who works as the policy and planning director of 1000 Friends of Florida. She said that in her interview, she named names about pro-development politicians and specified who was responsible for demolishing the growth management system.

“They must have done a lot of editing,” West said.

Crawford said the filmmakers made a choice not to point fingers.

“We steered clear of politics,” Crawford said. “We just did not go there, for the most part.”

“We didn’t want conservation to be seen as a partisan position,” Deen said.

The show says that “bad bills” are allowing too much development that hurts efforts to protect the environment. It never mentions any specifics about the bills or their sponsors.

West says that falls short of telling people the full story.

“You can blame ‘bad bills’ all you want, but if you lift the

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segment on two young guys who are planting seagrass in an area that has none. A concerned citizen in Polk County rallies her neighbors to pass a citizen initiative to pay for buying land for conservation before it can become a new subdivision or office park.

“We wanted to bring more awareness to these groups,” Crawford explained. “This is a little bit of a heroing for them.”

Common Ground

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Above: Behind the

scenes with the crew of “Protect Our Paradise” in the swamps of Venus, FL, not far from Lake Okeechobee Opposite: Filming

his shows has taken Crawford into some of the most unforgiving environments in Florida, like the Apalachicola Bluffs and Ravines Preserve.

More to Tell

Crawford says he regrets having to leave some things out of the shows.

For instance, he mentions, in the wildlife episode, they had to cut a segment where a biologist “walked around a neighborhood teaching people the right way to engage with wildlife.”

He said he wasn’t happy about having to leave out a planned segment that highlights how the On Top of the World development in Ocala has been conserving water.

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cover a little more, you’ll see who the bill’s sponsor is and who the special interests are who are pushing them,” West said.

“The development community has really got a stranglehold on how our state is growing.”

Henderson, too, said leaving all of that out also leaves Floridians blissfully unaware.

“You can’t talk about growth without talking about how our state’s growth policy has changed,” he said.

Similarly, when the show addresses water pollution, viewers will not hear the names of any of the state’s most notorious polluters, such as the Georgia-Pacific paper mill in Perry. And left out in the show on wildlife: the identity of some particularly destructive developers, such as PulteGroup (formerly known as Pulte Homes), which in 2021 pleaded guilty to 22 counts of destroying gopher tortoise burrows in Marion County (and killing two of the tortoises, which are keystone species and listed as threatened), paying a paltry fine of only $13,700.

Crawford conceded that the shows avoid assigning blame for the horrible conditions depicted in the docuseries.

“We could’ve gone there,” Crawford said, “but we chose to stay neutral.”

Instead, the show takes care in each episode to depict people who are working on solutions.

Viewers see Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium trying to save the coral in the Keys from a deadly disease. There’s a

“Protect Our Paradise” cost $700,000 to make, Crawford said. To pay for the production, Conservation Florida connected him with a key donor, and “he loved it and said let’s do it.”

That donor, Arnie Bellini, doesn’t appear in any of the shows, but he’s listed as an executive producer. Bellini started a Tampa-based tech firm, ConnectWise, and then in 2019 he sold it for $1.5 billion. Now he and his wife have become philanthropists with a strong interest in conservation.

In fact, the Bellinis were behind Conservation Florida’s successful push to win legislative approval for $300 million in state funding for the Florida Wildlife Corridor.

Bellini said he was glad to help Crawford and Deen design the content and focus of the series.

“We all sat down and talked about what needs to be done,” he said. “What’s great about ‘Protect Our Paradise’ is that it reaches both sides of the aisle,” he said.

Bellini said he isn’t opposed to development, but he wants to encourage the right kind.

“This state’s going to be developed,” he said. “We need to include the developers in these discussions. It’s all about balancing our robust economy and the environment.”

And he wished he could have shown more about what’s been happening in the troubled Indian River Lagoon, which suffered such a catastrophic seagrass loss that more than 1,000 manatees starved to death. But overall, he’s happy with the choices made and the shows that have resulted.

The episodes are being syndicated to all of Florida’s major media markets except for the West Palm Beach region.

“It’s a bit of a shotgun blast,” he said.

So far, though, Crawford said he’s hearing nothing but praise for the series.

“The response has been positive,” he said, noting that one fan even said, “Every Floridian should watch this.”

He has plans for more. When the series has finished its run on Florida television, he wants to approach the various streaming services about showing the series nationally.

Then, over the next few years, he plans to repackage the footage into a different form. He wants to make a 90-minute documentary version that could be rereleased in that format and reach a different audience.

“I want to take all the best episodes and put them all together,” he said.

He wants Florida viewers to be more than merely dazzled by the visual artistry of the show. He wants them to see it as a call to arms.

“I want them to be inspired, to be engaged, to be aware,” he said. “We’re such a transient state, but I am hoping to stoke a fire in some people to get involved and be a part of the solution.

Because let’s face it, we’re all part of the problem.”

We need to include the developers in these discussions.

It’s all about balancing our robust economy and the environment.

— Arnie Bellini

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the must Go On! The return of the Greatest Show on Earth MArks the reimagination of a florida icon and a rebirth of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus.

By ERIC BARTON Photography by JOSH LETCHWORTH

This page: George Caceres, 45, a lifelong circus performer, watches his troupe of performers practice the daring routine he choreographed for the new Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey show.

George Caceres does not look like a man about to risk his life.

He’s casually shaking out his arms, letting them flail at his side like hooked mackerel. As calm as the Intracoastal on a windless morning, he straightens his white spandex shorts, pulling them down lower on his thighs. Behind him in the massive Tampa Bay rehearsal hall for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus, a crew dressed in all black drags a massive net across the main stage—the net that will later, hopefully, save Caceres from a hard landing.

At 45 years old, Caceres is the leader of a trapeze troupe that, aside from him, appears to have an average age of sophomore year in college. These days, he’s more teaching and leading than leaping and catching. A shock of silver runs from the center of his hairline through his black hair, like he’s been scared hard one too many times.

The trapeze troupe has been practicing for 31 days on a new routine that Caceres choreographed. If it works, it will headline the recently reborn Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey. The firm that owns Ringling, Florida-based Feld Entertainment, shuttered the circus in 2017 after a public outcry over elephant performers and a resulting decline in ticket sales. It’s late on a Monday, and they have 45 more rehearsals until opening night on Sept. 29 in Bossier City, Louisiana. I ask Caceres if his troupe is ready, if they’ve done the new stunt he just invented.

“No,” he says quickly. “We realized some things about the act that we couldn’t see on paper.”

The sketched-out version, he explains, involves a troupe of nine performers who take turns swinging from two platforms, narrowly passing each other above the center ring. If he can pull it off, the finale will be spectacular. For now, they’ll keep working on the basics. “Maybe next Wednesday we will try it.

Maybe by the end of this week, I don’t know,” Caceres says.

It’s just then that Ringling’s director of casting and performance comes over. Giulio Scatola inserts himself into

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the troupe’s circle with the confidence of a man very much in charge. If this were a movie or a dramatic TV show, Scatola hit his mark with dramatic timing. “George,” he says, “at about 5:45, I would like to run the whole thing.”

“The whole thing,” Caceres says, not as a question but a statement.

“Yes, the whole thing.”

The whole thing. The entire act, the one the troupe wasn’t ready to attempt, as of one minute ago, will be attempted in less than an hour. Caceres pauses, considering the dangers. They are performers, always ready, the most capable among their profession. They are the trapeze artists of Ringling Bros.

“OK.” Caceres lets a wry smile spread as he heads off to begin stretching.

“Going up!” a crew leader shouts from the other side of the ring, and on her command, the net rises all at once. Ringling had it sewn specially for this act, shaped like the equal sided Red Cross symbol, to protect the performers as they make their perilous two-direction route.

The troupe climbs rope ladders up to platforms 31 feet off the ground and begins jumping off, swinging out over the net.

On the opposite side, two wide-shouldered performers wait to catch them, hanging upside down from fast-moving swings.

The first performers leap off, one by one, pirouetting and spinning and flipping into the arms of the catchers. It seems they have a From left: Alexis success rate just over 50%, half the Marin practices his trapese skills ahead time falling into the net below. It very of the show’s debut; much looks like Caceres was right— extreme unicyclist Wesley Williams nobody’s ready for the whole thing. circles the ring.

Minutes tick by as they practice.

Below: John and Word spreads that Scatola is stuck in Mable Ringling, who first brought the a meeting, and 5:45 comes and goes. circus to Sarasota Does he still want them to run the in 1927

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whole thing? The performers begin lounging on the net and watching YouTube videos from a single phone.

It’s 6:20 by the time Scatola breezes back in, apologizing. He asks Caceres if the troupe is ready.

“Oh, it’s going to happen,” Caceres says. His team, seven men and two women, climb back up the ladders. Scatola queues the music—a dramatic, drum-heavy song—which sounds like the background of a cinematic car chase.

Scatola grabs a microphone that blasts his words over the sound system. “Ten seconds. Four. Three. Two. One. Let’s do this.”

One by one, the performers begin to fly out, letting go at the apex of their swings, landing in the arms of the catchers. One by one, they nail it, flying back onto their own swings and then back to the two platforms. Not one single drop. All six of them go, and then finally it’s Caceres’s turn. His lone swing out and back will signal the start of the big finale, the thing that has never been tried.

The music crescendos, drums and horns and guitars blare; two hands on the swing, like he’s done a million times before— ever since his first step off a trapeze platform at 4 years old.

Caceres leaps.

The return of Ringling is a massive, multimillion-dollar investment by Feld Entertainment. The goal is ambitious: recreate the concept of a circus. It’s a monumental task in an era in which all of us are inundated, all day long, by internet videos of people doing extraordinary things. But Feld bets audiences will still be willing to pay to see those things in person.

There’s more on the line than just the success of Ringling.

Feld’s headquarters in Palmetto, on the south side of Tampa Bay, could also bring a return of the circus culture. The Sarasota-Bradenton area sprung up largely after the arrival of Ringling in 1927, and there are hopes that its return will bring circus culture back to the shores of the Gulf Coast.

But first, before any of that can happen, Caceres must stick what comes after that leap off the platform. He swings out, his body extending down below the swing. He lets go, his hands outstretched now, every part of him reaching, stretching, pulling toward the forearms of the performer waiting on the swing.

Just inches.

Inside one of Florida’s largest buildings The headquarters of Feld Entertainment rises like a massive spaceship that landed on an unexplored planet, ascending

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from the sand and scraggly bush of inland Florida with little else around it. For a long time, according to Ringling, it stood as the state’s second largest building, after NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building—that was until an Amazon fulfillment center recently surpassed it.

There apparently aren’t a lot of visitors to Feld, so there’s nobody manning the front desk when I arrive on a Monday morning. A Feld greeter meets me instead at the door. We head back into a maze of hallways snaking through the 600,000-square-foot building, more than 10 times larger than the White House. Ringling performers are practicing here six days a week now, but this is also home to Feld’s other touring shows, including “Monster Jam,” “Disney On Ice” and “Marvel Universe Live!” Performers for those shows also practice here, and the monster trucks sit in their own bay getting serviced between shows.

In the hallway, we run into Kenneth Feld, the owner, and his daughter, Juliette Feld Grossman. She’s being groomed, along with her two sisters, to someday become the third Feld generation to take charge of the entertainment empire.

“Oh, hey!” Feld Grossman says with a charming smile. The four of us make our way toward Ringling’s practice hall, where the performers have already begun a 10-hour rehearsal broken down into roughly hour-long sections for each act. “There are probably thousands of queues in this production for lighting, sound, rigging, staging elements­—all these pieces that have to be expertly choreographed,” Feld Grossman told me earlier by phone.

Out of all the shows Feld owns, this one isn’t just business, she says. Feld Grossman’s grandfather, Irvin Feld, bought Ringling in 1967. One of her earliest memories is putting on a clown outfit and being one of the performers to pour out of a tiny car. She’d spend school breaks at Ringling rehearsals.

“Ringling is so close to our heart. It has been part of the Feld family longer than it was part of Ringling or Barnum. We take This page from top:

An uproar over animal rights and the resulting diminished ticket sales brought the circus to a close in 2017; in its heyday the circus was a showcase of the strange and spectacular that drew throngs of people.

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the responsibility of this iconic property seriously. I grew up around it. It was heartbreaking to close it, but it was also the business decision we had to make.”

Pressure from animal rights groups forced Ringling to remove elephants from the show in 2016 (they were retired to the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Center for Elephant Conservation). Ticket sales never recovered. When Feld finally closed the circus just months after retiring the elephants, ending a 146-year run, there was no promise that it would return.

Bringing it back now, Feld Grossman says the family recognized the challenge from on-demand entertainment available these days in everyone’s pockets. They decided Ringling would need key changes to help it succeed in the era of YouTube. They’d celebrate the performers, while also bringing the audience into the show—like the circus, but with greater engagement.

As we head into Ringling’s 60,000-square-foot rehearsal hall, it’s difficult at first to take in the vastness of it. Partial walls and curtains separate large parts of the space into a green room, stretching areas and separate rehearsal spaces for different acts.

Finally, we come to the center of the room and step around a tall platform where the producers have a row of desks, and the three rings are finally in focus. They’re made up of geometric shapes and bright colors, like a life-size Fisher Price circus toy. It’s all built in pieces so it can be broken down and rebuilt, shipped on roughly 25 semi-trucks. Above us, lights in the rafters flood the place, illuminating a group of dancers from South America, a team of trick BMX riders and black-clothed stagehands that seems to be scrambling in every direction.

There are 75 people in the cast, 51 crew members and 12 on the creative staff. It’s a fraction of the thousands that used to travel the country with Ringling. But if this new Ringling Bros. succeeds, the show could bring something long missing back to its home place.

Ringling’s century in Sarasota After a 45-minute drive down Tamiami Trail, Jennifer Lemmer Posey meets me in the lobby of the Ringling Museum’s Tibbals Learning Center and leads the way to her second-floor office, where circus memorabilia hangs between cubicles.

When she was a girl, Lemmer Posey’s parents would take her to Ringling on her birthday—the circus coincidentally

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Left: Skyler Miser,

18, comes from a long line of human cannonballs.

Right: Miser,

pictured atop her new cannon, grew up with her parents in the circus; after graduating high school she officially joined the family profession.

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If You Go ...

The connection to the circus runs deep along the Gulf Coast, and there are attractions dotting the Sarasota-Bradenton area worthy of a road trip.

Café L’Europe

After moving to Sarasota in 1927, John Ringling set up his office on the barrier island that he owned. It was the first step in building a new version of the city. Since the 1950s, it has served as a restaurant, now home to Café L’Europe, where the tuxedo-clad servers and potatocrusted grouper set a formal tone on the otherwise largely casual St. Armands Circle.

Main Bar Sandwich Shop

Retiring circus performers Antonio (Charlie) Borza and his wife Thea opened Main Bar in downtown Sarasota in 1958 and filled the walls with photos of circus stars.

That’s reason enough to come, but the real draw here is their famous Italian sandwich, spiced up with Main Bar’s peppery giardiniera.

The Ringling

Florida’s official State Art Museum is home to John and Mabel Ringling’s collection, portions of which are on permanent display.

The 66-acre estate also features lush gardens, the Circus Museum, the Historic Asolo Theater and Ca’ d’Zan, the Ringling’s palatial Moorish-style home on the shores of Sarasota Bay.

Ritz-Carlton, Sarasota

The Ritz-Carlton has long been a headliner of upscale hotel properties for the SarasotaBradenton area, and it serves lots of tourists and Florida staycationers with its golf course, beach club and laidback-luxury style. Even if you don’t stay, it’s worth a visit if only for Jack Dusty, a casual, vibey seafood restaurant known for a signature elderflower cocktail called the Siren and a Sarasota cioppino stew.

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always passed through Jacksonville in January. She hadn’t been to a show in years before getting an internship at the museum while she was an art history student at nearby New College. That was 21 years ago, and now she’s the Tibbals curator of circus. “Every day,” she says, “there’s something I get to learn about.”

Lemmer Posey explains that the heyday of the circus, the era of “The Greatest Show on Earth,” began thanks to P.T. Barnum in 1871. That’s when he added a second and third ring to his shows. Before then, the circus largely consisted of a series of performers taking a single stage, one act at a time, often new immigrants showing off some skill they brought from the remote corners of the globe. Barnum’s three rings turned it into a spectacle, with multiple acts performing at once, leaving the audience wondering where to turn their attention.

“Once you get more than one ring,” Lemmer Posey says, “one of the joys and frustrations is you don’t know where to look.”

Starting in 1927, Ringling’s cast and crew began wintering in Sarasota. John Ringling and his wife Mable built Ca’ d’Zan (Venetian for House of John), a castle on the shores of Sarasota Bay. Modeled in Moorish style, the tower rises five stories like a

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Ringling’s Return Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey returns after a six-year break with a nationwide tour that began Sept. 29 in Louisiana.

Its 13th stop will bring it to Florida:

Tampa, Jan. 5–7 Orlando, Jan. 12–15 Jacksonville, Jan. 19–21 Sunrise, Jan. 27–28

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Find tickets at ringling.com

lighthouse, which he hoped would guide the way to a new era for his family.

Ringling’s circus performers and animals would make their winter homes off Fruitville Road. They bought houses in Sarasota and built trapeze nets and animal enclosures in their backyards. “The circus community started implanting itself,” Lemmer Posey says.

Her children go to school now with their descendants, with the last names of Wallenda, Zacchini and Zerbini.

In the center of St. Armands Circle, the city’s island entertainment district as envisioned by John Ringling, stands the Circus Ring of Fame, with monuments to the performers who called this place home. It’s overseen now by Bill Powell, 71, a former Ringling employee and son of two legendary performers. You might know his mother, the late Gee Gee Engesser, an animal keeper who was the first person to ride atop a team of 16 horses hitched together. Her curly blonde hair and sparkly costume would catch the spotlights as she stood astride the final two horses, one foot on each, like a mythical conqueror.

Powell lived with his grandparents in Sarasota while the circus traveled. But when his parents came home, they brought the animals they kept, including elephants,

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and Powell remembers sharing his breakfast with them in his backyard—quite literally, feeding them fruit as he ate a bowl of cereal. “I grew up with a menagerie.” His mom had 12 acres in Apollo Beach, and the animals would roam free.

He loved the elephants, but his favorites were the Alaskan Malamutes, Arctic and Blizzard first, then later Gigi, Roxy and Shell.

Like many children of performers, his parents pushed him to do something different, and after he attended the University of South Florida, he did PR for a newspaper and a phone company. He ended up at Ringling and worked there for 45 years. He’s still bitter about the animal rights activism that helped kill Ringling, he says, because they didn’t understand how well the animals were kept.

“Those of us who know and have lived it and have spent more than 15 seconds of Twitter time trying to understand it, the performers and their animals were the most important part of their lives,” he says. “It was a very crushing blow for anyone who knew and who had lived that.”

After talking with Powell, I head back to Feld to catch the last half of the day’s rehearsals. The trapeze troupe’s first attempt at the act is still hours away, but first, a young woman is supposed to climb into a new cannon for the very first time.

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Into the mouth of a cannon Just after lunch—the performers generally eat sandwiches and leftovers from Tupperware on couches in the green room—Brian and Skyler Miser stand with their arms crossed, identically, as if someone asked the father and daughter to strike the same pose. In front of them is a cannon, in a whole bunch of pieces.

Today was supposed to be the first time that 18-year-old Skyler Miser would crawl into the mouth of the cannon.

This was supposed to be the day she’d fly the entire length of Ringling’s practice space, the day she’d land safely in a net at the end. But, her father says, “It’s got to prove itself to me first.”

Brian Miser spent most of his 60 years on this planet known as The Human Fuse, getting shot out of a cannon and a catapult at Ringling and on the Letterman show and probably 10,000 venues across the world. The plan had always been for him to hand off the cannon to his daughter. But the sudden closure of Ringling meant Skyler instead worked at Subway after she graduated from high school.

Her earliest memory, from around 2 years old, is rushing

Above: As part of

its rethinking of a modern circus, Ringling hired Jan Damm as its master of ceremonies, leaving behind the old-timey image for someone who’s more comedian than top-hatted announcer. Originally from Maine, Damm began performing for babysitters and was doing magic shows for birthday parties by the time he was 10. A circus performer for 15 years now, Damm says modern audiences are more sophisticated: “They don’t want to laugh at Bugs Bunny getting an anvil dropped on his head. They want to laugh at somebody they can relate to, who feels like a friend.”

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over to the net to make sure her father was OK after getting blasted out of a cannon. “Yeah, it’s really dangerous. It’s not that the cannon is inherently dangerous, but he would light himself on fire too,” Skyler says.

She got shot out of a cannon herself for the first time at 11 years old. Brian sent a video of it to the Felds. He recalls, “They wrote back, ‘When she turns 18, we’ll have a contract waiting for her.’ And here we are.”

But this new cannon her father has built hasn’t been tested yet. They stood watching as a pair of Feld workers installed light kits inside the frame. When they’re done, perhaps in a couple of days, the Misers will begin by shooting out a sandbag that weighs about 100 pounds, the same weight as Skyler.

During those first few tests, the sandbag shoots into the air dramatically, hitting 7 Gs, as much as a fighter pilot pulling out of a nosedive—0 to 55 mph in less than a second—only to smack spectacularly into the net.

Then they adjust the force of the new cannon, so the sandbag lands as softly as possible. When that happens, Skyler will climb into the new cannon for the first time, squat down into a compartment and hold her breath.

“Every shot we do, we have a logbook that documents how much the sandbags weighed. We write it all down so we can go back to it and figure out where we went wrong,” Skyler says.

Jumping off into the unknown In those final days of rehearsals before Ringling’s first show in September, it was like that for most of the acts, working out the timing of BMX jumps or honing the script of the actors who will create a storyline for the performance.

But none of it was as dramatic as the trapeze. It’s not just that it’s a headliner of the newly reborn circus, it’s also that an error would be potentially catastrophic, performers crashing into each other in the air, falling who knows where below.

For Caceres, this show is a culmination of a career. He told me by phone earlier, though, not to think of it as a culmination of a lifetime, a lesson he learned years ago.

Like many circus performers, Caceres was born into it. His grandfather was a clown in regional circuses in Colombia, South America. His mother, Clothilde, is a Ringling seamstress.

His trapeze artist father, Miguel, created The Flying Caceres in 1982 for the 112th edition of Ringling. By then, Caceres was 4.

Back then, the performers would practice after the show, so Caceres remembers climbing that skinny rope ladder up to the

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handkerchief-size platform at 1 a.m. to join his father. He was 5 when he first started performing in shows, just a simple fly above the net, caught by the legs, upside down, then back to catch the bar. “It’s the most basic pass there is.”

He wasn’t afraid. “I remember feeling something. I wasn’t completely numb to it. But it’s like you don’t really know what could happen to you. You’re innocent. It’s later in life that you become really scared,” Caceres says.

In 1983, Caceres became the youngest person on the trapeze at the Monte Carlo International Circus Festival, beginning a career that spanned the globe. His father kept performing too, up until 2004. Miguel Caceres walked out, midshow, at a circus in Portugal. Something had just told him it was over, Caceres guesses. It wasn’t just that he retired—Miguel wouldn’t even talk about the circus or go see his son perform, not for years.

Caceres reckons it wrecked his father to give up on the life, and he took it as a lesson.

Caceres is a performer now. He risks his life on a trapeze, but he’s also a father and prioritizes that higher than work.

Thinking of his own father, he’s reminded to keep it just that, a job. He’s passionate about it, but he also keeps it in perspective.

“What sounds exotic for someone, it’s just my life. I try to just do a good job, whether I’m third or fourth generation. If it pleases my ancestors, great. It’s an added bonus.”

In creating his crisscross routine, Caceres set out to do something original. It’s based on an act first done at Ringling in the 1950s. But he added a new layer to the complexity with performers heading in two directions, an ending that has never been done before at Ringling, maybe anywhere.

While his troupe gets ready to try it for the first time, Caceres leaps out for his first trick, a simple maneuver not too far off from the one he did when he was 5. After Caceres returns to his platform, two performers set off just seconds apart, one from one side of the ring and one from the other. They cross in the center, leaping to the hands of the catchers who are hanging upside down on the swings. The two performers cross less than a second apart. As they swing out and back, two more performers take off from the platforms, Caceres is one of them.

Now things get difficult, dangerous. The first two performers swing from the platforms using the trapeze bars. They fly out into the hands of the catchers. As they do, a second set of performers swing out from the same bars, and then they trade in midair, the first set of performers returning to the bars and the second set into the hands of the catchers. They switch, just milliseconds, it seemed, from a collision. It’s like a pendulum swinging, only instead of one arm, there are four.

It seems like the end, right at that moment. But then they set off to do it a second time. At the end of the second attempt, instead of heading back separately, two performers jump to the

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same bar, so there’s four men on two bars, heading back to the platforms together. It seems like the bars could barely hold the weight, and they jostle and waver as they head upward.

Earlier, Caceres had explained that trapeze is a difficult act that looks easy, something that irks him. “I had a father-in-law tell me that I picked the wrong profession, that I should have found a job that looks hard and is actually easy.”

This, though, four men on two bars, looks impossible. They head back to the platforms with what seems like not enough momentum, as if they might just stall, right there, in midair.

Their feet stretch skyward. They angle their midsections high.

If they can just get their weight in front of them.

And then they land, all four of them almost simultaneously, up on the platforms.

As a journalist, I’m supposed to be impartial and objective.

But I hollered just then, along with the crew and the casting director nearby. The performers join us, howling from up on the platforms.

Then they all take turns swinging out and leaping gracefully into the net. Down on the ground, they gather in a circle, hugging, high fiving, laughing. I ask Caceres how it feels. “Good.

It always feels good to see something you created come to life.”

Some have wondered whether the circus can exist in a time of Instagram shorts and Boomerang loops. But that moment, when the crisscross trapeze came together for the first time, it felt more real and tangible than anything on a screen. Right there in front of us was “The Greatest Show on Earth.”

Opposite:

George Caceres first flew through the air as part of a trapeze act at the age of 5. “You don’t really know what could happen to you. You’re innocent. It’s later in life that you become really scared,” he said.

Above:

The newly revamped Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey includes a wide range of talent, including performances by aerialist Sammie Pearsall.

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— sunny dispatches from NW FLA —

Panhandling

By Pr i s sy E l ro d • I l l u st ra t i o n by S t ep h en L o m a zzo

Artfully Played

What happens when an artistic weekend with friends takes a turn for the unusual

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mbarking on an adventure with a car full of girlfriends unlocks a world of possibilities. The laughter, connection and unforgettable memories become the fuel propelling us forward.

I was looking forward to a much-needed getaway from my daily routine and lobbied three friends to join me for an artistic workshop and weekend retreat. Once upon a

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time I was more artist than author. I poured my creative juice into painting canvases of children, pets, landscapes and barns.

The three invitees have been my girlfriends for decades, each of us with our own unique quirks and set of know-it-all tendencies, me being the most headstrong with my you are what you eat mentality. My holistic beliefs and certitude have no doubt exhausted everyone who knows me.

Despite my goings-on they profess to love me.

Laden with luggage and bags of favorite foods, our anticipation filled the air as we loaded up my spanking new vehicle. My intention was to scan the owner’s manual before the trip. Of course, I didn’t. Who does, seriously? My mantra has always been learn it by doing it. Truth told, that’s the story of my life.

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Panhandling

sunny dispatches from NW FLA

The destination for our artistic retreat was the idyllic St. Simons Island, Georgia, the largest barrier island in the Golden Isles.

As a child, I watched how the moss-draped oaks danced in the breeze, casting playful shadows that mimicked brushstrokes on a canvas. The tapestry of vibrant colors blends harmoniously with the lush greenery and salt marshes. I spent my childhood summers at Sea Island and St. Simons, so both hold a space inside my heart.

We arrived at the quaint two-story beach house delighted to find a charming, pastel-colored abode with white-washed wooden shutters. The front porch had cozy mismatched wicker rockers adorned with plush cushions. Inside, the beach house exuded a comfortable, yet stylish atmosphere, with an open concept living space and a staircase leading to the second floor. The ocean was only a block away.

Once we unloaded the car, chaos ensued.

Each of us was convinced our way of organizing the house was the right way, which led to hilarious disagreements over bed assignments, fridge organization and even bathroom claims. Piles of snacks, desserts and wine bottles spilled out onto every available surface. “Are we here for painting or a drunken binge?” I heard one of them mumble.

the reception ended and the room emptied, I lingered to admire the landscapes, still lifes and figurative paintings that lined the gallery walls.

“Let’s go, we’ll be late.” Fran, one of my girlfriends, said. The next event was an informal dinner scheduled at a private club on the island.

The summer heat and humidity blasted us as we exited the gallery.

“Stay in the shade. I’ll get my car and pick y’all up,” I offered. There you go, that’s why my friends like me.

I scurried off to find the car and forgot it wasn’t white like the last four cars I owned.

Finally, I found my gray SUV and climbed inside.

The sweltering heat swallowed me. Fumbling for the air conditioner among the fancy buttons, I pushed and pulled until a burst of hot air blasted through the vents, making my overfrizzed hair swell and perspiration pool on my chest.

I pulled in front of the gallery and honked the horn for the lot of them. One jumped in the passenger seat, the others in the back. Doors slammed shut, and, amid the chatter, someone urgently shouted, “Hurry up, we’ll be late!”

I assumed the entire motley crew had squeezed in. Oblivious to the commotion inside

Starting on the wrong foot The mingling meet-and-greet cocktail reception started an hour after we arrived at the house. We hurriedly unpacked and dolled ourselves up, ensuring every strand of our colored hair was in place, and set out for the Anderson Fine Art Gallery.

We were late, with barely enough time to speak to Mary Anderson, the owner and sponsor of the workshop. We missed meeting our infamous art instructor, Gary Bodner, a retired OB-GYN physician from Atlanta, now a full-time artist. As

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my car, with their boisterous voices and my state of heat, I moved the gear, which happened to be a newfangled circle spinner found between the front seats. I pressed on the accelerator, causing the car to lurch backward instead of forward.

Unbeknownst to me, Linda’s left foot was still on the ground with the rest of her body half inside the car.

“Prissy, you RAN over my foot!!” Linda screamed. Suddenly, hollering and panic seized our shocked silence.

“Go forward!” someone yelled.

“No, go back!” another hollered.

Safe to say I had not mastered the art of shifting gears with the unfamiliar circle mechanism of my shiny new Genesis. I twisted until the back tire of my monster cleared her foot.

To say I started the weekend on the wrong foot (pun intended) would be an understatement.

“I don’t see any blood,” Linda said to Gayle, who sat beside her in the backseat.

“That’s not even possible, I ran over your damn foot!” I cursed through my scream.

With no idea what I should do, Fran took charge. “Go, go, go. Let’s find our group.

Remember, the instructor is a doctor!”

Our frantic GPS search, and my reckless speed, led us to the venue where our group gathered. I pulled up, left the nitwits in the car, and bolted inside. I spotted our instructor and ran over to him. Without wasting a moment, I explained the mishap and pleaded for his help.

He followed me to the car to assess Linda’s situation.

He examined her wounded foot with a calming presence. “It looks good, no broken bones or torn ligaments, not even a flesh wound. Your shoe protected you.” His eyes twinkled with a deep understanding of life, likely from dealing with crazy pregnant women all those years, not to mention bringing babies into the world.

Miraculously, the Left: Prissy Elrod’s expensive Italian wedge Picasso-like piece shielded her foot. Even inspired by her state of mind the shoe itself appeared

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Panhandling

sunny dispatches from NW FLA

unscathed. It seemed unbelievable, especially for me. An ounce of prevention was worth any price she paid for her pounded Italian shoe.

“Come inside, we’ll ice it to keep the swelling down,” he suggested.

So, we propped Linda and her foot in a fancy chair inside the swanky club. We drank martinis throughout dinner. Linda only had one, what with her instability and all. I had one, plus one, plus one more, only because I deserved it.

The healing powers of painting And that’s how we came face-to-face with our weekend art retreat instructor for the first time. Chaos met compassion, and camaraderie prevailed.

The next day, under his guidance, we explored different artistic techniques and mediums. Our retreat became a kaleidoscope of vibrant hues, as portraits, landscapes and abstract pieces appeared from our canvases.

Bold strokes of crimson and gold brought life to Fran’s portraits. Delicate brushwork transformed Gayle’s landscape into a captivating vista. Linda painted a scrub jay with meticulous detail and captured the feather’s texture and the jay’s slender beak.

Her range of colors, from deep cerulean blue mixed with lighter blues and soft grays, brought it to life. As for me, I painted what became a frazzled Picasso-styled character who mimicked my state of mind at the time.

On the final day, we gathered our selfexpression artwork, exchanged numbers

with strangers who had become friends, and bid everyone goodbye. Back at the cottage we gathered our unused and uneaten this, that and everything else, and reloaded it back into the car. The beach house, now a repository of memories, stood empty, awaiting the arrival of future souls seeking solace and renewal who just might invite a piece of craziness into their weekend. We can’t be the only ones, right?

Prissy Elrod is a professional speaker, artist and humorist, and the author of Far Outside the Ordinary. She was born and raised in Lake City and now lives in Tallahassee with her husband, Dale. She has authored two nonfiction books: Far Outside the Ordinary and Chasing Ordinary, the sequel.

MORE THAN A CIRCUS

THE CIRCUS ARTS CONSERVATORY EMBODIES:

PERFORMANCE World-class seasonal performances featuring a variety of international circus talent that is awe-inspiring for every age.

TRAINING

Utilizing the versatility of circus arts, Sailor Circus Academy, the nation’s longest running youth circus offers training to children and adults including circus fitness and performance opportunities.

OUTREACH

Our integrated arts education programs in area classrooms teach scientific concepts, language arts, physical education and math curriculum to thousands of students annually.

LEGACY

Celebrating 25 years, CAC has had a significant impact on the resurgence of the circus arts. It has positioned itself as a global leader in the continued evolution of circus.

CIRCUSARTS.ORG

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[ — fin e arts, favor ites, f lings —

ON THE FLY — FLORIDA WILD — Th i s b ra v e b i r d f a c e s a s h r i n k i n g h a b i t a t .

— BIRD’S-EYE VIEW — A gu ide to N orthe as t Flori da’s s t ori e d bar ri e r i s l and

— DESIGN DISTRICT — A n H G T V s t a r f i n d s a h o m e i n Pa l m B e a c h .

— ONE-ON-ONE — C a t c h i n g u p w i t h O - To w n ’s C o n g r e s s m a n Fr o s t

— THE TIDE — Fa v o r e d f a l l a n d w i n t e r f e t e s

— FLORIDIANA —

[

ISTOCK

C o u n t r y r o a d s t a k e u s h o m e a n d m a k e u s h u n g r y.

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Where Floridians Flock

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ON THE FLY: FLORIDA WILD P H OTOGR APHS & F IELD NOTES B y C arlton War d Jr.

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A New Way for the Jays

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’ve spent the past decade photographing wide-ranging land animals—like the Florida panther—to showcase the importance of protecting the Florida Wildlife Corridor. I’ve also gotten to know smaller animals, like the Florida scrub jay, that tell a similar story of why we need to protect a network of connected natural lands.

The Florida scrub jay is endemic to the Sunshine State, meaning it lives nowhere else in the world. It is Florida’s only endemic species of bird, and for that reason many believe it should be our state bird (rather than the Northern mockingbird). Scrub jays live exclusively in Florida scrub, an increasingly rare habitat crowning high sandy ridges throughout the central peninsula, which were formerly beaches from millions of years ago.

Relatively high and dry, scrub lands have been sought after for orange groves and housing developments. More than 90% of this rare habitat has been lost. The scrub jay population has followed the same decline and is now classified as a NOTES threatened species.

Much of the scrub that remains has been relegated to — HABITAT— isolated patches, which are fast becoming islands cut off JONATHAN DICKINSON from each other by development. When two islands of STATE PARK scrub are split by agriculture such as a cattle ranch, jays will move from one scrub patch to another. But when — SEASON — two islands of scrub are separated by development, the SPRING birds are unlikely to cross, becoming stuck on whichever island they were born. Over time, this creates an inbred population, and the loss of genetic diversity leads to — TIME OF DAY— MORNING declines in health and eventually local extinction.

The Ocala National Forest protects the largest swath of contiguous scrub habitat in the state and has the — SUBJECT— largest and most genetically diverse population of jays.

FLORIDA SCRUB JAY One of the places where these brave birds are declining is Jonathan Dickinson State Park, near Jupiter. The park protects an oasis of native scrub habitat close to the Intracoastal Waterway and Atlantic Ocean. But the park is encompassed by development and the jays no longer have a natural connection to other suitable habitats, causing the population to be one of the state’s most genetically impoverished. That was until Sarah Fitzpatrick, a conservation geneticist at Michigan State University, and a team of scientists came to the rescue.

In this photo, Fitzpatrick is at Jonathan Dickinson State Park observing a scrub jay recently relocated from the Ocala National Forest. During the last few years, conservationists from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission have been moving families of jays from Ocala to Jonathan Dickinson.

Those newcomer jays have been breeding with local jays, resulting in an increase in genetic diversity and overall health of the population. The best thing we can do to help is to protect more land to keep Florida Wildlife Corridor habitats connected for jays and all of the other species that depend on that land.

When the landscape connections are lost, Fitzpatrick and colleagues have proven that genetic rescue works and can help isolated wildlife survive.

27°2’30.1231” N

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80°7’37.4816” W

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ON THE FLY:BIRD’S-EYE VIEW A G U I D E TO O U R FAVO R I T E N E I G H B O R H O O DS Illus tration by Jule s O z ae ta

Isle of Eight Flags Explore the Victorian village, Historical sites and seaports of Amelia Island.

Above from left: Palace Saloon, A.L. Lewis Museum, Fort Clinch State Park, Amelia Island Lighthouse, Eight Flags Antique Market

1. FORT CLINCH STATE PARK

Soak up the island’s early history with daily tours of a Civil War-era fort and explore 1,400 acres of natural park shaded by maritime hammocks along the Atlantic Ocean. 2601 Atlantic Ave.

2. EGANS CREEK GREENWAY

Ride or hike your way through this grassy oasis of diverse ecosystems, perfect for spotting local wildlife or burning off a big lunch at one of the island’s eateries.

2500 Atlantic Ave.

3. A.L. LEWIS MUSEUM

Learn about American Beach and the Black leaders who played pivotal roles in establishing the coastline as a leisure, recreation and economic opportunity for Black Floridians. 1600 Julia St.

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4. AMELIA ISLAND HORSEBACK RIDING Trot 13 miles of beaches from atop Mr. Red, Tanner or Cookie and catch the island’s sunrise (or sunset) with this horseback riding outfit. 4600 Peters Point Road

5. EIGHT FLAGS ANTIQUE MARKET

Peruse the eclectic collection of new and vintage wares as well as fine antiques at this curated shop where you’ll find everything from nautical lore to rustic Floridiana.

602 Centre St.

6. FERNANDINA BEACH ARTS MARKET

On the second and fourth Saturday of every month, a parking lot in the center of town transforms into a marketplace showcasing the best of the region, including locally grown produce, fresh baked bread, handmade jewelry and crafts. 715 Centre St.

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7. FERNANDINA HARBOR MARINA

Once the shrimping capital of the world, these charming docks are where to watch the boats roll in on the Amelia River, or charter your own for a tour of Cumberland Sound. 3 S. Front St.

8. STORY & SONG

Find your next beach read at this cozy bookstore, bistro and cultural center that stocks new reads, serves brunch bites and hosts community book clubs.

1430 Park Ave.

9. THE HEIRLOOM YARD

Nestled in the heart of historic Fernandina Beach, Christie Walsh-Myers grows, cuts and arranges flowers right in the backyard of this charming home.

20 S. 10th St.

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10. PALACE SALOON

13. BURLINGAME

16. ELIZABETH POINTE LODGE

11. MOCAMA BEER COMPANY

14. THE SPROUTING PROJECT

17. AMELIA ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE

15. THE WILLIAMS HOUSE

18. FERNANDINA HISTORICAL TOUR

Grab a pint at Florida’s oldest continuously operating watering hole, and sit at the same maritime bar that once served the Rockefellers and the founder of AnheuserBusch. 117 Centre St.

This taproom and coffee shop is dedicated to the art of the brew, offering a wide selection of house beers and wines from across the country. 629 S. Eighth St.

12. WICKED BAO

Enjoy Asian street food at this popular eatery situated in a charming bungalow with a cozy side porch, where bao buns, dumplings and other small plates are served up with a heaping helping of happiness. 232 N. Second St.

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This Southern staple offers the best of the region’s farm-to-table cuisine, from a bone-in pork chop to a tomato and peach salad to an array of fresh seafood options served in a farmhouse-style setting. 20 S. Fifth St.

Experience chef-led private dinners at the Omni Amelia Island Resort, where fresh produce grows in the garden, local honey flows from the apiary and small-batch spirits ferment on-site. 39 Beach Lagoon Road

An elegant wraparound porch defines this genteel bed-and-breakfast, located just off Centre Street, built in 1856 and recently restored by owner and architect Veronica Byrnes. 103 S. Ninth St.

This boutique inn combines modern comforts with a nod to New England for a slice of hospitality served up with elegant coastal style and oceanfront views.

98 S. Fletcher Ave.

This historic sentinel has shone out over the Atlantic Ocean, steering sailors home from its perch since 1838. Stroll its grounds during visitor hours on Saturdays 11–2.

215 O’Hagan Lane

Walk streets built before the Civil War and discover the mystery and stories of more than 400 years of history from the docents at Amelia Island Museum of History.

233 S. Third St.

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ON THE FLY: DESIGN DISTRICT B y C a rri e H o n a ker

At the Heart of a home

For Palm Beach designer KRista W. AltermaN, every project is a passion project.

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K

rista Watterworth Alterman wrings every drop of productivity from her day.

Clocking more than 70 hours a week as a highly sought-after interior designer managing a team of creative women, she still finds time to attend her kids’ weeknight sports practices, prepare their favorite air-fried chicken and harness the soul of the homes she transforms.

This isn’t new though. She’s been grinding since she took her shot auditioning for HGTV’s “Save My Bath,” a hosting role that ushered in a new era for Alterman. While attending school at Parsons School of Interior Design in New York, she built her career as an onair personality for HGTV’s “Splurge & Save,” The Food Network’s “Restaurant Impossible” and DIY’s “The Vanilla Ice Project” for nine seasons. Alongside television appearances and classes, she grew the award-winning interior design

Opposite: This marble bathroom and sleek tub beckon for someone to draw a bath and relax. This page from left: The modern, glass sphere chandelier perfectly balances the traditional look of the stained-glass

window; Krista W. Alterman founded her interior design firm while attending school in New York City.

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firm she founded, Krista + Home, with her now husband and chief of product development, Eric Alterman.

After 10 years in Manhattan and bouncing between New York and their condo in Florida, the beaches called for a more permanent stay.

They packed up their kids, Griffon and Skylar, and made a new home in the Sunshine State in 2010. “Once you’re here, you never want to leave. It’s one of those places that draws you

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in,” Alterman said.

They found their spot in Palm Beach Gardens. “Driving the neighborhood on our way to view the property for the first time, we saw families biking and children playing in their front yards—we were sold immediately and never looked back,” Alterman said.

“We’re close friends with many of our neighbors. We do regular date nights together, and we meet for driveway cocktails when the

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Above: Banana bark chandeliers pop above the gray porcelain countertops. Opposite, clockwise: Neutral

colors and modern coastal themes abound; a delicate glass fixture dances over the table; personal details like art and books infuse character; Alterman encourages luxurious bedding in the bedroom.

weather gets cooler. Our kids’ best friends live on our street. It’s everything we wanted and more. It’s home.”

Alterman relishes Palm Beach’s vibrant restaurant scene and ample green space to hang out with her dog, Rocky. She spends lunches connecting with the community of Florida designers she’s fostered. “I really wanted a place where we all felt safe and comfortable to share stories, collaborate

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and lift each other up,” she said.

The abundant sunshine, therapeutic ebb and flow of the waves and lush tropical foliage surrounding Alterman’s home all factor into her vision of coastal design. As she likes to say, “It’s not your grandmother’s version of Palm Beach.” Her approach blends classic and modern, elevating a neutral palette with pops of color and texture, and emanating a sense of organic luxury.

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She wants to help people escape to their homes and capture the same spirit of vacation they feel while traveling. Alterman is intentional about how she brings that into each project. The stack of books on the coffee table is not random. She paid attention when you said Tom Ford was your dream dinner guest. It’s no accident the “Gramercy Tavern Cookbook” lays open on the kitchen counter since that’s where your first date was. Those KRISTA + HOME floor-to-ceiling curtains — LOCATION — may remind you of your 4650 DONALD ROSS RD. STE. A-112 favorite hotel, the Four PALM BEACH GARDENS Seasons Palm Beach, — PHONE— because her sleuthing (561) 264-8780 goes that deep. “I want kristahome.com to bring the essence of what you love into your home, and wow people with those very specific details,” she said.

The brass telescope aimed at the night sky, the black-and-white photos of palm trees in Cuba, the sea fans in colors you only see 65 feet below the water’s surface in Key West, all build the story of the home, developing it into a multifaceted character Alterman picks up on in conversations with clients. All these elements come into play during her favorite part of the design process: the finishing service. “It’s so satisfying to bring together all of the inspiration from their family, travels and the things that are important to them,” she said.

And she doesn’t forget about the outdoor space—the reason we live in Florida. “It’s so great to be in this environment where the sun shines and you’re near the ocean. We should optimize our connection to nature. All the [social] sciences have found that is so key to emotional well-being,” Alterman said. Even years before she shot the camera phone video of her NYC apartment to audition for HGTV in 2003, she remembers drawing houses and interiors as a child, imagining the lives of the occupants. “I can look back now and see I’ve always had this in me,” she said.

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EVE GREENDALE, JESSICA GLYNN

ON THE FLY: DESIGN DISTRICT

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ON THE FLY:ONE-ON-ONE CO N VE RSATIONS, INTERVIEWS, STOR IES B y Ja m i e R i ch

FROST in the House A sit-down with CONGRESSMAN MAXWELL FROST, who at 26, is the first Gen Z’er to be elected to the House of Representatives

MAXWELL FROST: The 10th Congressional district is one of the most unique and exciting districts in the country (I’m not biased at all.) I have all of downtown

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own a small music festival with my best friend Nya. We [Orlando] have some of the greatest music venues across the state. We have some of the most amazing cultural events across the state, too. Our city was hit hard during the Pulse nightclub shooting, and when people come to the memorial that’s still up and see the photos, those photos are all people smiling and people loving and coming together. After the shooting, our city really came together, whether it was donating blood or raising money or just providing love to the people who needed it. That’s really what makes Orlando special. It’s that entertainment, it’s the hospitality. It’s the love, and it’s really the local scene here of people who are building Orlando to be what it can be.

YOU BEGAN WORKING TO STOP GUN VIOLENCE AT AGE 15, AFTER THE SANDY HOOK SHOOTING. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?

and then SoDo, south of downtown. It’s kind of a small place geographically, but with so many people. It’s one of the most diverse districts in the country and also has one of the largest Puerto Rican populations in the country.

WHAT’S ONE SURPRISING THING ABOUT ORLANDO?

MF: Orlando is a city where the lifeblood of our economy and a lot of our culture comes from our hospitality and entertainment. Obviously, the theme parks are considered a part of our artistic culture, but we also have amazing local scenes. I grew up going to local concerts, playing concerts, producing my own shows. I

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MF: When I saw that the shooting happened, I had been at a restaurant before a jazz band concert. I felt like I needed to be there. When I saw the videos online, a lot of the kids and teenagers fighting back were saying, “We can’t just not do anything.” I felt really inspired. I went on Facebook and searched everybody’s names, and I sent them a message like, “Hey, I’m from Florida. I want to help.”

One of them responded. Her name is Sarah Clements. Her mom is a teacher at Sandy Hook. She survived the shooting, and she started the Jr. Newtown Action Alliance. Sarah sent me a link to come to Above: Congressman Maxwell Frost of Orlando

speaking out about Florida’s housing crisis with supporters on Capitol Hill

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REPRESENTATIVE MA XWELL ALEJANDRO FROST

DESCRIBE FOR US YOUR DISTRICT IN CENTRAL FLORIDA.

Orlando. I have all of our Main Street districts: Winter Park, Maitland. We stretch all the way east, we go past UCF, the second largest public university in the country, and we go all the way out to Bithlo, which is the rural part of my district.

Then we go west toward the Parramore, Pine Hills area. We stretch a little lower through a bit of Doctor Phillips. I have the pleasure of representing Universal Orlando

PHOTO CREDIT TK TK TK TK

M

axwell Alejandro Frost made a name for himself at the end of 2022 by becoming the first person of Gen Z to be elected to Congress. As the representative for the 10th congressional district of Central Florida, the 26-year-old has some big ideas on how to address climate change, the housing crisis and gun violence in the state. The lifelong advocate was first inspired to organize around gun violence at the tender age of 15, when he traveled to Washington to be with the families of the victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut that killed 28 people. But the young congressman has more to his story than shootings, despite being a survior of gun violence himself. He’s a passionate musician, foodie and lover of Orlando nightlife. Flamingo Editor in Chief Jamie Rich recently caught up with Representative Frost to learn more about the important work he’s doing on behalf of Floridians in Washington and what inspired him to run for office. The following are excerpts from their conversation.

WADING IN:ONE-ON-ONE CO N VE RSATIONS, INTERVIEWS, STOR IES

By XXX

It’s that entertainment, it’s the hospitality.

It’s the love, and it’s really the local scene here of people who are building Orlando to be what it can be.

—MAXWELL FROST

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ON THE FLY:ONE-ON-ONE CO N VE RSATIONS, INTERVIEWS, STOR IES

—MAXWELL FROST DC for the memorial. I asked my parents, and I ended up going there. It was being there, lobbying members of Congress and meeting people. I was the only person from Florida, and I was 15. My parents didn’t go. Obviously, it’s a lot to be in a city alone, but I wasn’t alone. I was with the other advocates, and we all took care of each other. That whole experience was life-changing for me. I came home, and I had a lot of clarity on what I wanted to do.

WHAT CAN FLORIDIANS DO TO HELP STOP GUN VIOLENCE?

MF: When we talk about a lot of the solutions, they actually have bipartisan and widespread support. Universal background checks, which we don’t have right now, most Republicans are for it. And most NRA members are also for universal background checks. So if most people are for it, how come it’s not law? In comes the conversation about money and politics and influence and everything like that, but there’s really good work we can do here in Florida. I think number one is voting.

Voting for candidates who will prioritize this issue, who are looking to work on this issue.

Also voting for people who see this issue holistically. This is one of the most polarizing issues. I don’t understand why, when you talk with the average American individually, most of us agree on what needs to happen here. We agree that we have to pass gun regulations to make sure guns don’t get into the wrong hands.

We agree that we see root cause issues like fixing poverty and health care and low wages. That helps end gun violence too, because it’s about building a world where people don’t feel the need to use

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a gun to solve their problems. It’s about mental health care, too. We can’t afford to pigeonhole ourselves in an issue that claims 100 lives a day. And it’s not just the lives we lose. It’s the people whose lives are changed. Over 300 people get shot a day. As far as people getting involved, voting for good candidates and making sure your voice is heard, whether it’s city council, county commission, writing letters to your state representative, going to Tallahassee to vocalize your concerns. We need as many people shouting and being loud about this issue.

member of Congress is. And that allows us to drive the work to elect someone different.

You know, when you get into a legislative body, it’s all a math problem.

You need a certain amount of votes to pass legislation. If you don’t have the votes, it doesn’t pass. If you don’t like the math, every two years in Congress, we have the opportunity to change the math and change what Congress looks like.

That’s one of the greatest hallmarks of our democracy is that when we are upset, we have recourse we can take.

WHAT SHOULD FLORIDIANS DO, IF THEY FEEL LIKE THEIR REPRESENTATIVES WON’T LISTEN?

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST ISSUE FACING FLORIDIANS?

MF: Number one, still make your voice heard, still reach out. It’s true. There are representatives or leaders where it doesn’t matter how many kids die, it doesn’t matter how many of their own constituents reach out. They believe what they’re going to believe no matter what.

But that doesn’t mean we still don’t turn up the pressure. Because you never know if you could change someone’s mind.

When you turn up the pressure, it allows you to understand just how bad your

MF: I’m gonna do the politician thing, and I’m gonna give you two. One that’s very much on my mind right now is the climate crisis. We are experiencing severe heat in Florida right now. We see that the ocean along our coastline is reaching hot-tub levels. It’s horrible for a lot of our different fish species and things that can actually go extinct because of high temperatures.

We need to take bold action around the climate crisis. Florida is one of the frontline states. We saw what happened with [Hurricane] Ian. I’m not saying we

REPRESENTATIVE MA XWELL ALEJANDRO FROST

The climate crisis is huge. It’s bad for people, it’s bad for businesses, bad for families, it’s bad for our state.

Above: Representative Frost focuses on issues like gun violence, climate change and the housing crisis.

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Below and right: Frost is

passionate about the local music scene; the phenom is also a professional percussionist.

created hurricanes, but the science shows us that as we continue to emit carbon, it heats up the ocean.

And when the ocean heats up, hurricanes last longer and they are worse.

The climate crisis is a huge one. It’s bad for people, it’s bad for businesses, bad for families, it’s bad for our state.

The second thing is housing. There’s a lack of affordable housing and housing, especially in Central Florida. Unfortunately, the state legislature hasn’t done much around homeowner’s insurance, which is through the roof, and people are having a hard time even getting plans. With tenants, there are so many problems with renting and the power of tenants in the marketplace.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO COMBAT THOSE ISSUES?

MF: We’re going to release a lot of legislative bills around housing. My first one is called the End Junk Fees for Renters Act. It does three things. Number one: it promotes transparency. When you’re a tenant, and you apply with a landlord, the landlord is going to know everything about you, and you’re going to know nothing about the landlord. This isn’t about our mom-and-pop landlords who own a few units. We have these huge

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conglomerates, currently engaged in litigation, currently having pest problems in the apartment complex and things like that.

And the tenant has no idea until they’ve already paid first and last [month’s rent], security deposit and are stuck in a lease. e should be able to understand what litigation is going on and any other problems so we have a better understanding before we engage in a contract.

Second, it eliminates junk fees. There’s a ton of them. It’s when a landlord charges you extra for something that they’re already supposed to do. We’re talking about things like trash, we’re talking about things like lawn. Sometimes people will look at their bill, and their rent goes up $500 because these little fees add up. It creates an issue where you don’t really know what your rent is until you get in there and you see all these surprise fees.

We found in Florida some people paying upwards of $150 extra just to pay rent online. And then another landlord charges between $40 and $60 each time a tenant sends an email, text or phone call to them.

These are junk fees, and we need to crack down on them.

The third thing is eliminating the sole use of credit scores when applying to rent places. We found that credit scores are not a good indication of whether a person is going to pay their rent. It’s important that we look at other ways of determining whether someone’s good for paying their rent. So it’s a really important bill, one of many to ensure that we are giving tenants a little more power and transparency, especially now that all these multicorporate conglomerates have bought 80% to 90% of single-family homes and apartments and hiked the costs. These people don’t even live in Florida. There’s just a lot of work we need to do around housing in the state.

FROST’S FAVES Music Venue: I’ve got to be

careful here. I’ll say one that has a lot of memories for me is the House of Blues. I was in a band in high school, and we did a show there that changed my life.

Florida musician: Well, I gotta

say my dad, Patrick Frost. He’s a great musician. I love Jimmy Buffett.

A lot of people might find that surprising, but my dad used to cover him all the time. So, you know, I’m not against being on a beach with a Hawaiian shirt and a frozen margarita listening to some Jimmy Buffett.

Restaurant: Right now I’m

obsessed with a place called Edoboy, an eight-person standing sushi bar.

You go in, it’s small, you eat it by the piece, and it’s some of the best sushi in Orlando.

Coffee Shop: Drunken Monkey is

a coffee shop that has a really good herbal, and still creamy, chai tea latte.

Book you’re currently reading: I finished Democracy

Matters by Dr. Cornel West earlier this year, but I find myself mostly reading bills and memos. That’s what’s on my bedside table.

Above: Frost played a show at the House

of Blues that he says changed his life.

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ON THE FLY:ONE-ON-ONE CO N VE RSATIONS, INTERVIEWS, STOR IES

serious legislating. Then after one year, most members of Congress start their reelection campaign, which is another full-time job and diverts their attention away from the people. It creates this dichotomy, where you have a lot of conflicting interests.

I think making our terms four years, which is in line with most elected offices, like mayors and city council, will allow us to focus more on the job at hand and less on getting reelected.

However, it must be coupled with term limits to ensure we have new people coming in and out of government.

DO YOU THINK THAT THERE SHOULD BE A MAXIMUM AGE OR AN AGE LIMIT TO THOSE SERVING?

MF: I’m not in favor of an age limit. I think the best way to deal with this is number one, introducing term limits.

Congress doesn’t have term limits.

You can serve until the end of your life as long as you want. That’s not right. I’ve gotten in at a very young age and, obviously, I don’t think I should be able to serve until the end of my life. But I can if I wanted to.

It’s not something I intend on doing.

So term limits, coupled with longer terms, I think can really help the institution work better for the people.

In Congress, our terms are two years.

I know folks might be thinking, oh, yeah, here’s a congressman trying to get a longer gig. But hear me out. We have to campaign every two years, which means that you have a year of

that’s really important to me, and I find ways to incorporate it with work.

For instance, when Paramore came to Orlando, we partnered with them and state representative Anna Eskamani, here locally, and together we had over 35 volunteers who were getting petitions for the Floridians Protecting Freedom ballot initiative to protect bodily autonomy in the state. We collected over 1,800 in just a few hours.

There are ways that we combine work and fun. I love to cook. I love to go out to a bar and have a drink with friends and talk and meet some new people. I love to be out in the community. Once a quarter, I’m doing these nightlife tours where I go out with a different group of people, and we take videos of different bars in Orlando and concert venues and promote them and talk about how fun our city is after hours.

HOW DO YOU DESTRESS FROM WORK?

MF: I haven’t figured it out yet. But I’m a musician. I go to a lot of concerts. I love music, and whether it’s planning a concert or just going out with my friends to catch music, that is something

No.

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ON THE FLY:THE TIDE ROAD TR IP–WORTHY EVENTS (NORTH) SEA AND SKY AIR SHOW

JACKSONVILLE BEACH

Oct. 21–22

The roar of engines, the swirl of contrails and the dance of the Blue Angels—you’ll be stretching your neck to take in this spectacle of aviation awe. These military aerobatics are bound to leave hearts racing and minds soaring. specialevents.coj.net

FOO FOO FESTIVAL P E N S A C O LA

Nov. 2–13

This culmination of the arts is a 12-day kaleidoscope of all things creative. From a rhythmic jazz ensemble to a DIY street parade, every corner of the fine arts is on display at this sophisticated Southern celebration. foofoofest.com

FLORIDA SEAFOOD FESTIVAL

ALYS BEACH CRAFTED

A PA LA C H I C O LA

Nov. 3–4

Oct. 25–28

Dive into a plateful of coastal cuisine at North Florida’s favorite fete for deep-sea delights. This maritime jubilee boasts buttery crab legs, an oyster shucking contest, live music and their famous blue crab race.

Prepare your senses for one of the most spirited soirees in the state. Sip wine and artisanal beers, learn to make the perfect espresso martini from a master mixologist or discover one-of-a-kind gifts made by curated artisans at the Makers Market. This fine crafts festival grew out of the Firkin Fete, a gathering of local brewers each offering 11-gallon kegs (or firkins) of which the flavors were unknown to all until they were tapped at the festival. Though known for an array of wine tastings and cocktail classes, Alys Beach Crafted is not solely a celebration of libations. It’s also an ode to artists—the crafters whose hands breathe life into handmade goods on display. Paint a masterpiece alongside local artist Justin Gaffrey or become a leathersmith working alongside Jeni Bailey. Set against the stunning backdrop of Alys Beach along Highway 30A, it’s a tasteful journey for curious connoisseurs of craft. alysbeachcrafted.com

floridaseafoodfestival.com

A LY S B E A C H

SUPER GIRL SURF PRO JACKSONVILLE BEACH

ALYS BEACH CR AFTED

Nov. 10–12

Above: Reserve a spot in a cocktail

seminar at Alys Beach Crafted.

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There’s something in the water at this three-day surfing competition—female empowerment. Watch women conquer the waves, dominate the court, shake the stage and shatter the glass ceiling. supergirljax.com

30A SONGWRITERS FESTIVAL

RINGLING BROS. CIRCUS

WA LT O N C O U N T Y

JACKSONVILLE

Set on a picturesque beach highway, more than 175 singer-songwriters serenade festivalgoers with original melodies, transforming intimate venues into sonic sanctuaries.

30asongwritersfestival.com

Step right up and see “The Greatest Show on Earth!”

With mesmerizing physical feats and daring acrobatics, this event has long captured the attention of people worldwide. ringling.com

Jan. 12–15

Jan. 19–21

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ON THE FLY:THE TIDE ROAD TR IP–WORTHY EVENTS (C E N T RA L ) GASPARILLA PIRATE FEST TA M PA

Jan. 27 Climb aboard as the buccaneers of Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla invade Bayshore Boulevard in search of the key to the city. With an endless stream of parades and revelry, this signature pirate-themed festival charts a course for treasured moments, over-the-top costumes and plenty of rum. gasparillapiratefest.com

SANFORD PORCHFEST SANFORD

feb. 24

More than a block party, this down-to-earth music festival invites both neighbors and out-of-towners to porch-hop historic downtown’s homes, which for one day become a collection of stages for local artists. Every intimate performance is free and within walking distance, or a quick golf cart ride, from each other. sanfordporchfest.org

ORANGE BLOSSOM REVUE LA K E WA L E S

Dec. 1–2

ROCK ‘N’ BREWS BBQ FESTIVAL

SIESTA KEY CRYSTAL CLASSIC

STREAMSONG HOLIDAY CUP

LA K E WA L E S

Oct. 26–28

S I E S TA B E A C H

Nov. 10–13

BOWLING GREEN

Mouthwatering BBQ meets local musicians at this sweet-andsmoky event. With a craft fair, bonfire party and a four-hour riverside concert, you’ll get your fill of good tunes and grilled grub. rocknbrewsbbq.com

These works aren’t made from a plastic sandcastle mold. This sand-sculpting contest defies the laws of physics as 24 artists compete for the prestigious Crystal Classic title. siestakeycrystalclassic.com

Cap off the holidays at this luxury golf resort, with landscapes reminiscent of Ireland’s iconic courses for a tournament blending sport, camaraderie and festive allure. streamsongresort.com

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Dec. 27–29

Above: A monumental sandcastle at

the Siesta Key Crystal Classic

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ALEXIS WHAREM, SIESTA KE Y CRYSTAL CL ASSIC

With hands raised and voices lifted, you can’t help but have a near religious experience under the oaks at this annual American roots music festival in Lake Wailes Park. Headliners include nationally acclaimed musicians and regional roots bands from the likes of JJ Grey & Mofro, The Wood Brothers, Harper O’Neill and more. In between sets, nosh on eats from a fleet of food trucks and wash ’em down with craft beer on tap from a hive of hops makers. Don’t want to miss a moment of this musical revival? Tuck in under the trees. For the first time, weekend pass holders can pitch tents or hook up RVs to stay on-site at the park. On top of showcasing some of the South’s most notable musicians, this annual fundraiser supports the Blossom Charitable Foundation, Inc., providing art and education opportunities, plus music-based recreational programs, for the Lake Wales community. orangeblossomrevue.com

ON THE FLY:THE TIDE ROAD TR IP–WORTHY EVENTS (SOUTH) JOAN DIDION: WHAT SHE MEANS MIAMI

Now-Jan. 7 Examine the life of famed writer Joan Didion through visual arts. Curated by novelist Hilton Als, this exhibit, based on his book “What She Means,” shows stages of Didion’s life through 50 different artists’ works. pamm.org

SHARKS MIAMI

Oct. 14–april 21 Dive into the world of “Sharks,” a new exhibition at the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science. Learn about the 450million-year-old fish while you get up close and personal with multiple life-size models. Don’t worry, these Jaws don’t bite. frostscience.org

FORT LAUDERDALE INTERNATIONAL BOAT SHOW F O R T LA U D E R D A L E

THE FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL AIR SHOW, PEREZ ART MUSEUM MIAMI

Oct. 25–29

A symphony of luxury yachts, maritime tech, fishing seminars, and a 40k-gallon demonstration pool await at the world’s largest boat show.

Sip a mojito while perusing the toys on display from makers like Rybovich & Sons, MJM Yachts, Brabus Marine, Axopar Boats and more. flibs.com

FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL AIR SHOW P U N TA G O R D A

Nov. 4–5

Pack plenty of provisions and head to the airport, although you won’t be the one catching a plane during this weekend of aeronautical action. All eyes turn to the sky as some of the nation’s best aerial acrobats soar high above as this two-day spectacular unfolds at the Punta Gorda Airport, its home for 42 years. Experience the G-forces of the USAF Thunderbirds, F-16 Fighting Falcons, as they scream past in their famous four-ship diamond formation. And don’t forget to breathe when national aerobatic champion and six-time US Aerobatic Team member Patty Wagstaff barrel rolls through the clouds and dives down to buzz the crowd in her low-flying show. Not all the acts stay inside their aircraft. The Special Operations Para-Commandos, an aerial parachute demonstration team of active-duty military members, defy gravity, twisting and flipping through the air waving flags and sparklers. It’s a perfect weekend of wonder in the sky and on the ground in Southwest Florida. floridaairshow.com

KEY WEST LITERARY SEMINAR

HOMESTEAD CHAMPIONSHIP RODEO

THE PALM BEACH SHOW

JAN. 11–14

HOMESTEAD

Jan. 26–28

Feb. 15–20

Saddle up for 75 years of Florida cowboy tradition with roughstock rodeo events like barrel racing, steer wrestling, team roping and bull riding. homesteadrodeo.com

Shop the Southern summit of all things luxury design at this art, jewelry and antiques showcase. Presenting highend items from around the world, this six-day event is a haven for curious collectors. palmbeachshow.com

KEY WEST

Above: See “Joan Didion: What She

Means” on exhibit at Miami’s PAMM

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Join authors like Carl Hiaasen and Karen Russell, plus Flamingo contributors Craig Pittman and Diane Roberts, in writing workshops and talks about our wild environment. kwls.org

PA L M B E A C H

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FLORIDIANA ALL THINGS VINTAGE B y E m i l ee Perd u e

A Family Tradition

I

t began in Grandma’s kitchen, as most Southern things do. It was 1910, and Grandma Mary Bradley started selling homemade smoked sausage from her Tallahassee kitchen counter. A decade later, the family added country milled corn to make grits and cornmeal for their customers. When neighbors, farmers and out-of-towners started flocking to the North Florida countryside for a taste of Bradley home cooking in 1927, they expanded their breakfast nook to a quaint storefront. Nestled on a winding road under arching oak canopies about 16 miles from downtown, Bradley’s Country Store stands essentially unchanged a century on.

Today, Bradley’s, as the locals call it, is a Capital City icon. Its weathered tin roof and well-loved front porch, complete with Adirondack rocking chairs and wooden planters overflowing with lavender, invite visitors to sit and stay a while. Or, at least, it tries to. The aroma of home-cooked sausage, made according to Grandma’s original recipe, beckon both curious road-trippers and

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Tallahassee townies for a quick bite to-go that can easily turn into an hourlong perusal of their homemade preserves, sauces and syrups—all packaged in glass mason jars and wrapped in a red and white Bradley’s label.

Above: Sit and stay a while on the front porch.

Creaking wooden floorboards, a soft lull from the jukebox and a twanged greeting of, “Welcome on in!” takes visitors to an era of slow Southern life. An array of Bradley’s products line the shelves, from mayhaw jelly and sweet potato butter to bags of coarse stone-ground

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grits and roasted raspberry chipotle sauce.

Under vintage Coca-Cola signs shines a glass countertop showcasing old-fashioned hoop cheeses, ham hocks, bacon ends, sausage cuts and more. Get your goods packaged and refrigerator-ready while you enjoy a sausage dog topped with relish and mustard at a picnic table under the oak trees. This charming pit stop is equipped with an extensive candy collection and refreshing cold sodas in glass bottles. In addition to these road-trip essentials, they also carry cookbooks, country-inspired home decor, biscuit mixes by the bag and pints of locally made ice cream.

If you can’t make the pilgrimage for your sweet and savory staples, order online and support the business as it celebrates classic charm and Southern flavors in a modern era.

Now owned by a fourth-generation Bradley mother-daughter duo, there are some things they’ll always keep the same: the family name on the front door and Grandma Mary’s recipes in the kitchen.

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ERICH MARTIN, VISIT TALL AHASSEE

Four generations of homemade sausage, grits and Southern charm in Tallahassee

Dive into the extraordinary world of these prehistoric and mysterious ocean predators.

On View October 14 – April 21

frostscience.org/sharks

1101 Biscayne Blvd., Miami, FL 33132 | 305-434-9600 | frostscience.org The Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science is supported by the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners of Miami-Dade County. This project is supported by the Building Better Communities Bond Program and the City of Miami. Sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture, the Florida Council on Arts and Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The museum is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution and a member of the Association of Science and Technology Centers.