Tallahassee Magazine July–August 2022

COMMUNITY GARDEN ENJOYS NEW LIFE

SPECIAL OLYMPIAN GROWS IN CONFIDENCE

SWIM INSTRUCTORS LEAD KIDS PAST FEARS

Legends of the

Game

For lifelong softball devotees, chalk lines and chain-link fences define their happy places

WHEN IT COMES TO MY BABY,

I DON’T PLAY GAMES.

While they battle over their grandson’s name, I’m focused on what matters: choosing the safest hospital for my baby’s delivery.

And that’s TMH. Tallahassee Memorial is home to the region’s only Level III NICU and High-Risk Labor and Delivery Unit.

TMH has the most advanced care for both of us, so I can rest easy knowing I made the safest decision for baby George…or Thomas.

And that’s all that really matters.

Decide for yourself at

TMH.ORG/WeDeliver TALL AHASSEEMAGA ZINE.COM

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THANK YOU, TALLAHASSEE!

COMPASSION. HONESTY. PASSION FOR JUSTICE. TA L

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2021 2021

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Best Law Firm/Attorney Practice

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DESTIN | TALLAHASSEE | JACKSONVILLE

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Contents

JUL/AUG 2022

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61

PHOTO BY KEN LANESE COURTESY OF FSU ATHLETICS

SOFTBALL

↓

FEATURE

FSU PITCHER KATHRYN SANDERCOCK

The balls are harder these days and bats are made of aluminum alloy or a mixture of carbon fiber polymer, graphite and fiberglass. The wooden bat has gone the way of baseball’s Dead Ball Era, and the old soft-core balls that had to be replaced after a few games because they came to resemble a pair of rolled up socks — they’re gone, too. Rules have been changed to keep balls in the yard, and strategies have evolved to adapt to them. But the geometry and the numerology of the game have remained unchanged. Countless softball players resist ever having to say goodbye to the experiences of taking the field and stepping into the batter’s box. Softball teams are less numerous than they once were and, for that, some blame soccer and others, sedentariness.

But the athleticism of a fast-pitch pitcher or the relative youthfulness of a sexagenarian still at it suggests that the game remains a worthy pursuit.

by STEVE BORNHOFT and EMMA WITMER

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Contents

JUL/AUG 2022

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26 ABODES

83 INTERIORS In a

21 PERSONALITIES Anthony Lobello of Tallahassee graduated from gliding on wheels to striding on blades and put himself in line to meet his future wife, an Italian Olympic speedskater, Arianna Fontana.

26 RECREATION For children

Boulos, by land and by sea, is a man in full.

After working for 20 years in the financial world, he transitioned to residential development in Tallahassee, bringing to a new discipline his accustomed style and confidence.

are ready, too, to deck adults out for their next backyard party.

GASTRO & GUSTO

49 DESSERTS Courtney

Whalen, as a stayat-home mom with a 2-year-old, decided to take on macaron making as something of a domestic challenge.

Friends found out about her glorious cookies, word spread and a business was born.

42 TRENDS Among boat

54 DINING OUT Chef Leon

Area specialty shops include several that are run by women and cater to little people with clothing and accessories. Retailers

88

EXTERIORS

Vines make for an attractive vertical element in yardscapes.

Some aggressive varieties grow up on their own, while others may need a little help.

IN EVERY ISSUE 14 16 112 118 122

EXPRESSION

75 MUSIC Frank Jones

got his start as a musician playing with a Southern rock band while in high school.

Soon thereafter, he formed his own band and wrote songs for an album. Today, the Frank Jones Band has a big Tallahassee-area following.

80 ETHICS Should

visual artists be entitled to rights that have long been enjoyed by published authors? The issue has occasioned the adoption of protections in Europe for hundreds of years, but the U.S. has been slow to the party.

TALLAHASSEEMAGAZINE.COM

46 WHAT’S IN STORE

Brunson is going about starting a restaurant at Lake Ella in the same way he might bake a souffle — carefully. It is important to him to be able to guarantee that diners will enjoy a great experience and outstanding food.

FAMU Community Garden on Orange Avenue is back growing again. Established nearly 50 years ago, it is dedicated to improving the diets and health of families and reducing food costs.

» MACARONS » SPEEDSKATERS » PROFESSIONAL PROFILES

captains, stylish performance wear has replaced the tired old T-shirts and shorts that never could resist a stain. Indeed, it’s possible these days to go straight from the boat to the bar, styling all the way.

56 HARVESTING The

COMMUNITY GARDEN ENJOYS NEW LIFE

PUBLISHER’S LETTER EDITOR’S COLUMN SOCIAL STUDIES DINING GUIDE POSTSCRIPT SPECIAL OLYMPIAN GROWS IN CONFIDENCE

SWIM INSTRUCTORS LEAD KIDS PAST FEARS

HADI BOULOS

Harrell is a medalwinning multi-sport athlete. She is grateful to the Special OIympics for helping her grow in confidence and wants to give back by serving the organization as a spokeswoman.

37 CITIZEN OF STYLE Hadi

during the dog days, gardens need not be reduced to greens and browns. With a variety of heat-tolerant plants, you’ve got options.

JULY–AUG 2022

32 CHAMPION Ashley

PANACHE

92 GREEN SCENE Even

TALLAHASSEE MAGAZINE

learning to swim, the first big hurdle is overcoming their natural fear of putting their faces in the water. Swimming instructor Colin McKinnon motivates his students by telling them to talk to the fishes.

49

Legends of the

Game

For lifelong softball devotees, chalk lines and chain-link fences define their happy places

ON THE COVER:

Frank Ashcroft, Reggie Brown and Jerry Reynolds figure prominently in Tallahassee softball lore. For 40 years, Ashcroft has been selling softball gear at his business, B&B Sporting Goods, while playing and coaching ball in city leagues and beyond.

Brown and Reynolds continue to travel the country to play in highly competitive 55 Major Plus tournaments.

Photo by Dave Barfield

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PHOTOS BY KAY MEYER (26,49), AND PICTUREPARTNERS / ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS (88) AND COURTESY OF HADI BOULOS (37)

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growing number of households, advanced technologies have made it all the way to the necessary room. Prepare to be pampered in new ways.

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Contents

JUL/AUG 2022

SPECIAL SECTIONS AND PROMOTIONS

94

DEAL ESTATE Just listed is a gorgeous home located in Northeast Tallahassee on a quiet, private culde-sac. The home features a highly spacious open floor plan, stainless steel appliances, hardwood flooring, a covered back porch and four bedrooms, including a downstairs master.

Also new to the market is a six-bedroom, five-and-a-half-bath home located in the WaterSound development near Santa Rosa Beach in Walton County. Features include a gourmet kitchen with Wolf and Sub-Zero appliances, wet bar, covered patio and carport, shiplap walls and custom window treatments.

S P ECI A L A DV E RT I S I N G S ECT I ON

PROFESSIONAL PROFILES Tallahassee is a wonderful place to live and work largely because of the businesses and companies that keep it thriving. We entrust the business professionals in our community with helping us make financial, health care, economic, personal and promotional decisions.

Choosing the right company to trust is essential. In this special section of Tallahassee Magazine, we profile selected, highly regarded professionals who have proven accountable, dependable, trustworthy and dedicated to improving the lives of those they assist.

Turn the pages to meet them.

101

← PROFESSIONAL PROFILES Meet

professional service providers whose experience, trustworthiness and reputations have earned them the trust and respect of their clients.

Full Service Hearing Care Audiology Associates and Tallahassee ENT:

The only clinic in Tallahassee with both Doctors of Audiology hearing and ENTcare Physicians, Comprehensive means so you receive the most experienced and professional care.

HEARING LOSS PREVENTION, DETECTION AND CORRECTION

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brewers craft their finest offerings for the Tallahassee Beer Festival, TCC is set to welcome Luke Bryan and Tallahassee Magazine points toward the 24th annual Best of Tallahassee celebration.

Experience you can trust 850.616.6796

Contact us now at 850-877-0101 the Beach AND www.TallahasseeHearingHelp.com • www.TallyENT.com Visit Tallahassee Senior Living

Two locations | 1405 Centerville Road #5400 | 2625 Mitcham Drive TallahasseeHearingHelp.com

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PROMOTION

PHOTO BY SAIGE ROBERTS (110)

• 1405 Centerville Road, Suite 5400 • 2625 Mitcham Drive ↑ CALENDAR FAMU prepares for its Grape Harvest Festival,

Your furniture makes our tail wag!

Donate your gently used furniture to The Fix Thrift Shop.

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TALLAHASSEE MAGAZINE VOL. 45, NO. 4

JULY-AUGUST 2022

PRESIDENT/PUBLISHER BRIAN E. ROWLAND ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER MCKENZIE BURLEIGH

EDITORIAL EXECUTIVE EDITOR Steve Bornhoft SENIOR STAFF WRITER Emma Witmer STAFF WRITER Hannah Burke CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Marina Brown, Les Harrison, Rochelle Koff, Melinda Lanigan, Lis King, Rebecca Padgett Frett, Wynn Parks, Audrey Post

CREATIVE

NO MATTER WHERE YOUR TRAVELS TAKE YOU Centennial Bank has a location there for you, with over 50 locations in Florida from the beaches to the theme parks.

Be sure to download our mobile app* for all your banking needs in between.

VICE PRESIDENT/PRODUCTION AND TECHNOLOGY Daniel Vitter CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jennifer Ekrut ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Lindsey Masterson SENIOR PUBLICATION DESIGNERS Sarah Burger, Saige Roberts, Shruti Shah GRAPHIC DESIGNER Sierra Thomas CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Betsy Barfield Photography, Dave Barfield, Michael Booini, Alex Dossey, John Harrington, Andrea Jones, Land Air Sea Productions, Ken Lanese, Ryals Lee, Lindsey Masterson, Kay Meyer, Bob O’Lary, Alicia Osborne, Saige Roberts, Shems Hamilton, Tommy Weinstein, Hannah White, The Workmans

SALES, MARKETING AND EVENTS SALES MANAGER, WESTERN DIVISION Rhonda Lynn Murray SALES MANAGER, EASTERN DIVISION Lori Magee Yeaton DIRECTOR OF NEW BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, EASTERN DIVISION Daniel Parisi DIRECTOR OF NEW BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, WESTERN DIVISION Dan Parker ADVERTISING SERVICES SPECIALIST Tracy Mulligan SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE Julie Dorr ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Michelle Daugherty, Darla Harrison DIRECTOR OF MARKETING Zandra Wolfgram MARKETING MANAGER Javis Ogden SALES AND MARKETING WRITER Rebecca Padgett Frett ADMINISTRATIVE & CUSTOMER SERVICE SPECIALIST Renee Johnson

OPERATIONS CUSTOM PUBLISHING MANAGER Sara Goldfarb CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE/AD SERVICE COORDINATOR Sarah Coven PRODUCTION EDITOR Paige Aigret PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION SPECIALIST Melinda Lanigan STAFF BOOKKEEPER Amber Dennard

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EDITORIAL OFFICE 1932 Miccosukee Road, Tallahassee, FL 32308. (850) 878-0554

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SUBSCRIPTIONS One year (6 issues) is $30. Call (850) 878-0554 or go online to tallahasseemagazine.com.

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CUSTOMER SERVICE & SUBMISSIONS Tallahassee Magazine and Rowland Publishing, Inc. are not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts, photography or artwork. Editorial contributions are welcomed and encouraged but will not be returned. Tallahassee Magazine reserves the right to publish any letters to the editor.

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Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is prohibited.

Partners of Visit Tallahassee and Member, Greater Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce.

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from the publisher

GET RENEWED BY SOMETHING NEW

Treat yourself to a first-time experience

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Leaving shore, we ran for two hours during which Steve, a longtime fly fisherman who began by fishing streams and graduated to the seas, offered me a tutorial. I would have had an easier time absorbing Steve’s tips had I not been jacked up on adrenaline!

We arrived at Pacific Canyon, where cobalt blue waters are known to hold billfish. Steve was first up. Within 20 minutes, he hooked a sailfish that jumped and danced across the water. I studied Steve as he coolly reeled in the magnificent fish. All of my senses were on high alert. My turn was next.

I made a few practice casts with the fly rod in an effort to at least approximate the rhythm and technique that Steve had displayed. The boat motored along at maybe six knots while dragging a half-dozen hookless teaser baits.

Without warning, a bill appeared among the baits, and pandemonium ensued. Three Spanish-speaking crew members screamed instructions I could not understand, while Steve offered advice that I had a hard time carrying out aboard our rocking vessel.

Twice, I had shots at sailfish that I failed to capitalize on, but Neptune smiled on me and gave me a third.

Sweet success! I hooked a sailfish of about 95 pounds, the onboard experts said. “Reel, reel, reel,” they encouraged me as the captain backed the boat down toward the fish, and I was showered with sea water kicked up by the transom.

It seemed that my heart was banging my eardrums, and I reeled as furiously

as I could. Twenty minutes later, a mate grabbed the fish’s bill, photos were taken and the fish was released.

I enjoyed a great sense of accomplishment as high-fives were exchanged all around. At this point, I was content to collapse in a chair and attempt to relax — a person can take only so much. I had been reminded of the old Kung Fu series; Steve was the master, and I was a grasshopper.

One among the many lessons I learned was this: No matter your vocation, avocation or station in life, create time in which to experience something new. It’s a great restorative and motivator.

Keep it reel,

BRIAN ROWLAND PUBLISHER browland@rowlandpublishing.com

PHOTO BY THE WORKMANS / RPI FILE PHOTO

As we enter life’s fourth quarter, it can seem that one is running out of things to do for the first time.

Recently, though, I was reminded that some of our most dramatic adventures can occur well after halftime.

In April, I was honored to help host a fishing expedition in Guatemala along with Dr. Guy Harvey, his daughter Jessica, Steve Roden and Guy Harvey Magazine editor Fred Garth. We were joined by 13 outdoors enthusiasts who were thrilled at the prospect of making multiple sailfish catches during each of our days on the water.

Participants included a couple in their 70s and two much younger men whose wives had treated them to spots on the trip as surprise birthday gifts. Some 40 miles offshore, we saw dozens of sea turtles at the surface and countless dolphins chasing baitfish.

Those baitfish attract billfish, too, and the bite was on! Mates scrambled about the deck, assisting anglers who battled fatigue during bouts with billfish that lasted up to 30 minutes before the sails were brought to the side of the boat.

Dr. Guy Harvey is a highly successful businessman, a respected student of marine biology, an accomplished artist — and a heckuva angler. He was instrumental in pioneering ways to catch sailfish on a fly.

For our last day at sea, one of the boats was designated for fly fishing, and Fred asked me to jump on board and give it a try.

“Count me in,” I said, despite never having held a fly rod before.

The next generation of electric driving arrives with the 2022 BMW iX. Take on short commutes or road trips with complete confidence thanks to a single-charge range of 324 miles. That’s in addition to the trailblazing power and instant torque you’ll experience with each and every drive. Test-drive your 2022 BMW iX today at Capital Eurocars.

Capital BMW 3701 W. Tennessee St. Tallahassee, FL 32304 (855) 314-6658 Capital-BMW.com

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July-August 2022

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from the editor

AN ATMOSPHERE LIGHT AND FRESH For years, my answer to the familiar question — “What books do you have on your nightstand?’” — has included Game Time, a collection of the baseball writings of Roger Angell, who died in May at age 101.

Like his mother and stepfather, Angell was a fixture at The New Yorker, where he worked as a writer and fiction editor. On the occasion of his death, the magazine’s editor, David Remnick, wrote about Angell, “No one lives forever, but you’d be forgiven for thinking that Roger had a good shot at it. Like the rest of us, he suffered pain and loss and doubt, but he usually kept the blues at bay, always looking forward.”

Angell will live on in his fit and fluid body of work including essays that have the power, undiluted by time, to influence my own outlook and attitude.

I favor especially his reminiscences about his childhood and the early stages of his relationship with baseball.

As a boy, he discovered what would be a lifelong fascination and love with the names of baseball, handles that he found to “prickle or sing in one’s mind.”

There was Mel Ott, Joe Stripp, Jimmie Foxx, George Pipgras, Goose Goslin, Paul Derringer, Van Lingle Mungo, Babe Ruth and longtime Philadelphia Athletics manager “Connie Mack,” whose professional name was a truncated version of the one on his birth certificate, Cornelius McGillicuddy.

I grew up in Minnesota following with my brothers the exploits of Zoilo Versalles, Rich Rollins, Earl Battey, Camilo Pascual, Jim Kaat, Vic Power and Harmon Killebrew, but was badly distracted by the M&M Boys of the New York Yankees, the franchise that ultimately commanded my affections.

Angell, to his credit, stayed current.

A notebook-toting scribe for starters, he was a blogger at the end, commenting on games that streamed on cable networks,

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Remnick tells us. But he retained a fondness for the “lighter and fresher atmosphere” that surrounded baseball in the 1930s.

“Sports were different in my youth — a series of events to look forward to and then to turn over in a memory, rather than a huge, omnipresent industry, with its own economics and politics and crushing public relations,” Angell wrote in 1992. “Attending a game meant a lot, to adults as well as to a boy, because it was the only way you could encounter athletes and watch what they did. There was no television, no instant replay, no evening highlights.”

Florida and dramatic game accounts penned by sportswriters with household names engrossed fans who followed the progress of seasons in the sports pages.

While I was born more than 30 years after Angell, that model held true when I was a kid. I incompletely digested the Minneapolis Tribune, turning first to the peach-colored sports section. As a young journalist, I watched production personnel in newsrooms assemble pages of standings and box scores and late results from the night before.

Baseball was a widely shared, loremaking experience of a sort that we desperately need more of today. Viewers across the country warmed up their sets to watch the “Game of the Week,” called by the likes of Pee Wee Reese, Dizzy Dean and Joe Garagiola.

Today, shared experiences tend toward flag lowerings and brief periods of collective grieving before swiftly we return to our now accustomed divisiveness and suggestions that one party or another is trying to politicize tragedy.

I preferred “Stop the steal” as it may have applied to runners trying to swipe bags.

For this edition of Tallahassee Magazine, I interviewed five men whose decades-long love affairs with softball

have never frayed even as their playing days ran out or have neared their end.

For their time and reflections, I thank Frank Ashcroft, Reggie Brown, Earl Chambers, Rodney Newman Sr. and Jerry Reynolds.

Reynolds moved me when he said that at 58, he is grateful just to be able to continue to round the bases, albeit on an artificial hip. He and the other 55-plus dudes he plays with have reached the point where they like and respect even the men on opposing teams. A spirit of play dominates games.

How great would it be if that spirit could be spread across all fields of endeavor, all manner of people?

Touch ’em all,

STEVE BORNHOFT, EXECUTIVE EDITOR sbornhoft@rowlandpublishing.com

PHOTO BY MICHAEL BOOINI / RPI FILE PHOTO

The spirit of play can animate young and old

2022 | TALLAHASSEE TENNIS CHALLENGER

Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare and the TMH Foundation thank the donors, sponsors and volunteers who made possible the 2022 Tallahassee Tennis Challenger benefiting the D. Mark Vogter MD Memorial Endowment for Neuro-Intensive Care at TMH Grand Slam Sponsors USTA Pro Circuit • The Vogter Family • Visit Tallahassee • Tallahassee Neurological Clinic Wimbledon “Skybox” Sponsor Mark Webb/Merrill Lynch French Open Sponsors Graganella Insurance Agency • Eye Associates of Tallahassee Florida Sports Foundation • Florida Lottery Australian Open Sponsors Eliot & Heidi Sieloff • Brence A. Sell, MD • Eric & Lori Willyoung • Truist Wealth • The Southern Group Ashley Pyrotechnics • Tallahassee Pulmonary Clinic • Tallahassee Gastro Health Center US Open Sponsors Tallahassee Dental Association • Maria & Mark Yealdhall • Jenny & Michael Crowley • In Tents Events Katrina & Chris Wilhoit • Periodontal Associates of North Florida • Kathy & Jim Dahl • Jamie & Joe Lenda Ken & Becky McAlpine • Ed & Carol Moore • Lanigan & Associates, P.C. • Mildred & Carroll Dadisman Anna Jones, RDN • Preventive Cardiology & Internal Medicine Associates • Judy & Dennis Egan Carol & Ed Herndon • Carolyn & Rich Henry • Pennington, P.A. • Dermatology Associates Anne Davis & Barbara Davidson • Nancy & Bob Crawford • Drs. Jeannine Silberman & Joe Gray Remedy Intelligent Staffing • Alice Abbitt & Ralph Zimmerman • Hopewell In-Home Senior Care Katie Brennan & Claude Hendon • North Florida Orthopaedics • Capital Periodontal Yi Zhu & Alex Meng • Sniffen & Spellman, P.A. • MAD DOG Construction • Hayward Title Group Barbara S. Withers, CPA • Big Top Manufacturing • Geosyntec Consultants • Chip Chaney, DMD Ashley & Rob Sniffen • Mary Warner at Change of Pace • Candace Beauvais & Jason Karasevich Rob Contreras & Ellen Berler • Armin Friedli, MD • Mariela Bartens/Coldwell Banker Hartung MLD Architects • Growler Country Craft Beer & Eatery • First Commerce Credit Union • Lauren & Rob Howell Challenger Sponsors Tallahassee Tennis Association • Debra & George English • Ray & Jann Bellamy • Angela & Jim McCloy Sandra Stovall • Dr. & Mrs. J.A. Giralt • Sue Ault/AMGEN • Ben Barry Horowitz Futures Sponsors Libby & Sid Bigham • Gloria & Raleigh Rollins • Judy Zorn • Kathy Beggs • Richard & Kathy Zorn Jake Varn • Chris Thomson • Joan Macmillan • Mary Alice Linzy • Mariana Doseanu/Keller Williams Michael Loo • Judy Pohler • Sandra Brown This event is held in partnership with the TMH Foundation and the City of Tallahassee Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Affairs.

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PROMOTION

TALLAHASSEEMAGAZINE.COM RECAP

Making Tails Wag Surf Dog, who by now qualifies as a D-list celebrity, is a shy guy, easily spooked. He led a nomadic existence for much of his life until a caring owner turned his life around and led him to settle down. Now, he’s a social media darling with a Tallahassee Magazine cover to his credit.

Surf Dog’s many successes were celebrated on May 19 at a check presentation event where he was honored as the latest Tally Top Pet winner.

Head to TallahasseeMagazine.com/makingtails-wag to read the full recap.

Thank you for your 2022 Pinnacle Awards nominations. Now, plan to join us on September 29 at Dunlap Champions Club in Tallahassee when we gather for an in-person awards luncheon honoring 12 inspiring women who have helped make Northwest Florida exceptional.

To purchase tickets and for more details about this year’s nominees and Keynote Speaker, visit 850BusinessMagazine.com/ pinnacle-awards.

LEADING EDUCATORS

DOG DAYS OF SUMMER

Many of you enjoyed our annual pets edition, and we don’t find any reason to turn down the spotlight on animals we hold dear.

Celebrate your furry, scaly or feathered friend by posting a snapshot on Instagram.

Tag us @tallahasseemag #tallydogdays and you may win a prize.

@tallahasseemag

@TallahasseeMag

REWIND

Tallahassee Magazine

Teachers have had it tough the last couple of years. As we approach the 2022–2023 school year, we take another look at the teachers who have inspired some of Tallahassee’s top educators.

TallahasseeMagazine.com/ four-educators-reflect-on-teacherswho-inspired-them

A CALL FOR COVER-WORTHY PETS Tallahassee Magazine is proud to partner with Be The Solution for the 2023 Tally Top Pet contest.

Find out if your pet has what it takes to win over Tallahassee Magazine readers. The top vote getter in the competition will appear on the cover of the magazine’s May/June 2023 edition.

Nominations will be accepted beginning Sept. 1, 2022. Head to TallahasseeMagazine.com/ tally-top-pet-rules-and-regulations to learn more.

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SETTING IT STRAIGHT Women appearing in photos in the May–June edition of Tallahassee Magazine were misidentified. Maria Estes, not Nicole Wiedemann, appeared on pages 7 and 87. Wiedemann is in the photo on page 85.

PHOTOS BY THE WORKMANS (PINNACLE), DAVE BARFIELD (REWIND) AND TOMMY WEINSTEIN (RECAP)

PINNACLE AWARDS

TALL AHASSEEMAGA ZINE.COM

July-August 2022

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SCORE MORE

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WHERE EVERYONE’S AN MVP

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JUL/AUG 2022

PROFILING THE PURSUITS, PASSIONS AND PERSONALITIES AMONG US

THE

→

Tallahasseean Anthony Lobello transitioned from skating on wheels to skating on blades, a move that led him to his future wife, the Italian Olympic speedskater Arianna Fontana.

PERSONALITIES

STRIKING GOLD ↓

Tallahassee coach leads skater to long-term success on short track

by MARINA BROWN

RECREATION photography by DAVE BARFIELD

Talking to Fish

|| CHAMPIONS

Going for Their Goals

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THE

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↑ Arianna Fontana’s successes on the ice have resulted in many celebratory kisses, above. ↘ Members of Italy’s speedskating team, including Anthony Lobello, trained in preparation for the 2014 Winter Olympics, held in Sochi, Russia.

I

t’s a brilliant morning when the two appear at my door. Azaleas and live oak blossoms sway in the sun. She is cute, petite and freshscrubbed. He is strong, handsome and outgoing. One of them is admittedly jet-lagged. But because they are parts of a pair — a kind of uni-mind that when joined, overcomes the most daunting of obstacles — yesterday’s transcontinental, transoceanic jaunt from Italy is really nothing to get in the way.

Just in from Milan, Olympic gold medalist Arianna Fontana, blonde and only appearing delicate, sits at the kitchen table sipping iced coffee. In a soft Italian accent, she talks about how she loves Tallahassee, its greenness and canopy roads.

“I had always thought of Florida as beaches,” she said. “Miami and traffic. I love the quiet of this city and the people.”

So much so that she and her Tallahassee-born husband and coach, Anthony Lobello, are renovating a home in Killearn.

Lobello smiles at her from across the table. They have been married for nearly 10 years. Much of that

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time has been spent training for one competition after another with Fontana committing herself to Lobello’s arduous training regimen, which they believe has made possible her competitive longevity as she turns 32. But the relationship is clearly not one of a Svengali and a sycophant who follows dictates. Theirs is a partnership based on respect and a mutual competitive streak that strides over fatigue and pain to finish lines.

← Arianna Fontana, at left, leans into a turn at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. ↑ Above, Fontana and husband/coach Anthony Lobello hit the gym.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF ANTHONY LOBELLO (OLYMPIC KISS AND WORKOUT) AND IOC IMAGE SERVICES (SKATING IMAGES)

IN THE BEGINNING

Fontana started skating at age 4 following the lead of an older brother who liked to compete. In their small town near Lake Como, she discovered the exhilaration of coming in first.

And she wasn’t afraid of work. By 13, she had been invited to train in shorttrack competitions with Italian athletes headed for the Olympics. At 15, she was made part of the Italian team that skated in Torino and was the youngest Olympic

Winter Games competitor ever to win a medal — a “beautiful” bronze.

Over ensuing years, Fontana would go on to beat every European short-track speed skater in sight. With more than two dozen World Cup, European and World Championship first-place finishes, she has now competed in five Olympic Games and won 11 Olympic medals, including two golds, to make her the Italian athlete with the highest number of Winter Olympic medals and the

second-most decorated Italian athlete in Olympic history. She is petite at 5-foot-3, but she is nothing if not formidable.

The life of an athlete has a heart, too — a romantic one that came to life on the ice for American speed skater Lobello.

A Maclay and later Florida State MBA graduate, Lobello had begun his athletic career loving inline skating but dreamed of competing in the Olympics.

Pragmatically, he switched to ice blades, traveled to Kissimmee to hone his talents on a new surface, and at 19, enrolled at Northern Michigan University to take advantage of its winter sports program.

After only 36 months on the ice, Lobello, in 2006, tried out for and was named to the U.S. Olympic speed skating team. Two years later he was ranked seventh fastest in the world at 500 meters, and after another two years, fifth.

Due to ill health, however, he didn’t make the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.

Frustrated, he “began building a system of training that would work for me.” He devised a regimen of “incredible” intensity — weights, diet, “a different kind of off-ice program.”

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→ Arianna Fontana, standing with Anthony Lobello, displays Olympic medals.

She finds Tallahassee to be a welcome departure from the sand and palm trees often associated with Florida.

And, with both an eye to his sport and to the girl he had fallen in love with — the Italian wunderkind Arianna Fontana — Lobello obtained dual Italian/ American citizenship, and in 2014 made the Italian Olympic Team.

They married later that year, and together Lobello’s carefully tailored regimen and Fontana’s natural talent and “stone-cold killer” instincts have prevailed.

IN TALLAHASSEE

Today, months after the 2022 Winter Games, the pair is still taking a “sports break.” After a grueling Olympics in Beijing, Arianna is enjoying down time.

“I just went on a shopping spree in Milan with a girlfriend,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. She also has taken up boxing to keep in shape.

Lobello listens to her almost like a doctor, sensing “where her body is, where she is. If she wants to go for another Olympics in 2025, that would be 20 years of competition at the very highest level. No one else has ever done that,” he said. “But I will be setting up a regimen for her body to accomplish her goal if that is her decision.”

Of course, there are other more pressing considerations now that the pair is together again in Tallahassee: Whether to choose Gordos, El Jalisco’s or Table 23 from among their favorite restaurants. If the fishing will be good in the waters off of Gulf Shores. If Arianna will actually catch a tuna again (a lifetime highlight.) And even the timing to start their family. “We’re young,” Lobello said, “and I do have that MBA!” TM

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photography by DAVE BARFIELD

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↖

Instructor Colin McKinnon works with student Harper Hagen while in the background, instructor Mary Shelton encourages Mitzi Williams. McKinnon tells beginners to talk to the fishes and listen for replies; if you’re young enough, that’s plausible.

RECREATION

TALKING TO FISH

For some, it’s a first step in learning to swim

by EMMA WITMER

T

here are no fish swimming beneath the glassy blue surface of the Trousdell Aquatic Center pool, but that doesn’t stop Colin McKinnon from telling his more nervous students to strike up a conversation with guppies below.

“One really common fear for kids learning to swim is putting their face and ears in the water,” McKinnon said. “So, I tell them to blow bubbles

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and talk to the fish. Then, they have to put their ears down to hear the fish talk back.”

McKinnon, 22, is a swim instructor at the city’s various aquatic centers.

In the course of four years teaching swimming in Tallahassee and his hometown of Melbourne, he has worked with students of all ages, from 6-month-olds in mother-andbaby lessons to adults. Regardless of

age, taking the plunge can be a frightening experience, McKinnon said. He believes his job is to connect with his students and show them that there is a path through that fear.

“One thing that I will do is talk about funny things that happened to me in the pool,” McKinnon said. “I swam for years, but I’m not immune to getting scared at times.”

McKinnon swam competitively for 12 years, then studied sports management at Tallahassee Community College. Still, an accidental kick to the chest from one of his students was enough to startle him.

The city’s aquatic division includes eight sites, including the Trousdell and Wade Wehunt aquatics centers, where swim instructors provide lessons.

Aquatics director Leslie Adams said she trains every lifeguard and swim instructor on staff with care and intensity. Instructors photography by KAY MEYER

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→ A foam noodle supports Mitzi Williams as instructor Mary Shelton pulls her along. For Shelton and fellow instructor Colin McKinnon, every day in the pool brings progress worth celebrating.

undergo a rigorous three-day training session developed by the Red Cross covering areas including breath management, strategic safety and mastery of basic strokes, as well as how to effectively communicate with different age groups.

“We never run a swim lesson or anything in any of our pools without lifeguards on duty,” Adams said. “Not only do they do their initial training, they have in-service training at least once a month. There, they practice those skills to stay fresh. They get recertified annually.”

Like McKinnon, Brian O’Brien, 22, has a long history as a competitive swimmer and swimming instructor. A Palm Beach County native attending FSU, he is training to become a swim instructor with Tallahassee Aquatics. O’Brien believes that before you can help a student overcome his fear of the water, you must first acknowledge why that discomfort is present.

“I like to think fear is a good thing in kids who don’t know how to swim,” O’Brien said.

“I’m OK with that because that means they aren’t going to jump in the water head first.

For our younger students, we like to keep the parents nearby. That helps the child feel safer venturing out, but it also shows the parent that we are taking extra care to ensure their safety.”

At 18, Mary Shelton is one of the younger swim instructors with the Aquatics Division.

She worked as a lifeguard with the pools for two years and is now entering her second year as a swim instructor. For her, watching the bonds that children make during group lessons is both fun and useful in allaying fear.

“It’s definitely that team mindset,” Shelton said. “They all sit on the wall together and introduce themselves, and we are together for the next two weeks. It happens so naturally.

One moment they don’t know each other and then the next, they are joking around and high-

fiving and sharing those crazy life stories that they have at 6 years old.”

Support and cheers from other kids can do wonders for a new swimmer’s confidence.

“Private lessons can be great for some people, but one of the biggest

advantages of taking a group lesson, especially for kids, is being able to learn from watching someone else,” Adams said. “If you don’t want to do something but see that someone else is having fun, you are way more likely to take the plunge.” TM

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photography by KAY MEYER

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How TMH helped a Tallahassee mom grow her family and battle heart disease After searching the state, Cassie Lewis found the best complex care at home in Tallahassee.

by Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare The surgery was a success. “A month later,” Cassie laughs, “I met the man I would marry.” After tying the knot in 2016, Cassie and Patrick tried for three and a half years to get pregnant, while closely monitoring her heart.

When an echo in 2019 showed her condition was worsening, Cassie’s cardiologist recommended she hold off on having more children.

One week later, she learned she was pregnant.

Cassie Lewis always knew she’d need heart surgery. She just didn’t know when.

Cassie was born at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (TMH) with a bicuspid aortic valve, which means that an integral piece of her heart meant to have three leaflets had only two. Since then, TMH has been the common thread woven through every stage of Cassie’s life, from her own birth and her children’s high-risk deliveries to multiple complex heart procedures.

Cassie’s symptoms didn’t start until adulthood. At 29 years old, she began experiencing debilitating shortness of breath.

An echocardiogram revealed she’d need her aortic valve replaced.

Cassie was referred to the Valve Clinic at TMH Physician Partners, Services by Southern Medical Group, who closely monitored her condition. “Our Valve Clinic is where we plan and streamline care for patients in our Structural Heart Program,” says Dr. Thomas Noel, interventional cardiologist and Co-Chair of TMH’s Structural Heart Program – the only one of its kind in the region. “Our interventional cardiologists and heart surgeons work together to evaluate patients’ unique needs and determine the best plan of care.”

At first, Cassie had no symptoms, but eventually, the shortness of breath returned. She and her obstetrician, Dr. David Dixon, decided to induce her labor three weeks early to avoid added stress on her heart.

When the day arrived on August 27, 2020, Cassie’s heart was under such strain, her heart team worried childbirth could put her into a crisis. With her obstetrical team, they decided to deliver her daughter Harper in the operating room in case Cassie needed emergency surgery.

“I had two months to process that I needed open heart surgery,” Cassie recalls. “I got a few opinions, and at Shands, the doctor said, ‘I don’t know why you’re here – you have an amazing cardiac surgeon in Tallahassee.’ ” Cassie had met with Dr. David Saint, cardiothoracic surgeon at TMH, and she remembered loving his bedside manner. This recommendation sealed the deal.

Together, they decided on an open-heart bovine valve replacement. Cassie had one son, Gage, but wanted more kids. While a temporary solution, the bovine valve gave her the best chance at the fewest pregnancy complications later.

A DV E RTI S E M E N T

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“My heart had worked so hard during the delivery, it was too enlarged for another open-heart surgery,” Cassie recalls.

“I completely trusted Dr. Noel. If anyone did it, I wanted it to be him.”

TMH’s Structural Heart Team performs more TAVRs than anyone else in Northwest Florida.

“With TAVR, we deliver a small, stent-like valve to the heart using a catheter inserted through a tiny hole in the groin,” explains Dr. Noel. “TAVR lets us replace the valve without ever opening the chest.”

That was a relief for Cassie. The procedure went perfectly, and almost instantaneously her symptoms were gone.

“I trusted the care team I had lined up. They coordinated so well together,” Cassie says.

One key member of that team was Joanna Fato, RN, BSN, Assistant Nurse Manager of TMH’s High-Risk Labor & Delivery Unit.

“I cannot tell you how amazing she was,” Cassie shares. “She sat there the whole time, closely watching me, keeping me focused.

I knew if I needed something, she was there looking at me to cue her.”

“It was incredible,” she remembers. “As soon as they opened the valve, I could finally breathe again.”

The next day, Cassie was back home with Harper, Gage and Patrick. She felt better than she had in years, and she credits every member of her care team at TMH with getting her there.

After just three pushes, Harper was born. Weighing a healthy 7 pounds and 2 ounces, she was everything Cassie imagined and more. They started skin-to-skin contact right away. Then Patrick came into the OR to hold his daughter for the first time while the doctors tended to Cassie.

Moments later, Cassie recalls, “I looked up at Joanna and said, ‘I can’t breathe.’ ” The delivery had put her heart into further distress. Her care team stabilized her. She would still need another heart surgery, but not yet; the priority was letting her body heal.

When Cassie and her mom took Harper to the pediatrician a week later, Cassie couldn’t make it to the door. She was scheduled for a transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) the next day.

“I’ve been through so much medically. TMH has been my saving grace every time and will always hold a special place in my heart.”

Visit TMH.ORG to learn more about the advanced, interdisciplinary care available at Tallahassee Memorial.

A DV E RTI S E M E N T Developed in partnership with GET Creative, a division of USA TODAY.

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← Ashley Harrell is grateful to Publix stores for their long-running support of the Special Olympics in Florida.

Participation as an athlete, she said, has helped her deal with cerebral palsy and neurofibromatosis, a nervous system disorder.

CHAMPION

GOING FOR THEIR GOALS

Corporate partnerships create opportunities for Special Olympians

by STEVE BORNHOFT

A

shley Harrell is a sextathlete.

She competes as a Special Olympian in six sports: tennis, golf, cheerleading, gymnastics, stand-up paddleboard and swimming.

Harrell, 33, of Tallahassee, has won medals at state-level competitions, and she is especially proud to be a member of

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the Leon County Chargers cheerleading squad that will compete in the Special Olympics 2022 USA Games to be held in Orlando in June.

“I can do a front roll, and I have been working on my cartwheels,” Harrell proudly said. “We do shaking of the hips and lots of dance moves and some cool stunts that are pretty advanced like we hold somebody up high. We are one of the only teams that doesn’t need much assistance on the mat.”

Harrell’s participation in Special Olympics Florida and the success of the organization throughout the state is due largely to the support of Publix Supermarkets, headquartered in Lakeland. The relationship was fostered 50 years ago by Publix founder George Jenkins, said Dwaine Stevens, a 42-year Publix employee, who two years ago became its director of community relations.

Publix’s annual point-of-sale Torch Icon campaign has raised more than $60 million for the Special Olympics since 1993, Stevens said. (That figure does not

include the 2022 fundraising total, which was unavailable at press time.) Shoppers who contribute to the campaign are rewarded with coupons for products from Proctor & Gamble, another longtime supporter of Special Olympics.

“We thank Publix for all of their support throughout the year,” said Damien McNeil, the regional director for Special Olympics in Northwest Florida. “Publix has been a pioneering leader in employing people with special needs. Go into any Publix across the state, and you will see people with intellectual and developmental disabilities working alongside fully able peers. They welcome Special Olympians into their stores during the campaign and enable us to use their bandwidth to better engage people across the state.”

At Publix store No. 128 in Jacksonville, where Stevens frequently shops, he has gotten to know over many years a disabled employee, John.

“We’ve never been together outside of the store, but it’s always photography by SAIGE ROBERTS

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A DRIVE FOR JUSTICE

good to see him when I do my shopping,” Stevens said. “I’ve had the privilege of meeting associates with a developmental or intellectual difference who have been with us for 20 years.”

Disabled employees, Stevens said, enrich the workplace they share with their fellow associates and enhance the shopping experience.

“All of our associates are devoted to serving our customers and serving each other,” said Stevens, who started with Publix in custodial services just days after graduating from Kathleen High School in Lakeland and continued to work for the business while attending Polk Community College. “We believe in an inclusive work environment, and that brings value to everyone.”

Harrell represented Special Olympics during the Torch Icon campaign at her home store, Publix No. 1051, located on Blairstone Road in Tallahassee.

“It was awesome,” she said. “We wore our medals, and people were asking us what sports we competed in. It is very important that we have organizations like Publix that help us.

Every time I go to the store, I thank them for all their support. They have gotten to know us, and they will help us with anything.”

Harrell says she regularly attends practices overseen by coaches in preparing for

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competitions. Coaches are trained specifically to work with Special Olympians.

“Anyone can come out and coach,” McNeil said. “It’s better, obviously, if a person has experience in a given sport, but we truly could take a generic weekend athlete and make them into a coach.”

To the extent possible, Special Olympics avoids removing components of sports or events as they are typically played, but adjustments are made in the spirit of reasonable accommodations.

In bowling, athletes unable to throw a ball down the alley may position a ramp, place the ball on it, and then push it toward the pins.

Athletes unable to get to their feet on a standup paddleboard may sit or kneel instead.

Harrell stands up.

In tennis, she has developed forehand and backhand ground strokes and an overhead serve. She has participated in skills competitions in golf and will tell you about having rolled in a snake during a long putting competition at state. As a swimmer, she participates in freestyle and backstroke events. Her gymnastics specialties include floor exercise and the balance beam.

At state, she has won Athlete of the Year and Inspirational Athlete honors. To get to state, athletes must succeed in area and regional competitions. TM

PHOTO COURTESY OF SPECIAL OLYMPICS INTERNATIONAL (SHRIVER)

↑ Ashley Harrell has competed successfully at regional and state levels and looks forward to going to nationals as a member of the Leon County Chargers cheerleading squad. In preparation, she is working to perfect a cartwheel. In addition, she is training to become a public speaker with the goal of representing Special Olympics as a spokeswoman.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Eunice Kennedy Shriver became aware of how unjustly and unfairly people with intellectual disabilities were treated.

She also saw that many children with intellectual disabilities didn’t even have a place to play. She decided to take action, and soon, her vision began to take shape. She held a summer day camp for young people with intellectual disabilities (ID) in her backyard. The goal was to learn what these children could do in sports and other activities — not dwell on what they could not do.

Throughout the 1960s, Eunice Kennedy Shriver continued her pioneering work. She was the driving force behind President John F. Kennedy’s White House panel on people with ID. She directed the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation, and her drive for justice grew into the Special Olympics movement. — from SpecialOlympics.org

↑ Eunice Kennedy Shriver at 1968 Special Olympics games in Chicago photography by SAIGE ROBERTS

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REGARDING MATTERS OF ALL THINGS STYLISH

→

Hadi Boulos enjoys a moment of reflection at Boulos Corporation headquarters in downtown Tallahassee.

He wears a suit he designed himself.

CITIZEN OF STYLE

A COMMITMENT TO WHAT ENDURES

Cosmopolitan developer knows where his values lie

PHOTOS COURTESY OF HADI BOULOS

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↑ Hadi Boulos’ tastes move beyond graceful lines to include a fondness for things rugged. Inset photos: Two views of his overseas apartment — the drawing room, top, and a lavish living room.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF HADI BOULOS

I

f, as the dictionary tells us, “style” refers not just to the cut of your suit or your choice of hues, but to “a mode of living; a particular, distinctive characteristic,” then the style of Tallahassee housing developer and property management guru Hadi Boulos surrounds him. From the handmade suits he designs himself to his quest for the perfect roofline, to his own personal strivings to be the best in anything he does, Boulos’ style tenets run deep.

At the downtown Tallahassee building he owns topped with its magnificent golden Boulos logo (another of his designs), Boulos welcomes a visitor as a guest. In the Middle Eastern tradition of hospitality, Lebanon-born Boulos offers tea or water, and a seat on a soft, streamlined divan.

Boulos Corporation is currently bringing over 600 new homes and 100 apartments and duplexes out of the ground in Tallahassee and its environs. And yet, the 47-year-old bachelor appears serene in an elegant blue suit, open-collared bespoke shirt and a naturally warm sophistication that nearly overshadows the ambition and vision of the born “doer.”

With what might be a self-effacing smile, Boulos said that he has many experiences and influences to draw upon as the impetus for his future plans, many of which are inspired by a deep and powerful devotion to his father.

Born in Lebanon to a noted architect/developer and his wife, Boulos moved at an early age to Germany and added a fourth language to the French, Arabic and English he already knew. He was educated later at the Maclay

←

Before choosing to focus on residential development, Hadi Boulos worked a 20-year career in banking that included service as the managing director of Citibank in Switzerland.

He excels, he says, in managing risk.

School in Tallahassee — where his father had relocated after falling in love with the city’s verdant and welcoming environment — and in France and Switzerland. Boulos said that the experiences to which his family exposed him, the steeping in the beauty of European architecture and culture and simply developing a taste for quality without compromise, have all become a part of what could be called Boulos’ “personal style.”

Upon graduation from university, Boulos began what would become a 20year career in banking that found him as a vice president at Merrill Lynch in New York, director of Barclay’s Bank in London and later managing director of Citibank in Switzerland. All the while, he and his father had been investing in Tallahassee real estate. Then, with a mid-career switch from banking to development, it seemed that the instincts that had led three generations of Bouloses in search of physical beauty were aroused in Hadi as well. He says, too, that with his deep understanding of banking and finance, he at all times “manages risk.” That is to say, “if you are offering an extraordinary product and are not overleveraged, you will do well.”

That is what Boulos looks for in his personal style choices as well — “the extraordinary product.” Responding to questions, many of Boulos’ answers tell of a life few in Tallahassee live, and yet, he quietly views the privileges in their greater context, that search for quality, and for what endures.

“I am a traditionalist,” he said. “My avatars would be the men of the 1930s to 1950s, those with the casual elegance of actors like Clark Gable or Cary Grant. I don’t like fashion trends, rather, apparel that is timeless and which feels effortless.”

Boulos favors understated sparkle in a watch and prefers a British-made cologne he has worn for years, Penhaligon’s Halfeti, with its blend of “vigorous grapefruit” and Turkish spice. He avoids the color black and spurns blue jeans. In Miami, Boulos can be found in linen jackets on the rear deck of his 90-foot Gianetti, which, with its Missoni wallpaper and treble-trayed ceilings, is a destination in itself.

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↑ Hadi Boulos recharged aboard his yacht, the M/Y Boulos, off Miami Beach’s Star Island. Inset photos depict the vessel’s flybridge and salon.

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To spend a weekend in the company of Hadi Boulos? Perhaps it would be in Miami, dining at Cecconi’s, with its Venetian cuisine and art deco/Cubano decor. Perhaps aboard his yacht sailing near the Greek island of Simi. Together, you could enjoy the Louvre, then have late afternoon tea at the Hotel Costes, or with him as your guide, drop into the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Yet Hadi Boulos puts one thing above his successes, his acquisitions, his intercontinental voyages — even his commitment to finding beauty in the simplest acts of living — and that is a devotion to his father.

“My parents gave me a profound appreciation of family and values,” he said. “My father is my closest friend. Along with my mother, from them I received a sense of style, love of the arts and meticulous attention to detail. Now that my father needs me in a new way, I have dedicated the last seven years to memorable quality time with him, which for me is a blessing.”

In the end, there is little more to say about a man than to style him a faithful and devoted son — no matter what he is wearing or how big his boat. TM

PHOTOS COURTESY OF HADI BOULOS

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↘

TRENDS

WHAT THE CAPTAIN IS WEARING

Stereotype-busting Capt. Lorraine Frasier of Dolphin and Snorkel Tours, Inc., located in Panama City Beach, chills on the bow of one of the operation’s vessels.

The business offers experiences including Shell Island dolphin and snorkeling tours and Forgotten Coast wildlife adventures.

Modern marine wear performs well, looks good

by HANNAH BURKE

CLOTHING SUPPLIED BY HY’S TOGGERY OF PANAMA CITY BEACH

B

oat captains once conjured images of ratty T-shirts; sun-bleached, longbilled hats with leaping marlins or anchors on the crown; and shorts that appeared to be held together by stains, but today they’re sporting some serious seafaring styles.

“Marine wear now is performance fabrics that give great sun protection,” said Tom Morgan, owner of Apalach Outfitters in Apalachicola. “Just like with a T-shirt, people want some cool graphic on their performance shirts, and these clothes have evolved to come in all sorts of colors and patterns.”

Nautical threads, like the golf duds you may have spotted at this year’s Masters Tournament, now marry form with function in sleek, often understated pieces designed to keep you cool, dry and even aerodynamic. Or maybe aqua-dynamic in this context.

For many, this offers a seamless transition from sport to polite — or impolite — society.

“You can absolutely wear these sun shirts and quick-dry shorts both on the water and off,’” said Morgan, whose store specializes in outdoor apparel and accessories. Floridians tend to embrace the “boat to bar” look, and Morgan said it’s not uncommon for men to pair these performance shirts with a khaki short to wear while out and about town. photography by MICHAEL BOOINI

↑ Capt. Lorraine Frasier’s ensemble includes a Columbia PFG Bonehead straw hat; a sleeveless Tamiami button-down shirt; and a Flash Forward windbreaker, ideal for keeping off the sea spray kicked up by a running boat in a choppy sea.

At Apalach Outfitters, bestselling brands such as Patagonia, Southern Tide and Simms offer all-day comfort for both the offshore angler and casual cruiser.

“I love to saltwater fly fish, with my passion really being fly fishing for tarpon,” said Morgan. “I like to wear Patagonia fishing shorts and one of our private label performance tops in a hoodie. It’s all about sun, sun, sun.

People like facial protection, and Simms makes superior face masks and fishing gloves that cover the back of your hand.”

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Columbia’s line of PFG (performance fishing gear) shirts, made with sweatwicking and quick-drying fabric, boasts an ultraviolet protection factor (UPF) of 50. These tops have acquired

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the Skin Cancer Foundation’s seal of recommendation, which indicates their lightweight, polyester composition will block up to 98% of the sun’s rays.

For many brands, button-down performance tops offer a more polished style and often feature mesh-lined back vents, perforated underarms and utility pockets for your sunglasses, phone and other essentials.

Too, contemporary fishing pants and shorts are designed to repel water and maintain a solid stretch factor. Many opt for convertible fishing pants, which zip around the thigh and transform into shorts or swim trunks.

While some may never part with their beloved flip flops or Sperrys, Morgan said

contemporary boating kicks are becoming more sophisticated. “XTRATUF shoes are for men and women. There’s a 6-inch ankle deck boot, and they also make something like a boating tennis shoe.

Those are really popular.”

But before you leave the dock, don’t forget your sunglasses, Morgan said.

He is partial to a pair of Bureo X Costa shades, whose eco-conscious frames are made from recycled fishing nets.

“It’s a cool new brand, but we also carry traditional Costa, Oakley and Ray Ban,” he said. “Sunglasses are always a big deal to people who come in and want to go out on a boat, especially if they don’t do so regularly. They’ve got to have their polarized sunglasses.” TM

CLOTHING SUPPLIED BY HY’S TOGGERY OF PANAMA CITY BEACH

↑ Capt. Brayden Burns of Dolphin and Snorkel Tours, Inc., is ready for boating or brunching in an AFTCO Apex short-sleeved, button-down shirt and AFTCO stretch fishing shorts. Both the shirt and the shorts are made of four-way performance stretch material.

←↑ Capt. Keagan Montfort of Dolphin and Snorkel Tours, Inc., stretches out in a Huk long-sleeve Icon X performance fishing shirt that is moisturewicking and vented in the back. Her shorts are Huk’s Ashley style. ←↑ Montfort is

joined by Capt.

Brayden Burns, who is wearing a Huk long-sleeve Pursuit performance fishing shirt, performancelined swim trunks and a LoPro Angler trucker-style ball cap in refraction camo.

photography by MICHAEL BOOINI

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panache Whether your summer daydreams are filled with nights on the town, lounging by the water or backyard barbecues, Hearth & Soul in Tallahassee can help you find an outfit for all occasions.

↓ What’s In Store?

➸ The ZIG ZAG BAG

holds everything you need for your day by the pool or beach. It is beautifully hand crocheted by raffia artisans and weaved to perfection in Madagascar using sustainable fibers. ↓

➸ Trying to find jewelry that won’t tarnish this summer? ALEXA LEIGH BRACELETS are designed with gold-filled beads and a comfortable elastic stretch.

It’s the perfect everyday jewelry to take you from the pool to the party. ↓

➸ After you’ve packed your bag, throw on a SUNSET HAT, hand embroidered and hand woven from Paja Toquilla straw in Ecuador. Each one is certified to exceed UPF 50 to protect your skin from harmful UV rays. ↓

➸ When it’s time for happy hour, style the MILANA TOP by RAMY BROOK with your favorite pair of jeans.

Her signature fabrics, lively colors and sophisticated silhouettes will make you feel confident and comfortable. ↓

➸ A pair of ILLESTEVA PAMELA SUNGLASSES will complete your waterside look. ↓

➸ Finish your look with fabulous CHIE MIHARA HEELS, ideal for everyday and summertime soirees. ↓

A roundup of offerings at local businesses

Lillie & Co is owned and operated by women who love to style your littles. The Thomasville, Georgia, store specializes in clothing, accessories, toys and gifts from local and nationally recognized brands. For summer, the store is loving the styles of Beaufort Bonnet Company.

The little ladies in your life can step out in pastel summer styles in the Annie Apron Dress with Wand Appliqué and Laney’s Little Set with Rainbow Stripe. A day at the beach isn’t complete without a new suit. The Brookhaven Bathing Suit and Wave Spotter Swim Set come in a Caicos Canopy print featuring vibrant colors and whimsical foliage. Bows and ruffles make for dainty details. Set sail with the Sanibel Board Shorts in the Smooth Sailing print dotted with sherbet sailboats.

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DINING OUT Leon’s at the Lake || HARVESTING Growing Groceries

gastro&gusto JUL/AUG 2022

FROM THE SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE TO THE PIÉCE DE RÉSISTANCE

↓

PINEAPPLE UPSIDEDOWN CAKE

DESSERTS

MACARONS! Cookies worth waiting in line for

by EMMA WITMER

↓

photography by KAY MEYER

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gastro & gusto ←↓ SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED Macaron-maker Courtney Whalen has arrived at some 80 flavor combinations for her hotselling cookies. Varieties include Blueberry Cheesecake, top photo at left; Pineapple Upside-Down Cake, lower photo at left; and Fruity Pebbles, in hand in photo, below.

I

n December 2020, young mom and budding confectionary entrepreneur Courtney Whalen stepped into The Prepared Table with a macaron in each hand. Both were banana pudding flavored, the favorite dessert of Robin O’Donnell’s husband.

O’Donnell, owner of the cozy kitchen boutique at Bannerman Crossings, told herself she would eat one and save the other for her Michael.

She couldn’t hold out.

By the time her husband arrived home from work that evening, his cookie was toast. O’Donnell gave Whalen a call.

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In the course of their conversation, O'Donnell proposed that Whalen no longer peddle her sweets out of the back of her car, proposing that she instead sell them at The Prepared Table.

More particularly, O’Donnell offered her shop as the new, permanent location for Whalen’s biweekly pop-up shop, a decision that proved beneficial for both women.

“The day of her first pop-up, I got to the shop around 9:45 before we opened at 10, and there was already a line waiting at the door,” O’Donnell said. “One time a lady got in line, and she didn’t even know what she was

TALLAHASSEEMAGA ZINE.COM

in line for. She said she figured if this many people were waiting on something, she didn’t want to miss it.”

Today, the website for Whalen’s Live Love Macaron lists layered macaron cakes, personalized colors, designs and packaging as well as 70 flavor combinations for cookies.

“It’s really more like 80 now,” Whalen laughed. “I’m always experimenting. I like to joke that I should write a cookbook just on my fillings because there are so many.”

Whalen launched Live Love Macaron back in 2017, but the path to becoming a business owner was by no means a straight line. Her youngest child, Charlotte, had just turned 2.

Like many stay-at-home moms, Whalen grew restless. Her time belonged to her children, but she longed for something of her own.

“I started tinkering around in the kitchen during nap times, and macarons caught my eye,” Whalen said. “It was a challenge that I really wanted to conquer and succeed at. I would post pictures on Facebook and bring them to family events, and people started asking me to make them for birthday parties, dinner parties or gifts. It gave me the boost of confidence that I needed.”

Macarons are a tricky treat to master. Among the Italians, the French and the Swiss, there are at least three methods for achieving the optimal crisp-yet-gooey sandwich cookie, but each combines the same basic ingredients: egg whites, sugar and almond flour. photography by KAY MEYER

←

For Courtney Whalen, macarons were a challenge she resolved to conquer. Early successes led to a demand for her cookies among her friends, and Whalen grew in confidence.

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photo by Scott Holstein

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Whalen started with the French method, whipping meringue after meringue until her results were just right.

Then, with the encouragement of a fellow macaronmaking Facebook friend, Whalen branched into the Italian method, carefully handling vats of boiling sugar water with a Betty Crocker/Breaking Bad flare.

“Trying the Italian method made me fall in love with macarons all over again,” Whalen said.

Within a year of baking her first batch, Whalen applied for an LLC and started taking on larger orders, and the word got out. Every other week, she would pack up whatever cookies went unsold and alert her hungry followers of an impending flash sale with the note: “Pickup — Trader Joe’s.”

A petite woman with a chipper voice and a wide grin, Whalen said she felt like a drug dealer, passing off little parcels to customers with a sweets addiction.

“But that’s where the business truly began,” Whalen said. “The flash sales were anticipated. They were super fun and engaging. People were surprised by the flavors and would comment about their favorite flavors. It was really fun, but it was also really time consuming.”

Whalen has held two macaron and beer pairing events with Deep Brewing Company and hopes to kick off a similar event with local wine bar Poco Vino.

“If I could give advice to any young woman out there with a passion that they believe in, it would be this: You never know if you don’t try,” Whalen said. “Put yourself out there. Put your idea out there, and it will Place an order at reach someone somewhere.

LiveLoveMacaron.com, and discover the You have to pursue your date and time for dream and be ready to evolve Courtney Whalen’s and get creative and get gritty. next pop-up shop.

If you love it, go for it.” TM

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PHOTO BY KAY MEYER

↑ When Robin O’Donnell, the owner of a boutique kitchen business at Bannerman Crossings, offered Courtney Whalen space for a weekly pop-up shop, Whalen was on her way to making macarons in large quantities.

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→

Chef Leon Brunson takes a break at his location on Lake Ella.

Currently engaged in catering, he plans to open a lunch spot on the lake in the coming months.

DINING OUT

LEON’S AT THE LAKE Chef is realizing plans for new lunch spot

by AUDREY POST

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local tourism brochure describes Tallahassee’s Lake Ella as a beautiful park “perfect for a quiet stroll or walking your dog while enjoying a cup of coffee or an ice cream cone purchased from one of the cottages surrounding the lake.”

With respect for all the good that tourism marketers do for the Capital City, the description misses the mark. The cottages don’t surround the lake; they’re mostly nestled along North Monroe Street, with a couple on side streets off Monroe that lead down to the water. Perhaps most importantly, though, it doesn’t capture the essence that makes Lake Ella not only a gathering place, but a community.

Leon Brunson has taken the time to learn about the community that is Lake Ella. His new restaurant, Leon’s on the Lake, which is set to open later this year

TALLAHASSEEMAGA ZINE.COM

or early next year in the Cottages at Lake Ella, will reflect the community that he has adopted as his own.

“People from all walks of life gather at Lake Ella,” he said. “Some come from their homes to walk their dogs. Some bring their kids. Some come here who have no home at all.

“But it seems like there’s no level of judgment, no stress,” he continued. “This is a friendly community. I want Leon’s on the Lake to reflect that community.”

Back in 2020, Brunson wanted to buy KB Kitchen, a business that Kool Beanz owner Keith Baxter had planned to open as a weekend breakfast and brunch spot in the cottage formerly occupied by Mickey’s Lakeside Cafe. It didn’t work out that time, luckily for Brunson, as the COVID-19 pandemic was just around the corner.

PHOTOS BY ALICIA OSBORNE COURTESY OF THOMASVILLE CENTER FOR THE ARTS (FOOD) AND COURTESY OF LEON BRUNSON (PORTRAIT)

↑ Leon Brunson prepares crab cakes and soup for delivery to a customer’s event. He said he will take a gradual approach to opening a restaurant so as to ensure that it provides both a quality experience and good food.

When he discovered earlier this year the business was available, the timing seemed right.

Leon’s on the Lake is undergoing renovations inside and out, and the business will open in phases. Brunson calls it a “slow and steady release,” with lunch service opening first.

“It’s going to resemble Mickey’s, a place where families can come for a healthy lunch,” he said. “There’s fast food all around us. We’re not doing that. No processed foods. We’ll have salads, soups and sandwiches, not a huge menu but a nice selection. We’ll have a vegetarian special and a chef’s special.”

He wants to work out any kinks in the lunch service before adding more layers to the business.

“We have seen what has happened in the food service industry since the pandemic began,” Brunson said. “We’re not getting the level of service we used to get in many places, and we’re not getting the quality of food we used to get in many places. We want to provide both.”

One of the innovations he plans to add is QR codes posted along the trail around the lake. If there’s a line out the door of

the restaurant, customers can scan the code, place their orders and pay for them online, then wait for a text to tell them their to-go order is ready.

When dinner service is added, it will be more akin to a concert tour schedule than a nightly opportunity for diners. For example, he might schedule what he calls a “deep dive” into a particular cuisine on three different evenings. Diners pick the date they want to attend and buy their tickets online. Because the cottage is cozy, seating likely will be limited to about 20 people. People will be able to learn about themed dinners through social media, his website and a newsletter. The cost for each dinner will vary depending on what is being served.

“Dishes with more expensive proteins will be on the pricier side,” Brunson said, “but all the dinners will be interactive and engaging.”

Tickets could be as low as $50 for three courses up to $125 or $150 for five or six courses. The restaurant will have a beer and wine license, including a selection of local beers, and Brunson also plans to serve specialty cocktails adding herbs and fruits to the wine.

Eventually, he wants to add private dinner parties to his evening offerings.

“Right now, if you’re looking for a private venue for a gathering, you’re either in a side room in a busy restaurant, or in a nice space, but you have to outsource the food,” Brunson said. “We’ll be able to provide both.”

During the worst of the pandemic, when restaurants had to close or shift to take-out only and let go of most or all of their staff, Brunson shifted to catering but also offered free cooking lessons. He wants to continue teaching others who love cooking. He participated in cooking demonstrations this year at the Food and Wine Festival sponsored by Cleaver and Cork, the Tallahassee Community College Foundation’s popular annual culinary event and signature fundraiser.

He’s a busy guy with a passion he wants to share. He wants to support local farmers and producers, encourage sustainability and healthy habits, and respect traditional Southern cooking while introducing new flavors and traditions.

“Lake Ella is a healthy and happy community,” he said. “I want to make sure we stay true to the people of Lake Ella.” TM TALL AHASSEEMAGA ZINE.COM

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gastro & gusto

HARVESTING

GROWING GROCERIES Renovated historic FAMU Community Garden is back

by AUDREY POST

T

he Florida A&M University Community Garden is back open for business!

Established almost 50 years ago on South Adams Street and later relocated to its current home at 2001 W. Orange Ave., it is the oldest community garden in Tallahassee and one of the oldest in the state.

It was closed for renovation before the COVID-19 pandemic began, and its reopening in spring 2022 has coincided with a gradual reopening of society in general.

Nestled on three acres of fertile soil across the street from the FAMU Developmental Research School (FAMU High), the garden has been a community hub for decades. FAMU Extension Agent Trevor Hylton, who oversees the garden, said that unlike some gardens that are communal, the FAMU garden has always offered gardeners the opportunity to grow the crops they prefer by leasing individual plots. As a result, there has been great diversity in the crops and in gardening methods.

“It offers an opportunity for newcomers to Tallahassee to produce crops they’ve traditionally grown that are otherwise unavailable locally,” he said. “There are gardeners from all over

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Intern Alicia Murphy, LInda Sapp and FAMU extension agent Trevor Hylton help tend one of the oldest community gardens in Florida.

The FAMU Community Garden was established nearly 50 years ago.

the world working side by side, sometimes without speaking the same language.”

The language of gardening is universal, and the Orange Avenue gardeners have a tradition of sharing. For people in the surrounding neighborhoods, it is a gathering place.

“It was a community of people, a lot of nice people. We’d trade plants, seeds, advice, what have you,” said Donald McBride, who began toiling the soil at FAMU when the garden was still on South Adams Street. “I can remember bringing my daughter Akacia with me when she was a toddler after we moved to Orange Avenue. She liked to play in the dirt and watch the crops come up.

She’s 29 now.”

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Originally established to provide a space for faculty, staff, students and community residents to grow fresh vegetables for athome consumption, the garden also exists to improve the diet and health of families and to reduce the cost of food for them.

McBride moved to Tallahassee from Tampa to attend FAMU, ended up staying and had a career at the university photography by LINDSEY MASTERSON

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before retiring a few years ago. To say he’s happy the garden has reopened is an understatement.

“I used to worry Mr. Trevor to death about when it was going to reopen, because the garden was the only thing keeping me out of the psych ward,” he said with a chuckle. “Gardening is good for you spiritually, for your mental health.”

Before the renovation, the garden had 71 plots, each measuring 40 by 40 feet.

One of the changes has been to reduce the size of the plots to 20 by 20 feet, as many gardeners found the larger plots difficult to maintain. Most years, the garden was full; there was always a waiting list.

Having more compact plots will allow more gardeners access to the garden.

McBride didn’t want a plot quite that small, because he kept his large plot lush with a variety of vegetables over the years.

What did he grow?

“It would be easier to tell you what I didn’t grow,” he said. “I didn’t grow potatoes, rutabagas, watermelon or cantaloupes.”

He swapped his crops — including peas, corn, tomatoes, squash, green beans, onions, okra, greens and carrots — with fellow gardeners for the things he didn’t grow. Since the garden reopened, he was able to snag one slightly oversized plot in

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↑ FAMU Extension Agent Trevor Hylton finds that gardening has universal appeal. At the FAMU Community Garden, he said, people from around the world, speaking many languages, work side by side.

an odd-shaped corner of the space that measures 20 by 30. “I can still grow a lot,” he said.

He’s happy with the improvements that have been made.

“Before, if a water main would break, they had to shut off the water to the entire garden to fix it,” he said. “Now, the water is set up in zones, so if there’s a problem, the water is shut off only in that zone.”

The paths are wider now that the garden has been reconfigured, making it easier to get around garden beds, and the garden has equipment available for gardeners to borrow, so they don’t have to haul their own from home.

As of mid-May, about half the plots had been leased at $80 a year.

The garden has long practiced good environmental stewardship, with on-site composting and sustainable watering

practices. There is also a buffer zone between the garden and the stream that runs beside it, so the garden can help filter rainwater.

Before the garden was closed for renovation, Hylton estimated it produced about 14 tons of fresh produce a year.

Many gardeners, like McBride, filled their freezers and canning jars, shared with their friends and neighbors, and donated to charitable organizations working to provide food security and alleviate hunger.

Gardeners are not allowed to sell the food they produce, under the terms of the lease.

“We were happy to share, sometimes with people who just walked up needing food,” he said. “There was plenty for everyone.”

McBride paused and said, “I’m really looking forward to having everyone come back to the garden.” TM

The Florida A&M Cooperative Extension Community Garden was created to provide a place for faculty, staff, students and community residents to grow fresh vegetables year-round for consumption at home. Its goals are to improve the diets and health of families; reduce the cost of food; and to provide an area for people who do not have adequate space at home to grow vegetables. The average planted plot produces enough food annually to feed approximately 60 individuals. More information is available at (850) 599-3546.

TALLAHASSEEMAGA ZINE.COM

photography by LINDSEY MASTERSON

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ner of Action Legal Discovery Services

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overy Services and myself, personally, have enjoyed a great relationship with we wouldn’t miss a beat from a down printer.” ntire staff at CopyFax for over 15 years. Their delivery staff, sales, service, management are all friendly, dependable and extremely knowledgeable.”

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In slow-pitch softball, a high percentage of pitched balls are put into play. In that way, . it departs from baseball and That certainty is part of the game’s appeal. rfast-pitch. an D

with vice, ble.”

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PHOTO BY FABIOMAX / ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS

Powell Rd.

Capital Circle NE

M a lineup full of right-handed pull hitters, there is little opportunity to relax.

Unless playing right field against Apprehension attaches itself to every pitch. And uncertainty. With the next swing of his bat, a hitter may drive in a run with an infield squibber or a rope that knocks the glove off the short fielder. Among players, there are various archetypes: the mauler, the base hitter, the man with a gun for an arm, the man who somehow digs out those wicked ground balls smashed COPYFAX toward third, 2000 the sponsor/coach without whom teams never would come together. And there are a few whose names loom especially large in a community’s softball history. Here, we profile a few such prominent players. We devote a story, too, to fast-pitch softball, a game played by women and Eliza Rd. girls and dominated by pitchers whose violent, torqued-up pitching motion is frankly confounding. The average slow-pitch guy, attempting such a motion, might likely bowl the ball toward home plate or toss it straight up into the air. Among different strokes, there is this common denominator: Most everyone — men and women, boys and showroom more it generates. Camaraderie among good people, who prefer girlsVisit — whoour plays softball istoday fond ofto thelearn camaraderie about all the services we have to offer. to find their good times between the lines. — STEVE BORNHOFT

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HIGH COMPRESSION Modern gear has intensified softball

A

BY STEVE BORNHOFT

AMONG GOLFERS, THERE ARE

some who are never content to play with anything other than the latest driver. It matters little that the big stick won’t let them more reliably sink 12-foot putts.

That same fixation on the latest and greatest extends to softball players and their bats.

Going, going, gone went the days of Louisville Sluggers made of hickory and ash. About the time that Frank Ashcroft established B&B Sporting Goods in Tallahassee in 1982, a revolutionary aluminum product called the Bombat arrived on the sporting goods scene.

Ashcroft was dubious. Would a weekend player accustomed to paying $15 for a wooden club pay $40 for a metal stick? His doubts soon dissipated.

“I sold those bats as fast as I could get them,” he said.

Entrepreneur and inventor Ronald Foreman, who introduced the Bombat after his efforts to succeed with an aluminum tennis racket fizzled, would soon be joined by

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ILLUSTRATION BY LINDSEY MASTERSON AND PHOTOS BY DAVE BARFIELD (#39) AND BATS COURTESY OF EASTON.RAWLINGS.COM

competitors. Louisville Slugger began manufacturing aluminum bats.

Easton gobbled up market share.

Today, softballers can choose among aluminum bats, alloy bats and composite bats, which are made from a carbon fiber polymer. There are bats that are as good as they will ever be the day they are made, and there are bats that, like fielder’s gloves, require some breaking in. Which perform best is a matter of considerable debate.

“Easton created the first alloy bats, and whenever they came out with a new model, I probably bought 30 of them,” Ashcroft said. “I had them all sold before they arrived at the store. We would reorder and just try to keep up with the new bats. It’s never stopped.

Everybody is trying to come up with a bat better than the others, and I don’t know how many manufacturers are out there producing bats.”

Balls, too, have evolved, to the point where they have prompted rules changes.

“The first balls that we had all had cork centers,” Ashcroft said. “After you hit them about 10 times, they were like a rolled-up pair of socks.”

The advent of a poly core center was to balls as aluminum was to bats.

COMPOSITE BAT

ALUMINUM BAT

Composite bats are made of a carbon fiber polymer that is mixed with graphite and fiberglass. The materials provide the bats with qualities including better pop.

Introduced in the 1970s, aluminum bats represented a cheaper and more durable alternative to wooden bats.

Unlike composite bats, they dent, but do not break.

VS.

A softball is made up of a core and cover sewn together with stitching, but it lacks a midsection of yarn that a baseball has. Its core is made of a synthetic mixture composed of either polyurethane or kapok, which is a combination of cork and rubber.

The circumference of this core varies by league-set standards.

“Worth came out with a poly core in the early ’80s, and they glued the leather on,” Ashcroft explained.

“They made balls in the late ’80s that you could hit a country mile.”

Some tournaments prohibited use of the highest compression balls, whereas at others, it was anything goes — and the balls went.

“People would show up with the Red Dot or the Hot Dot or something like that,” Ashcroft said, adding that while rules may vary depending upon the class of play, limits on the number of home runs that may be hit in an inning or a game are now typical.

“My boys have played tournaments where if you hit the ball out of the park, you’re literally out of the game,” Ashcroft said. A coach who shows up with 10 or 11 players will be left with holes in his lineup if careless players hit dingers, and when those empty spots come around in the batting order, they are automatic outs.

“It’s a little crazy, but it makes the guys hit the ball on the ground or turn it down,” Ashcroft said.

Modern bats and high-test balls have resulted in protective nets that are placed on the pitcher’s mound.

“I’ll tell you that if I were pitching these days, I’d throw the ball and get right behind the net,” Ashcroft said.

“In senior league, that’s mandatory. If

you’re batting and hit the net, it counts as a foul ball. If there are two strikes on you and you hit it, you’re out.”

The number of companies making fielder’s gloves has grown, Ashcroft said — it’s not just Wilson and Rawlings anymore — but gloves, themselves, have changed little.

Large, 14-inch mitts have been around for a long as Ashcroft has been selling gear and “they’re still made the same, still cut the same,” he said. “The only thing that has gone on with them is the price has gone up. I have people come in all the time and ask me if I am still selling that A-2000 for $100.

Sorry. Now, they’re about $399.”

Ashcroft, for obvious reason, misses the days when tournaments uniformly required that players dress in like hats, shirts, pants and socks. And he misses what he now regards as softball’s heyday, the ’80s and ’90s.

“We had well over 500 softball teams in Tallahassee back then between the state league and other men’s and women’s and co-ed leagues,” Ashcroft recalled. Amateur Softball Association rules prevailed.

Everybody was in uniform.

“As the years progressed, other leagues came in — the Independent Softball Association and others — and they didn’t have that requirement,” Ashcroft said. “Just give ’em a T-shirt

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The number of companies making fielder’s gloves has grown, Ashcroft said — it’s not just Wilson and Rawlings anymore — but gloves, themselves, have changed little. Large, 14-inch mitts have been around for a long as Ashcroft has been selling gear and “they’re still made the same, still cut the same,” he said. with a number on it, you know what I mean?”

During the heyday, teams had to survive area, regional and state tournaments to qualify for nationals.

“Now, it’s not like that,” Ashcroft said.

“There are fewer teams and they have so many classifications and different leagues, all you gotta do is pay to play.”

Quite apart from play at the state or national levels, Ashcroft recalls “little random tournaments” that were once as numerous as 5K races are today.

“Out at Hartsfield Farms, which is not in existence anymore, he had three fields out in the cow pasture,” Ashcroft said.

“People would go out on a Saturday and a Sunday and play tournaments there, and there were tournaments in Havana.

There were tournaments pretty much every weekend, whatever class you wanted to play in.”

That was then.

“People seem to have lost interest in softball over the years,” Ashcroft regrets.

Maybe folks are more lethargic than they used to be. Maybe soccer is to blame.

“Soccer has taken a lot of kids out of softball and baseball,” Ashcroft said.

“Some parents believe that little Johnny is not gonna get hurt playing soccer.

And, it’s less of an individual sport than baseball or softball. If you’re at home plate fixin’ to hit the ball, you’re the center of attention. Soccer, you just kick

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↗ Frank Ashcroft recalls with fondness “softball’s heyday” of the 1980s and ’90s when small-scale local softball tournaments were as numerous as 5K races are today.

the ball around, it’s a group effort. Well, it is what it is, and at least the kids are out there playing something.”

For a long while, softball was Ashcroft’s vocation, avocation and vacations.

“I don’t know that me and my wife even took a vacation for 10 years,” he said. “It was, ‘OK we’re going to Tampa’ or, ‘We’re goin’ to Panama City to play at Oakland Terrace Park.’ It’s still there, by the way. Hasn’t changed a bit.”

RODNEY NEWMAN SR. As a pitcher, he learned batters’ tendencies

R

BY STEVE BORNHOFT

PHOTO BY DAVE BARFIELD

RODNEY NEWMAN SR. PLAYED

baseball in high school, and post graduation, a typical track would have had him playing American Legion ball. Newman, however, found that he liked softball better.

His father, Gene, had gotten into sponsoring and coaching softball, and Rodney started playing for Newman’s Auto Air as a teen, back in the wood-bat era.

Newman’s, as the team was known, was content to kick around at the city league level for a couple of years, but at some point, it was overtaken by competitive urges.

Wooden bats gave way to aluminum bats, and Newman’s became a well-known and highly regarded regional softball powerhouse.

“In the late ’80s and ’90s, we stepped up and started having our big softball teams,” Newman said.

“We were ranked pretty good on the national level. There was a fellow named Jerome Earnest over in Panama City. He worked for The News Herald newspaper and

had a really good softball magazine that let you know how teams across the country did from week to week. We kept close track.”

At the time, there was but a single national tournament without classifications. Newman’s played in the open division, and there was no limit on the number of home runs a team could hit.

“Back then, your base hitters hit base hits, and your home-run hitters his home runs,” Newman said.

“But today, as you well know, they got balls that anyone can hit out of the park. They’re pitching from behind screens and wearing chest protectors, and I just never would have wanted to play like that.”

Newman started his softball career in left field, moved to the infield and then to the mound. As a pitcher, he would quickly backpedal after releasing the ball, effectively becoming a fifth infielder.

“If the batter hit me, he was gonna hit me around second base,” Newman said.

“You’ve got to throw the right arc, and then you’ve got to learn your hitters,” Newman said about keys to pitching success. “When you play on the bigger teams, you start playing some teams over and over, and you learn which batter is gonna probably swing at a bad first pitch and which batters will take a few. We would alternate pitchers every other batter when we played those big teams sometimes, just to give them something different to look at. If you got the wind right, you could try to curve the ball some. But sometimes, I don’t care what you do; it’s slow pitch softball, they’re gonna hit you.”

After losing the tip of his middle finger in an accident at work, Newman preferred to pitch wearing a Fastback glove manufactured by Rawlings. He poked the damaged finger out a hole in the back of the mitt, thus giving it an extra layer of protection.

In assembling its top tournament teams, Newman’s would recruit players from Panama City and even Fort Walton Beach. Too, Coach Newman would look for former FSU football stars with an interest in joining his team.

Fred “The Head” Miller and Phil Arnold were two who did.

“They weren’t base hitters. They were big guys. They hit home runs,” Newman said.

He recalls with fondness home run hitter Mike Cobb of Panama City who would fill a Newman’s roster spot from time to time.

“At the Southeastern tournament, he knew how to hit on those Panama City fields,” Newman said.

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“You’ve got to throw the right arc, and then you’ve got to learn your hitters,” Newman said about keys to pitching success.

“The wind would be hawking in about 20, 30 miles an hour. People would try to hit against it, and the ball would just get up there and hang, but Mike would hit it dead on down the line to left field and get it out of there.”

Newman recalls a time when teams from Tallahassee, unable to keep pace with ringer-laden teams from out of town, never won the Tallahassee Open.

“But there was one year where we played Ray’s Metal Works out of Gainesville,” Newman said. “The year before, they were runners-up at nationals. We beat them, 5150, in the Tallahassee Open championship game. There must have been 300 or 400 people around the fence watching that game.”

In the course of that triumph, Newman came to the plate, desperate not to kill a rally. He hit the ball on the ground to the left side of the infield. The crowd winced as one, but the ball slipped between the Ray’s third baseman and shortstop and bled into the outfield.

The crowd audibly exhaled.

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A STUDENT OF THE GAME Reggie Brown totes a bat of renown

R

BY STEVE BORNHOFT

REGGIE BROWN WAS STILL MUTTERING.

The night before, his team of seniors had lost in city league play to a church league team that Brown and company rightfully should have beaten.

“They were young kids, and I was pitching,” Brown said. “We just didn’t make the plays that we needed to make — fly balls, ground balls that should have been double plays. We had a ball hit to second base and instead of making the sure out, we tried to get the runner at the plate. We would have had two outs, and maybe we get out of the inning. Instead, the next three guys hit singles, and the fourth guy hit a grand slam.”

Brown says all of this as if cardinal rules had been broken. At 58, he’s not inclined to make or particularly forgive rookie mistakes anymore.

Brown has been around the game of softball since his days as a member of what might have been called the Chain Link Gang, shagging home run balls for teams that played in the Tallahassee Open and paid him $5 or $10 a game for his services.

Over time, Brown would take his place as one of the more formidable Open Division players that Tallahassee has produced. Like others who have played softball for decades,

he followed a trajectory that led him from the outfield to less rigorous duty as a catcher or extra hitter (EH).

These days, he divides his time between the hybrid church/seniors league team in Tallahassee and road trips to serious 50 and 55 Major Plus tournaments. At this writing, he is packing his bat bag for a trip to Las Vegas.

So it is that Brown approaches games with two different mindsets and in two different gears.

“As far as league, I have had to tone down my competitiveness because I am playing with a bunch of older guys, and I don’t want to run them out of the game,” Brown said. “It’s about having fun, not winning at all costs. I have batted against an 82-year-old pitcher, you know what I mean? But weekend tournaments, that’s a different story.”

Back in the day, Brown played with and against Brian Rowland when the future publisher was donning formal wear and driving limos for a living.

Rowland recalls with ease the night that Brown, playing a shallow left field, challenged him to hit the ball over his head. After making a couple of outs, Rowland succeeded that way and taunted Brown by shouting, “Torched,” as he rounded first and the outfielder scampered to the fence.

PHOTO BY DAVE BARFIELD

→ Reggie Brown plays softball at two speeds. In city league play, he takes his natural competitiveness down a notch, but in tournament play, he swings away.

“True story,” Brown conceded. “He can put that one on me, that’s alright.

That’s the kind of friendship we have.

He failed to score, though, so we were good. He wasn’t that fast.”

Together, Rowland and Brown played on a team, Hair Works, that was sponsored by a salon.

“He was a good pitcher, he moved the ball around,” Brown said. “He gave the hitter different looks and different

movements. You’d think he was gonna float it in there, and he would do what we call four-seaming — it gets in there quicker than you think it’s going to. He reminds me of what I do.”

Brown, who has logged a lot of Open Division innings on the mound, said the best softball pitchers resemble Greg Maddux or Tom Glavine. He is a student of the game, and every game is one more lesson.

“I try to outthink the hitter,” Brown said. “If you get a hit on this pitch, you’re not going to see it again. I’m playing a chess game. We nibble, nibble, nibble, but never pitch the ball right over the plate.”

When hitting, Brown said, anticipation is important.

“I pay attention to what the pitcher is throwing and what the umpire is calling, and then I make adjustments to where I stand in the batter’s box,” Brown said. “When you become a good hitter, the bat you have doesn’t matter much. You just have to make adjustments. I don’t look for excuses.

I look for solutions. Give me a bat, whether it’s heavy or light, I will make it work. I’ll just place my hands in different positions to compensate.”

But among bats, bigger isn’t always badder.

“I used to swing the heaviest bat they had, 38 ounces, then I got smart and started swinging the lightest one,” Brown said. “When I got my first Bombat (an early aluminum bat) from Walmart, I thought I was king of the world. The first glove I ever bought was a first baseman’s mitt from Buddy’s Sporting Goods before Frank Ashcroft bought the business. Steve Garvey model.”

Brown regrets that Tallahassee is not the softball town it once was.

“The Tallahassee Open used to attract 32 of the best teams in the country,” Brown recalled. “There were tournaments — 40, 50 teams — that used every field in town, and it could be that way again. Tallahassee has some of the finest softball complexes in the South.”

For Brown, a return to softball’s glory days is simply a matter of competitive field-rental pricing and a new commitment to what for him is the greatest of pastimes.

“It’s sad to see our fields sitting vacant,” he said.

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Jerry Reynolds hits the ball down and out

T

BY STEVE BORNHOFT

THREE

TIMES,

JERRY

REYNOLDS

backed away from tournament softball — when his children were small; when he paused for seven years to coach his son in travel baseball; and while recovering from hipreplacement surgery.

But still, at 58, he plays.

“The fire is still there,” Reynolds said.

“You still have to work at it, and you still have to get in your batting practice.

You’ve got to stretch and get ready to play so you don’t injure yourself.”

But the sport is less taxing now.

“At tournaments, you play just a couple of games a day — before sundown,” Reynolds explained. “We don’t play at night because no one can see at night anymore. It’s totally different now because you feel fortunate just to be able to go out and play softball.”

As a result of that good feeling, everyone — including players on opposing teams — is friendly with one another.

“You still want to have a high average and hit balls out of the park, run the

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bases and make plays because you’ve been that competitive guy all of your life,” Reynolds said. “But it’s fun.”

Reynolds, a three-sport athlete at North Florida Christian School and the son of the first football coach at Wakulla Senior High School in Crawfordville, started playing softball following his graduation from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Before he even crossed the stage, Buck Faircloth called him and asked him to play for his Capital City Radiator team in Tallahassee.

Quickly, Reynolds took softball steps.

Rodney Newman Sr. tempted him away from Capital City Radiator.

Reynolds was playing for the celebrated Newman’s team when it merged with its rival, Meeks Electric. He went on to play for teams in Alabama sponsored by TPS, a bat maker, and by Woerner Turf before Suncoast Softball, a bat maker located in Bradenton, Florida, recruited him.

Today, Reynolds plays city league ball in Tallahassee and otherwise

PHOTO BY DAVE BARFIELD

400 FEET OR THROUGH THE HOLE

travels to tournaments with Suncoast’s 55 Major Plus team. He is a member of Suncoast’s pro staff and, in that capacity, tests bats in development and leads camps for men, age 50 and over, who are taking up softball in retirement, playing the game in some cases for the first time.

Senior leagues are hard to find in Florida outside of the large retirement community, The Villages, but 50-andover, even 60-and-over, tournaments are numerous. Already this year, Suncoast has won an International Senior Softball Association championship and Senior Softball-USA’s spring national tournament.

“Back in the day, I played short and third,” Reynolds said. “Now, I play third and first, and sometimes I just hit.

When I first started playing, the bats were heavier and they weren’t as good.

You had to work out and be strong to be able to swing them. Now, they are all composite bats, and they are crazy hot.

We’re older and slower, and the ball is coming at us harder than ever.”

Among those hot bats is a Jerry Reynolds autograph model made by Suncoast, a bat that Reynolds no doubt tested on its way to market.

“At Suncoast, engineers show up with a bunch of bats uniformly painted black,” Reynolds said. “They are numbered but otherwise unmarked.”

Pro staff members hit with the bats and rank them in order of preference while Suncoast employees, using a device like a golf range finder, record distances. The pro staff guys provide feedback that could not be gained by using a machine to hit the balls.

“We can comment on how the handle flexes, for example,” Reynolds said. “Some bats, you can feel the barrel lagging a little bit. With a stiff handle, the ball jumps off the bat right away.

← At age 58, Jerry Reynolds can still hit a softball a ton, but it’s his ability to consistently stroke base hits that has made him a most valuable player and an advisor to a bat maker.

“The bats engineered for our company are probably the best bats out there, in my opinion.

But some people like Worth bats, and some people like Miken bats. It’s all a matter of feel. They are all made out of the same materials, and they all perform pretty well.”

Reynolds has adapted as the game has changed and he has aged. He has gotten used to two first bases and two home plates, accommodations made to prevent collisions between fielders and base runners.

In Major Plus games, teams are limited to nine home runs per game and seven runs per inning, except for the seventh inning when scoring is unlimited.

Reynolds explained that teams try to maximize their run production in innings one through six while saving some homers for the final frame. To do so, it’s essential that hitters refrain from hitting balls out of the yard unless there are runners on base. As a general rule, teams try to get 20 runs out of their long balls.

“The bats are so good, everybody on the team can hit it out,” Reynolds said. “I try to be that guy who can hit it down or hit it out when I need to.”

As a test hitter for Suncoast, Reynolds, who weighs in at 250 pounds, has driven balls more than 400 feet, shots that would clear the fences in a typical adult softball field by 100-plus feet.

“But the high average, that’s what got my name on that bat,” Reynolds said.

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AMONG GIANTS, HE STOOD TALL Earl Chambers commanded a measure of respect

W

BY STEVE BORNHOFT

WHEN EARL CHAMBERS MOVED TO

Tallahassee in 1973, he had some knowledge of the city’s softball scene, having grown up in Dothan, Alabama.

He approached Buddy Brandt of Buddy’s Sporting Goods, whose team Chambers knew to be one of the most competitive in town.

Brandt didn’t want Chambers. He dismissed him as too small, even as Chambers stood 6-foot-1 and weighed about a buck-ninety.

Undeterred, Chambers caught on with Hammons Equipment whose coach, business owner Doug Hammons, had assembled a roster half of whose members were FSU football players. Future All Americans and NFL pros Gary Huff and Barry Smith were among them.

“We had some big-time athletes, but they played city league with us,” Chambers said. “We weren’t a great team, but we knew how to play together.

We had a lot of fun, a lot of chemistry.”

Over the course of his career, Chambers would come increasingly to value camaraderie over championships. He played softball at the highest levels in premium tournaments along the way and earned the nickname Earl the Pearl given his silky smooth play at shortstop.

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Chambers moved from Hammons to Buddy’s, the team that had spurned him, and over a couple of years played with the kinds of studs who commanded national recognition. Chambers turned heads, too, and after playing a tournament in Jacksonville, he was approached by the sponsor of a team, Nelson’s Paints, out of Oklahoma City.

Incredulous at first, Chambers accepted an invitation to play in flyover country, where he would remain for four years.

“I had a blast,” Chambers said. “We went all over the country. Jerome Ernest of Panama City traveled with us for a couple of years.”

Ernest published a magazine that covered softball teams nationwide and, Chambers said, had helped Brandt assemble his best teams by putting him in touch with players across Northwest Florida.

“When I moved to Oklahoma, it actually made me a better player

because the wind blows in Oklahoma — every day, 15 miles an hour,” Chambers said. “And the parks were bigger, at least 300 feet or better. With that wind blowing up your nose, you couldn’t just muscle the ball out of the park. You learned to hit singles and doubles.”

Chambers returned to Florida to play for Jerry’s Caterers out of Miami at a point where he was approaching competitive burnout and seeking an escape from unrealistic expectations.

“It got to be no fun for me,” Chambers said. “I was playing for people who had never put a jock strap on. They really didn’t understand. They thought you were supposed to make every play, never make an out.”

Chambers retreated to Tallahassee and played for Newman’s. He had known Rodney Newman Sr. and his father Gene since Rodney had been in high school.

“I started playing with them and started having fun again, and that was the best time I ever had playing softball,” Chambers said.

Chambers once won a national Independent Softball Association championship at H.G. Harders Recreation Complex in Bay County with a team of players from Panama City and fellow Tallahassee resident Homer Newlin.

David Beck assembled the team, which starred the Walsingham brothers.

Among players from throughout the region, pitcher Steve Jones of Panama City stood out for Chambers.

“When I moved to Oklahoma, it actually made me a better player because the wind blows in Oklahoma — every day, 15 miles an hour,” Chambers said. “And the parks were bigger, at least 300 feet or better.

With that wind blowing up your nose, you couldn’t just muscle the ball out of the park. You learned to hit singles and doubles.”

PHOTO BY KEN LANESE COURTESY OF FSU ATHLETICS (LEONARD)

“I loved playing with him and against him,” he said. “He was so passionate and made the most of his ability. He wasn’t a great player, but he was a great player, if you know what I mean.”

As if to illustrate his preference for humble and enthusiastic versus arrogant and unpleasant, Chambers told a story about Cincinnati Reds great Pete Rose.

Chambers traveled to a sporting goods trade show in Chicago with friends including Mike Cobb of Panama City, who had invented a swing trainer he called the Cobb Knocker.

Rose was at the show signing autographs.

Cobb looks a lot like Rose — anyone would say so — but when Chambers pointed out the resemblance to the player known as Charlie Hustle, Rose showed his derriere, the Pearl said.

“I lost all respect for him right then,” Chambers added.

Chambers worked for beer distributors for 35 years, finding that “when you are in that line of work, people assume that all you do is drink and have fun all the time.

“The fact is, I don’t even like beer, can’t stand it. If I ever needed an opinion about a beer, I had my wife sample it.”

So it is that when Chambers gets together with old friends, he doesn’t throw back a cold one, but he does enjoy the fraternity, now more than ever.

“You come by a different opinion about people once you’re around them away from the field,” Chambers said. “Maybe I used to think that Steve wasn’t a very good third baseman. But now I know he’s a really good guy.”

→ FSU’s Mack Leonard displays the complex movement that a successful pitcher must command.

POUNDING THE ZONE

W

WITH A SENSATIONAL 1.59 CAREER

earned run average as of May 1, Florida State University’s Kathryn Sandercock has established herself as one of the most dominant pitchers in NCAA Division 1 softball.

As a kid, she was briefly barred from the mound for a propensity to pound batters rather than the strike zone, but now, with more than a decade of fast-pitch softball under her belt, Sandercock has mastered both technique and mindset.

Fast-pitch success requires controlled explosions

BY EMMA WITMER

“I throw my best when I’m reminding myself to relax,” Sandercock said. “You want it to be fluid, not a herky-jerky motion.”

Fluid, yes, and controlled.

A successful windup requires coordinated, complex movement.

Fastballs spring from the fingertips, while a successful change-up comes from the palm, FSU pitcher Mack Leonard explained. Moving from one pitch in a repertoire to another, a pitcher must take care not to let

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→ Elizabeth Hightower, a Jefferson County native, unleashes a pitch for the University of Florida. She once played for Tallahassee-based travel teams.

“If you try to learn all six pitches at once, you’re probably going to end up really average at all six, but you only need a good three to win,” Hightower said. “Focus on getting a good fastball and change-up and hit your spots. Then you can try a riser, a drop, a curve or a screw.”

There is a debate among the coaches about how early to teach kids a rise ball due to the stress its motion puts on developing joints and muscles.

“My dad wouldn’t even let me try a rise ball until I was 14 or 15,” Sandercock said. “I am really grateful for that.”

Sandercock is, by her own account, a drop ball pitcher, though she grew up calling them “splitters.”

“When I coach or give pitching lessons and teach the drop ball, I emphasize putting pressure on the top of the ball and peeling it out and down, finishing with your fingertips pointing at your toes,” Sandercock said.

From age 8 forward, Sandercock spent nearly every spare moment working on her craft, meeting with private pitching coaches, flying across the country for travel softball tournaments or working with her dad in the backyard. During the snowy months in her Virginia

hometown, Sandercock frequently traveled two hours out of town to the nearest indoor practice facility.

Still, Sandercock stresses the importance of knowing your limits.

Pitching practice, she said, is much more about quality than quantity.

“With hitting or fielding, you can go out and work at it for hours, but with pitching, if I throw for more than an hour in the bullpen, it’s counterproductive and bad for my body,” Sandercock said.

“Pitching is really 90% mental and 10% physical,” Leonard added, departing from the famous Yogi Berra quote about baseball being 90% mental and the other half physical.

“You have to want to do it every day because it can feel like a job. You have to love it. You have to focus on the little things. You can’t just go out and do a bunch of reps, you have to put intent behind it.” TM

PHOTO BY HANNAH WHITE COURTESY OF UF SOFTBALL (HIGHTOWER)

the batter detect what she is about to throw next.

Leonard threw her first pitch around the age of 8. Now, the Illinois native uses her skills as a veteran FSU performer and a mentor to upand-coming talent. She describes her early training like learning the waltz.

Separately, each step feels awkward and unnatural, but put the pieces together, and the dance is graceful.

“I would start out on my knee doing wrist flips at a quarter circle, half circle and a third,” Leonard said.

“Then I would do a whole one, just to make sure my arm was going up by my ear and not getting away from my body. When I stood up, I had to make sure my arm was moving through my hip. Once I had that down, I would put it in full motion, and from there it’s all about timing with your step and your stride and making sure everything is in a sequence together.”

There are six standard softball pitches, though few hurlers master them all. University of Florida pitcher and Jefferson County native Elizabeth Hightower said you don’t need all six to succeed.

“If you try to learn all six pitches at once, you’re probably going to end up really average at all six, but you only need a good three to win,” Hightower said. “Focus on getting a good fastball and change-up and hit your spots.

Then you can try a riser, a drop, a curve or a screw.”

The fastball is hurdle No. 1 for beginners. Sandercock said a pitcher uses every available ounce of explosive energy driving the ball through the “power line” that runs from the center of the mound to the center of the plate. Most pitchers move to the change-up next, a slower pitch meant to throw off a batter’s timing. Curveballs and screwballs dart toward or away from hitters.

Drop pitches and rise balls live up to their names.

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KEEPING TABS ON ALL THAT MUSES INSPIRE

→

Frank Jones performs at the House of Music in Tallahassee. The venue’s owner, Russ Pangratz, describes Jones as a talented musician who surrounds himself with good talent.

MUSIC

JONESING FOR THE PERFECT VIBE

↓

The Frank Jones Band gets people to their feet

by ROCHELLE KOFF

ETHICS photography by DAVE BARFIELD

Royalty Treatment

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ost of the audience was on its feet, moving like shadows against the bright lights bathing the stage in beams of blazing red, yellow, blue and purple. Students and grandparents alike mingled on the dance floor, inhibitions gone.

Inspiring the crowd was the Frank Jones Band — three musicians playing their rollicking mix of blues, soul, funk and rock ’n’ roll at the House of Music, formerly Junction at Monroe, in Tallahassee.

It was a good night.

“If the crowd is feeling it, we feel it too, and it just makes the show even better,” said guitarist and singer Frank Jones, who formed the band in 2016.

“It’s pretty awesome.”

When Jones plays his goldtop Epiphone, it’s like watching — and hearing — a cascade of liquid notes, lots of them, but each perfectly placed and never showy.

Along with Jones, the band is made up of experienced musicians — drummer Brett Crook and bass player George E. Rodgers III. They’re sometimes joined by a piano player or saxophonist, but these three alone bring a big sound and solid musicianship to the region.

“Frank is one of the most talented musicians in town, and he surrounds himself with good talent,” said Russ Pangratz, owner of House of Music.

“He has a good following.”

The band generally performs within 300 to 400 miles of Tallahassee. Locally, aside from House of Music, they’ve played at venues such as Fire Betty’s, Hurricane Grill & Wings and the Bradfordville Blues Club. In April, they performed at Proof Brewing Company and Cascades Park as part of the Word of South festival. And they’re often taking gigs in Apalachicola, Panama City, Steinhatchee and other spots along the Gulf.

They theorize that playing beach towns is probably one reason they survived the devastating impact of the pandemic on the music community.

“We were one of the few bands that played the entire time,” said Crook.

“We went to the coast — Carrabelle photography by DAVE BARFIELD

↑ By day, drummer Brett Crooks is a marketing manager for an online investing website.

The Frank Jones Band stayed active during the pandemic, he said, by heading for the coast.

and Apalachicola and St. George. They stayed open.”

Crook has opened for acts including James Brown and B.B. King, was on tour as a drummer with Grammy-nominated Cedric Burnside and was also in a band that toured with Hootie & the Blowfish.

The Frank Jones Band has built a growing fan base, but the musicians concede it’s a tough industry. All three work day jobs in addition to playing music. It’s a balancing act that will sound familiar to many local bands — juggling dreams and a passion for music with the reality of earning a dependable living, maybe supporting a family.

“On the weekends, I play music. It’s what I love to do,” said Rodgers, who has joined performers such as The Commodores, The Strikers, Regina Carter, Donald Byrd, Stephanie Mills, The Crown Heights Affair and Sheila Raye Charles, daughter of the late Ray Charles.

“I’d rather play music full time, but the cash flow ain’t there. It’s hard to support a family,” said Rodgers, who has four children. “This is my love, this is my calling. It’s not a job for me.”

Rodgers, 60, is a welder. Crook, 56, is a private instructor and marketing manager for an online investment community website. Jones, 34, works for an emergency management consulting firm.

Despite the need for day jobs, they can’t shake their lifelong love of performing.

A native of Tallahassee, Jones’ musical path changed after a visit to the Bradfordville Blues Club when he was a teen. It turned out that the talented young musician on stage, Rick Lollar, was a friend he hadn’t seen since third grade.

“He was awesome,” said Jones, who was inspired to advance his own instrumental skills. He would go to the venerable blues club quite often to catch accomplished acts like Damon Fowler, Sarasota Slim (Gene Hardage) and Roosevelt Collier.

At 14, Jones began taking lessons from legendary guitar player and teacher “Missippy James” Stanton, who also taught Lollar and a group of other talented young musicians in Tallahassee.

“Frank was one of those students who had above-average talent for his age,” said Stanton. “If there’s a natural talent, he seems to have it.”

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Bass player George E. Rodgers III moved from New York to Moultrie, Georgia, where his wife had family, and from there to Tallahassee.

“If I get someone to dance, I’ve done my job,” he says.

But Jones didn’t want to live the life of a touring musician.

“I made a pretty conscious decision all along,” he said. “I wanted a family, so I was never really going to go on the road or have that setup as my means of income, to be gone from a family I wanted to support. I managed to keep it pretty low-key.”

The only thing about that plan: “I’m not married unfortunately. Looking at it now, it’s like, ‘Oops, I might have gone and done that.’”

Jones graduated from Lincoln High School and started attending Tallahassee Community College, but “I ran out of money.”

He began working at the Florida State University bowling alley fixing bowling machines, then the Department of State and other state agencies before his current job helping cities and counties recoup money after natural disasters.

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“Music has still been my primary interest,” said Jones, whose influences include Albert Collins, B.B. King, Albert King, The Funky Meters, Clarence Carter, Ray Charles, The Beatles and Edgar Winter.

He played with the local Southern rock band, King Cotton, after high school then decided to start his own band. Jones wrote some of his own songs and recorded an album called First Take.

He started playing with Crook about three years ago. Crook had been a drummer, touring with bands for years though he cut back when his son, now 18, was born. “I decided to stop touring,” he said.

Crook grew up in Tallahassee and received his first drum set — “the blue sparkles catalog special” — from Sears when he was a boy.

His mother performed and traveled with a singing sister act, so “she was

always supportive,” Crook said. He learned the harmonica from his grandfather. His stepfather, Mark Ellerbee, was the original drummer for the Oak Ridge Boys.

Crook left Tallahassee after high school and lived in Los Angeles, Orlando and South Florida, playing most of the time. While touring with Cedric Burnside, “we played at the Lincoln Center in New York City, in the atrium, and it was one of the highlights of my career.”

Since Crook moved back to the Capital City seven years ago, he has freelanced with various bands.

“For me, I’m one of the older ones, so I feel blessed every time we get up there and play,” he said.

Rodgers expresses a similar sentiment.

Originally from Queens, New York, he started as a drummer, playing in church as a boy. He later was a drummer photography by DAVE BARFIELD

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with an R&B group but was inspired by the band, Earth, Wind & Fire. “When I was 18 or 19, I taught myself to play bass.”

His influences include Earth, Wind & Fire’s founding member and bassist, Verdine White, and the jazz, R&B and rock bass player, Nathan East.

Rodgers toured with several bands in his career, then moved first from New York to Moultrie, Georgia, where his wife had family, and then to Tallahassee. He’s been playing with the Frank Jones Band for a few years.

“I’m playing every weekend with them or other bands,” said Rodgers. “If I have a weekend off, I feel lost.

“I love what I do, and I get along with everybody,” he said. “A good attitude is right up there with playing ability. That’s the name of the game — be a professional.

“If I can get someone to dance, I’m doing my job,” added Rodgers.

Talking about their goals, they all share a desire to tour, even if briefly.

“I’ve always wanted to play in Europe,” said Jones.

“This band could definitely do that,” added Crook.

Rodgers wants to tour, but said trips have their ups and downs.

“It’s exciting at first, but after the first couple weeks you’re like enough is enough,” said Rodgers, who would like to play in Japan. “Yet, when I see a tour bus, I think, ‘Who’s in there? It should be me.’”

But playing overseas is only one option. They agree that even a Florida tour would be a boost.

“You have to be hustling to be working all the time,” said Jones. “There’s the business side to it, and that takes a chunk of time. We try to share as much of that as we can.

“It’s a whole lot of work even if you take away the years of practicing and learning your instrument,” said Jones.

“You have to learn the words to songs, about 30 songs for each show. There’s stringing up guitars and batteries and cables, and all that little stuff piles up.”

Still, the music is in their blood, and that’s what matters to all of them.

“With really great shows, you get so locked in with the music, it’s really spiritual,” said Jones. “You get that almost out-of-body experience. If we can get to the point where somebody, even if it’s only one person, is connected to the music, it’s something else.” ↑ They connect this night at Frank Jones Band FIRST TAKE House of Music. The crowd undulates as the trio render After playing for a Southern rock their version of Tyrone band in high school, Davis’ If I Could Turn Back Jones began his the Hands of Time. For the own band and wrote songs for an album, Frank Jones Band, the time First Take. is now. TM

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ETHICS

ROYALTY TREATMENT Should visual artists be assigned rights like those of writers?

by WYNN PARKS

ARTIST RIGHTS: A Timetable

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1883

The Berne Convention establishes copyright laws in participating European countries.

TALLAHASSEEMAGA ZINE.COM

Theo’s wife and from there to Vincent’s nephew. Today, Van Gogh paintings go for as much as $120 million — money that finally overstuffed the accounts of someone of the third generation.

Today, not much has changed, even for artists fortunate enough to make periodic sales. If they’re tough enough and their commitment to art turns out to be enduring, they are still likely to lead a hand-to-mouth existence. And, they may watch the one $500 sale they make in a given year later auctioned off for a hundred times that and enriching a latter-day collector.

Artists of all stripes know that scenario, including Florida-born B.F. Taylor, who in the flush of his love affair with painting, founded the Aegean School of Fine Arts in Greece. There, he died pulled apart

1928

The Rome revision of the Berne Convention includes the adoption of a Moral Rights of Artists bill.

1979

by trying to straddle the abyss between artist and administrator. He was intense when painting and straightforward with two generations of students in taking potshots at the perennial problem of artists’ rights.

“Sure you can copyright both visual art and literary art, but look at this — a writer can get royalties on his book sales and rights for life and 70 years more,” Taylor once said. “And on top of that, in a sense there’s no original; a writer is selling copies! When you or I sell an original painting or a sculpture, copyright aside, that’s all we get!”

In addition to copyrights, artists might certainly profit from moral and resale rights. When questioned about the latter, a majority of interviewed artists viewed the “all you get” principle as an

In the spirit of measures adopted in Europe, California passes an Arts Preservation Act.

1990

Inspired by European precedents and the California law, Congress passes the federal Visual Artists Rights Act. illustration by LINDSEY MASTERSON

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE RIJKSMUSEUM, AMSTERDAM / BRITANNICA.COM (VAN GOGH)

B

eing an artist, especially if your vision of the world doesn’t match the current aesthetic zeitgeist, can be as rough as a cob. Most people interested in the visual arts, especially painting, know the tales of Vincent van Gogh trading for food or art supplies without having sold any of his canvases. Fortunately for subsequent generations, his brother, Theo, aware of Vincent’s gift and recognizing Vincent’s crippled emotional state, contributed to the artist’s support.

Yet even between the two devoted brothers, it must have been a case of the blind leading the selfmutilated. Barely six months after Vincent’s suicide, Theo died of syphilis. Except ↑ for the paintSelf-Portrait, oil painting by Vincent ings he’d bartered van Gogh, 1887, in with, Vincent’s the Rijksmuseum, collection went to Amsterdam.

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“… In a sense there’s no original; a writer is selling copies! When you or I sell an original painting or a sculpture, copyright aside, that’s all we get!”

Creating a

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inescapable reality as if “continuing rights” were a tale from either the Big Rock Candy Mountain or France.

On the other hand, Preston McLane, director of FSU’s Fine Arts Museum, put in perspective the gradual shaping of artists’ rights over the past century and a half. French and German movements embraced the issue. The Berne Convention in 1883 established copyright laws in the signatory European countries.

Forty-five years later, with the 1928 Rome revision of the convention, came the adoption of the Moral Rights of Artists bill. The gist of “Moral Rights” involved listing on paper an artist’s legal rights over his or her creation based on the nature of the artist’s livelihood.

That roaring, pre-Depression era convention guarantees that the integrity of an artist’s work shall be preserved, even if he or she no longer owns it, thus preventing a collector from cutting up a sculpture and selling off pieces of it. The second guarantee is that of paternity, meaning that a work of art can’t be shown without the name of its creator. The other two rights, disclosure and withdrawal, declare that an artist is not obliged to show a work until he or she deems it to be completed, and that an artist has the prerogative to remove a work from a display.

It took the U.S. a while — B.F. Taylor to catch up with these conventions. In the spirit of European conventions, California passed in 1979 its Art Preservation Act, a precursor to the federal Visual Artists Rights Act passed in 1990.

However, despite all the gains in “continuing interest,” the bill of Moral Rights does not entitle artists to remunerations like Taylor’s writer collecting royalties.

Segundo Fernandez, a senior partner in the Tallahassee law firm of Oertel, Fernandez, Bryant & Atkinson, is a go-to guy on the subject. He’s an FSU graduate with degrees in both law and art history and was asked about how an artist could, after the initial sale of an art object, collect on subsequent sales.

“At this point, the question comes down to a legal issue,” Fernandez said. “I know of an artist in Seattle who works in glass. I don’t know the details, but his sales contracts are set up so that if the buyer wants to resell, the artist gets first refusal to buy back. And the buy-back price is specified.

At that point, something comes to yours truly, and I ask the attorney, “What would you think of putting a QR code on the back of artists’ canvases or under their sculptures’ bases to authenticate the piece and keep track of owners, stuff like that?"

“Hmmm,” Fernandez says thoughtfully.

The early brush strokes of an idea, I’d say. TM

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Technology’s reach extends to the necessary room

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S

uddenly technology is invading every corner of the bathroom, and analysts studying what homeowners want after COVID-19 aren’t surprised. After all, soaking and showering became a comforting pastime during lockdowns, along with sanitizing everything and dealing with the dreaded toilet paper shortage. Consequently, more people are upgrading their baths in numerous ways.

The NKBA, a trade association of the nation’s kitchen and bath designers, surveyed its members to learn what homeowners want from their baths these days, and the answer was high-tech faucets and toilets with bidets, heated seats and self-cleaning technology. Plus, overwhelmingly, spalike indulgences, such as showers and baths with sophisticated functions, sound and light systems.

One item that appeared at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show is the socalled Wellness Toilet that will interact with you as you check out the artichokes, beets or whatever in the produce aisle.

It will start speaking to you via your phone, recommending what you should

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buy and how to cook it. The concept of toilets whose content can be analyzed has been on clinicians’ radar for a long time, but designers are guessing that homeowners aren’t yet ready for that kind of technology. At any rate, it’ll be a while before it is ready for the marketplace.

SMART TOILETS

Still, there’s no doubt that available toilets are becoming very smart and are being welcomed with open arms. Today’s options by Toto include automatic

closing and opening of the seat, which can also be heated and light up at night.

Flushing and cleaning also happen automatically, and you can absolutely play your favorite tune — that may put you in such a good mood that you are ready for a built-in bidet option.

Certainly anybody who has ever traveled to Europe, is familiar with bidet functions, and in Japan, people have been using an electronic bidet-seat toilet since 1980. Called a Washlet, it cleans and dries you; 80 percent of Japanese households and certainly most hotels use it. Strangely, bidets have been slow gaining acceptance in the U.S. despite the fact that it was actually an American, Arnold Cokes, who invented the technology. After COVID, though, bidet sets are gaining acceptance in the U.S. as well, and Paul McManus of McManus Kitchens & Baths in Tallahassee thinks that’s an excellent trend. ←↑ Highly sophisticated sound and lighting systems are often built into today’s most posh bathrooms. Lighting effects in photo at top, created by McManus Kitchen & Bath, provide an example. Kohler’s Avoir toilet, at left, won a gold award at the 2022 Kitchen & Bath Show.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF KOHLER (TOILET) AND MCMANUS KITCHEN & BATH

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abodes “I am a huge fan of bidet seats,” he said, “and I think every toilet should have one. Cold-water bidet seats are inexpensive and easy to install. A cold-water bidet might sound uncomfortable, but they really are not. If you want a heated bidet seat, you need to have a plug installed behind the toilet. Bidet seats can actually be very simple or pretty complicated. They can raise and lower the seat via motion sensors, spray perfume when you’re done, have air drying functions and more. I lean toward the simpler ones.”

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There was lots of great product news at the 2022 Kitchen & Bath Show. For example, tub lovers will adore Kohler’s new Perfect Fill system. It consists of a smart drain and filler that automatically adds or removes water to fill the tub to your desired depth and temperature, and it is voice-activated. An additional control can store 10 bath profiles, including a shallow, toddler-friendly wash.

Want to save shower water?

Then Moen’s new RainStick will shower you with a three-gallona-minute spray while using 80 percent less water. This happens by pulling the water back up ↑ Control panel enables users through the shower’s column, of Kohler’s Perfect Fill system filtering and disinfecting before to draw baths to a desired respraying. It won the 2022 Best depth and temperature. in Show Award.

Interested in massages? Then BainUltra’s 42-jet Thermomasseur tub handles massages while keeping the water warm and also features chromotherapy.

McManus thinks lighting is too often overlooked.

For example, add green or blue low-power night lights for those late-night trips to the toilet so your night vision isn’t ruined and your sleep disturbed. And use bacterial-killing lights that can be turned on after using the bath, he added.

The findings at the Kitchen & Bath Show as well as designer surveys point to trends other than those involving the most sensational innovations. Smart and low-flow toilets will be commonly used within the next three years. Other changes will include voiceactivated lights, mirrors that hook up to Bluetooth, smart technology for pre-heated water, mood lighting and water sensors in condos and townhouses where others’ negligence could damage homes.

Finally, there’s something homeowners came to wish for during lockdowns: heated bathroom floors. They are becoming even more popular than rain sticks and chromotherapy showers, say the NKBA designers. TM

PHOTOS COURTESY OF KOHLER

THE REST OF THE BATH

Ella

Emily

Irene

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Summer

We are thrilled to announce Arbor Communities’ newest community, Magnolia Hill Estates, located off Buck Lake Road with all brick homes and large open spaces coming fall of 2022.

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* Photos are for advertising purposes. Delivery timeline is an estimate and can beTALL altered.

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EXTERIORS

CLIMBING VINES Twiners and tendrils add new dimension to yardscapes

by LIS KING

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↑However thorny, roses, in all of their romantic colors, add a wow factor to flowerscapes and make any day a special occasion. Wisteria, lower photo, is a flowering member of the legume family with woody, twining vines.

PHOTOS BY ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS: VIVIAN SONG (ROSES) AND SOHADISZNO (WISTERIA)

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avvy home gardeners know there’s more to a lush yard than the ground covers, flower spreads and shrubs that grow at ground level. They are finding that climbing vines can add welcome elevation and contrast as they wind in and around all sorts of structures.

Many vines are so showy that they are bound to become a wow factor.

Climbing vines are readily available at Tallahassee nurseries and garden centers as well as from plant catalogs and online.

However, combining vines that work well together can be a problem. That’s because they don’t all climb the same way, so while one may twine upward by itself, another may need to be pinned up to a structure to climb in the preferred direction.

Another thing to keep in mind is how vigorous a grower a vine is. Some of them are so profuse that they will keep you wielding your pruning shears more often than you’d prefer. For example, garden blogs often complain about wisteria growing too aggressively. While it’s true that this vine, if allowed to grow unchecked, can make a building look like a wooly beast, that reputation isn’t quite fair, says the horticultural team from W. Attlee Burpee & Company. If placed right and tended to, wisteria, with its stunning flower clusters, can climb up the walls and across the roof of an unsightly building and give it a look of a charming cottage in a storybook village.

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TYPES OF VINES

There are more than two dozen ways that vines climb, but most are variations on four themes. There are twiners, and then there are vines that climb via tendrils, aerial rootless, or some kind of hook.

The twiners, which send out shoots that will wind around a support, include varieties like wisteria, honeysuckle, hyacinth bean and chocolate vine. They need only a sturdy support to get going.

Members of the grape family, sweet peas and passion flowers are tendril vines, meaning that they have angel hair-like antennae that whip around until they find a support. Their tendrils are short and erupt all over the place, so they need something sturdy like mesh or chicken wire to keep them from latching to each other and ending up in a tangled mess.

Plants like English ivy and wintercreeper climb by aerial rootlets, and they’re unbelievably tenacious. They’ll latch on to a fence or a house, and it’s recommended that you prune them away from windows and gutters.

There are variations on these climbing methods. For example, roses use thorns to attach to a wood lattice or a tree trunk, but the canes still need a bit of direction. Weave them through a trellis, or tie them to a support.

Virginia creeper and Boston ivy form tendrils that end in little sucker disks. Clematis fashions tendrils; help it out by hooking a leaf stem around a support.

PLANTING TIPS

Vines don’t have to be all about gorgeous flowers. Burpee’s horticultural team thinks vegetable vines can be interesting, too. For North Florida, they suggest pole beans,

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TWINERS

These vines send out shoots that wrap around a support.

Beyond the support, itself, they need no assistance.

TENDRILS

Vines in this group produce thin antennae that whip around until they contact an object or another tendril.

AERIAL ROOTLETS

The aerial rootlets of plants including wintercreeper readily latch onto fences and houses and may need pruning.

HOOK

Plants that rely on hooks to go vertical may need a hand. They may be wound through a trellis or tied to supports.

TYPES OF VINES

Malabar spinach and cucumbers. Among perennial vines, they like passionflower, lonicera and honeysuckle, and in the annuals category, their choices are morning glory, moonflowers, cypress vine, thunbergia and cup-and-saucer vine.

If you like to spend time outside in the evening, Robin Ruether, product manager at Burpee, says you will do particularly well with moonflower, with its saucer-like, white blooms that light up the night and soften the air with a lemony fragrance. Honeysuckle, too, is an afterdark winner, smelling so sweet it will attract giant moths and other pollinators from blocks away. She also likes the cup-and-saucer vine, a South and Central American native and a vigorous climber with giant white flowers.

“It’s best to plant these climbers in early spring before there is too much heat, or in the fall,” she said. “They need a well-draining soil that is loose with a lot of organic matter such as compost mixed in. Dig a hole to accommodate the roots. Remove the plant from the pot and place the top of the root ball even with the level of the surrounding soil. Fill with soil to the top of the root, pat down the soil firmly and give the plant a good drink.”

Fences are natural supports for vines, and the most attractive way to cover an ugly chain link fence is with flowering climbers. Wood trellises are also good supports and are easy to install.

Landscape designers discourage homeowners from installing trellises up against house walls since so many climbers tend to get out of hand. Instead, add the trellises to flower beds where they will provide dimensional contrast.

Finally, think of adding a vine-covered arbor to your yard. It’ll quickly become your favorite romantic tea house or dinner spot. TM

PHOTOS BY ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS: PICTUREPARTNERS (HONEYSUCKLE), YANA BOIKO (TWINERS), MABELIN SANTOS (TENDRILS) AND SWEETPEAANNA (HOOK)

← Aromatic honeysuckle, best enjoyed in the evening, attracts large moths and other pollinators.

READY SET

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SUMMER COLOR Vincas can handle dog-days heat

by LES HARRISON

T

he heat and humidity of North Florida summers limit the options for adding color to the home landscape, but there are a few possibilities.

Vincas, the herbaceous summer bloomer, handles the area’s high heat with ease. Four species are evergreen and are most commonly encountered locally, but one is deciduous and will die back in autumn.

Reaching a height of about two feet, they are ideal as foundation shrubs or in mass plantings in the landscape. Colors for blooms range from white to blue and purple.

Their ability to handle mildly acidic to mildly alkaline soil gives the homeowner leeway to plant in a variety of locations. This is especially important for new construction where concrete or mortar scraps raise the soil’s pH in close proximity to the home.

Additionally, they are one of the few bedding plants that will successfully tolerate shade and

full sun exposure. Leaf mulch and pine straw will help stabilize soil moisture and moderate temperatures in the root zone.

Planting sites should have well to moderately well-drained soils. Excessively hot and dry locations are not suitable even though this plant is somewhat drought tolerant.

A non-native plant, vincas will spread if given the opportunity. Their prostrate growth pattern with slender trailing stems will cover an area devoid of other plants. Many of the stems will root, forming new plants.

Another heat-tolerant summer option is coleus, which has a wide variety of colorful leaves and combinations. They share many of the positive traits of vincas but are susceptible to a variety of pest species.

Neither plant is salt tolerant, meaning they are not good choices for coastal locations.

Eastern tent caterpillars build large, thick nests in the forks and crotches of many kinds of trees, especially cherry. The silky, tent-shaped nests are easy to identify on the upper branches of host trees. The caterpillars emerge in spring and go through six developmental stages. A few survive to become small nocturnal moths. The female adult moth lays her eggs in a single batch from May to July. There are 200 to 300 eggs laid in the group. The mass of eggs is shiny, reddish-brown and looks like dried foam. They are ordinarily about 6 inches back from the tip of a thin twig in the host tree. In approximately three weeks, the eggs contain fully formed caterpillars, but the small caterpillars remain in the eggs until the following spring. In late February to mid-March, they chew their way through their eggshells ready to devour tender leaves as their host tree is in spring bud. The voracious larvae immediately infest and, if in sufficient numbers, defoliate oak, plum and poplar.

Usually, the trees recover after a few weeks, but weakened or diseased trees may die. If safely reached, nests can be removed and the cycle disrupted. Heavy infestations may require a pest control specialist.

TENT CATERPILLARS

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Les Harrison is a retired University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences Wakulla County extension director.

PHOTOS BY ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS: LIUDMILA CHERNETSKA (VINCAS), JOE_POTATO (SOIL), CHRISTINLOLA (CATERPILLARS)

GREEN SCENE

The dog days of summer are the best time to use the sun’s energy to control a variety of pests. This can be accomplished by solarization, trapping the sun’s heat in the top few inches of the soil.

This technique is accomplished by covering an area with clear plastic for at least six weeks. Clear plastic sheeting will let the sun through to the soil and heat it to lethal levels for weed seed, insect eggs and fungi.

Pest populations will remain suppressed for three to four months, sometimes longer.

Black plastic is not recommended because it reflects too much of the sunlight to be effective.

SAME OWNERSHIP, TWO GREAT COMPANIES!

LAWSON & LAWSON ELECTRIC “The Good Guys” have been providing Tallahassee, and the panhandle region with quality electrical services since 1979. We are on duty 24-hours a day, and work in both the commercial/industrial, and residential fields.

LAWSON & LAWSON ELECTRICAL SERVICES, INC. llelectrical.com 850.562.4111 EC13002050, EC13002151, EN213938

LAWSON ALARM We provide fire detection, monitoring, and inspections as well as life alert systems for the elderly and disabled. We are trained and able to handle ALL of your low voltage needs from security and fire protection to Audio/ Video/Theater install and computer network systems.

LAWSON ALARM lawsonalarm.com 850-75-ALARM Florida License #EC13004698 Georgia License #EN213938

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PROMOTION

DEAL ESTATE

JUST LISTED

Northeast Tallahassee Cul-de-sac Living!

This gorgeous home is located in Northeast Tallahassee on a very quiet and private cul-de-sac. It features an open, light and bright floorplan with exceptional space for everyone; stainless steel appliances; hardwood flooring; a tankless hot water heater; gutters; a master downstairs bedroom along with two other bedrooms; an extra bedroom upstairs with its own full bath; composite decking perfect for Florida weather; and a covered back porch.

LISTED PRICE: $579,900 ADDRESS: 2365 Hadley Crossing Court SQUARE FOOTAGE: 2,749 BEDROOMS: 4 BATHROOMS: 3 FEATURES: Two-car garage, stainless steel appliances, hardwood flooring, tankless hot water heater, gutters, master bedroom downstairs along with two other bedrooms and an extra bedroom upstairs, composite decking, covered back porch APPEAL: This all-brick, newly built home is located on a private cul-de-sac lot in Northeast Tallahassee.

CONTACT INFORMATION: Kathy Reardon, (850) 510-2511 kathy@tallahasseehomeseller.com Coldwell Banker Hartung

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PHOTOS BY 323 MEDIA COURTESY OF COLDWELL BANKER HARTUNG

YEAR BUILT: 2018

3303 Thomasville Road Tallahassee, Fl 32308 • 850.386.6160 • Cbhartung.com

Wherever you dream of living, We’ll help guide you there.

3303 Thomasville Road Tallahassee, FL | 850.386.6160 | cbhartung.com

Where Your Dreams Become Home TALL TALLAHASSEEMAGA AHASSEEMAGAZINE.COM ZINE.COM

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PROMOTION

DEAL ESTATE JUST LISTED

Picturesque WaterColor Retreat Enjoy quintessential WaterColor style at this 6 bedroom, 5 ½ bathroom residence in the much sought-after Lake District, featuring picturesque park views and a central location only one block from a popular community pool. This property offers an open living and dining space with hardwood floors, walls of windows, volume ceilings, shiplap walls and custom window treatments. One of two beautiful master suites is located on the first level and features an exquisite en suite with a double vanity, large soaking tub and walk-in glass shower. Located on 499 acres in the renowned South Walton beaches, the WaterColor community offers the charm of small-town life. Exceptional community amenities include six beautiful swimming pools; a recently renovated Gulf-front beach club; nature trails; a boathouse offering kayaking, canoeing and paddleboarding; a fitness center and outstanding tennis facility; Camp WaterColor for kids with a lazy river and waterslide; parks and green spaces.

LISTED PRICE: $4,995,000 ADDRESS: 81 Needlerush Drive, Santa Rosa Beach SQUARE FOOTAGE: 3,707 BEDROOMS: 6 BATHROOMS: 5.5 FEATURES: Gourmet kitchen, quartzite countertops, Wolf and Sub-Zero appliances, wet bar, mudroom, covered patio, outdoor fireplace, large soaking tub, walk-in glass shower, two master suites, three guest rooms, built-in bunk rooms, covered second floor balcony, covered carport, outdoor shower, hardwood floors, volume ceilings, shiplap walls and custom window treatments.

APPEAL: Classic neutral hues welcome you with turquoise accents reminiscent of the sparkling nearby waters of the Gulf. Indeed, this stunning home is steps from the Gulf and community amenities, so you can enjoy all that WaterColor has to offer!

CONTACT INFORMATION: Jason Naumann, Broker/Owner The Naumann Group Real Estate (850) 933-0328 Greg Alsobrook, Realtor®, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Beach Properties of Florida, (850) 687-5810

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PHOTOS BY ALEX DOSSEY COURTESY OF NAUMANN GROUP REAL ESTATE, INC.

YEAR BUILT: 2013

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PROMOTION

DEAL ESTATE

JUST SOLD

Wonderful Family Home in Quiet and Safe Cul-de-sac in the Arvah Branch Neighborhood Eastside This spacious 3 bedroom, 2 bath home is ideal for raising a family. It has a dining room for family gatherings and a breakfast nook for on-the-go family activities. There is a separate living room for quiet reading or practicing the violin. The vaulted and oversize family room is great for watching sports on the big-screen TV. The family will love the updated, efficient kitchen and bar area for family cooking. The house sits on almost ¾ of an acre, most of which is fenced for kids and pups. There is a whole-house generator for those stormy times. The neighbors are all like family and take care of each other!

LISTED PRICE: $335,000 SOLD PRICE: $346,000 ADDRESS: 1973 Bushy Hall Road SQUARE FOOTAGE: 2,043 BEDROOMS: 3 BATHROOMS: 2 FEATURES: Newer roof, water heater and HVAC. Engineered wood floors throughout. Updated kitchen with granite countertops and black and stainless steel appliances. Whole-house generator.

Updated master bathroom.

APPEAL: Quiet cul-de-sac, family neighborhood, east side, great schools, Miccosukee Greenway for fun and exercise, updated family-sized home.

CONTACT INFORMATION: Joan H. Raley, Realtor (850) 545-9390 Joan@JoanRaley.com

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF JOAN H. RALEY, REALTOR

YEAR BUILT: 2001

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CONVENIENCE AND CONTROL

Audio Video Connections PROFESSIONAL DESIGN & INSTALLATION Home Theater | Networking | Home Automation

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MARK ICE, OWNER

(850) 251-4931 | MarkIce.net | Mark@MarkIce.net

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PROFESSIONAL PROFILES

Tallahassee is a wonderful place to live and work largely because of the businesses and companies that keep it thriving. We entrust the business professionals in our community with helping us make financial, health care, economic, personal and promotional decisions.

Choosing the right company to trust is essential. In this special section of Tallahassee Magazine, we profile selected, highly regarded professionals who have proven accountable, dependable, trustworthy and dedicated to improving the lives of those they assist.

Turn the pages to meet them.

PROFESSIONAL PROFILES

From left to right: Kristi Holland, Service Center Manager (Killearn); Alex Gonzalez, Service Center Manager (Governor’s Crossing); Traci Poucher, Regional Manager; Kendalyn Gordon, Service Center Manager (Mahan).

CAMPUS USA Credit Union

C

AMPUS USA Credit Union is a people helping people type of business. As a not-forprofit cooperative, they are owned by their members to best serve the interests of their members. With 18 service centers in North Central Florida, they serve over 100,000 member-owners as a full service financial cooperative offering a multitude of consumer and business services — such as checking and savings accounts, auto and home loans, credit cards, investment services and more.

Their shared vision is to empower their employees to make a positive difference in the financial lives of their members and in the communities they serve.

WHAT SETS YOUR BUSINESS APART?

At CAMPUS, you’re not just a member — you own the place. Profits are returned to member-owners in the form of no-and low-fee financial services and best-of-market rates on deposits and loans. Since our members own CAMPUS, we can never be bought, nor can we merge with another institution without our members’ approval.

WHAT IMPACT DO YOU HOPE TO MAKE ON THE COMMUNITY? We want to be

seen as a committed partner in the communities we serve. CAMPUS invests hundreds of thousands of dollars every year — these funds are donated directly

to local organizations that impact the community in a positive way.

WHAT DO YOU HOPE CUSTOMERS GAIN FROM INTERACTING WITH YOUR COMPANY? Most members are

surprised that when they bank with us, it feels more like being a part of a big family rather than just “banking.” We hope our members always call us first when making big financial decisions — that’s why we’re here.

MOST PEOPLE DON’T KNOW THIS BUT … CAMPUS started like many small

businesses — by a group of people who wanted to make a difference. The Credit Union started with nine members who each bought a $5 share account, which is the same price as a “share” today when a member opens an account.

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Joseph Brooks and Olivia Brooks

Brooks Law

OLIVIA BROOKS, ATTORNEY

A

s family law attorneys, Olivia Brooks and her father Joseph Brooks are dedicated to bringing about positive outcomes for families faced with difficult times.

As a practice, they concentrate in all aspects of family law including divorce, child support, parenting plans, paternity, equitable distribution, spousal support, domestic violence injunctions, court orders, appeals and

more. Joseph Brooks also specializes in medical malpractice litigation.

Inspired by her father, who has practiced law in Tallahassee for more than 30 years, Olivia Brooks decided to pursue a law degree at Florida State University. While in school, she gravitated to family law.

“Family law is hard because it’s emotionally charged, but seeing clients happy and healing as a result of a case in their favor makes it all worthwhile for everyone,” Brooks said. “Getting good outcomes for families is what I consider success, whether that means taking a case all the way to trial or settling in mediation.”

The firm offers free legal consultations to ensure that the cases they take are a good fit for the practice. Always, Brooks seeks to create comfortable, trusted and respectful relationships with her clients.

She and her paralegal, Dawn Duggan, are committed to thoroughly informing and educating clients and, most importantly, closely listening to them. Brooks makes certain that no details are overlooked and that all client concerns are addressed in a timely manner.

Brooks’ assets include skill in predicting outcomes, the ability to provide clients with sound advice based on legal precedents and her own growing body of experience. She also enjoys doing appellate work for family law cases.

“My intention is always to make the best decisions for each family, not only in the present, but for many years to come,” Brooks said.

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PROFESSIONAL PROFILES

Capital City Bank JUSTIN FOREHAND BUSINESS BANKER WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO PURSUE THIS CAREER? As early as I can remember my grandfather, Red Smith, would take me to the Capital City Bank North Monroe Office to make deposits. Longtime Tallahasseans may remember him from Red and Sam’s Fish Camp and The Tradewinds Restaurant out at Lake Jackson. Those early experiences drew me to business and commerce, which became part of my DNA. Being a banker has allowed me to learn about many types of business and to be active in the business community, just in a different way than my granddad.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE MOST ABOUT WHAT YOU DO? Banking is fundamentally a relationship business, so what I love most is developing meaningful, longstanding relationships with my clients and having a front-row seat to their successes.

There’s no better feeling than earning my clients’ trust and partnering with them to help meet financial goals.

WHAT SERVICES DOES YOUR COMPANY PROVIDE? Capital City Bank provides a full range of banking services, including traditional deposit and credit services, digital banking solutions, mortgage banking, asset management, trust, merchant services, bankcards, securities brokerage services and life insurance.

WHAT MAKES YOUR COMPANY UNIQUE? Capital City Bank places top priority on meeting the needs of our

clients, enhancing associates’ experiences and enriching our communities. The ways we serve our clients, seek to offer personalized financial solutions and support our local communities amplify our impact as trusted bankers and loyal neighbors. We aim to reflect and support the priorities of the communities we call home through financial and in-kind investments and matching associates’ personal donations to charitable organizations. Plus, we are committed to growing a more diverse workforce, cultivating professionalism and industry expertise and nurturing a culture of inclusion within our workplaces.

WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR GREATEST PROFESSIONAL ACHIEVEMENT? As I head into my 30th year as a banker and ponder a career that has ranged from teller to market president and now business lender, I can see how much of my success stems from experienced bankers who took an interest in me and offered guidance along the way. Every opportunity has contributed to the banker I am today, yet I feel my greatest professional achievement has been developing informal mentorships and collaborations with many up-and-coming colleagues. I take great satisfaction when advice based on my experiences can help other bankers grow in their careers.

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Naumann Group Real Estate, Inc. JASON NAUMANN, OWNER AND BROKER

J

ason Naumann will be the first to tell you that Northwest Florida is the most desirable region he can think of to live in. His five offices covering Tallahassee, Franklin County and South Walton County reflect his fondness for and commitment to the area.

Moving from Tampa to Tallahassee to attend Florida State University in 1993, Naumann began selling real estate his sophomore year and never stopped.

Upon graduation, he knew he wanted to open his own business in Tallahassee and help people buy homes. In 2001, he did just that.

The Naumann Group provides residential and commercial real estate services. With the help of a dedicated and passionate team, Naumann has

been able to expand the business into developing and building neighborhoods including Camelia Oaks, an active adult community in Tallahassee.

“It’s become a real passion — conceptualizing a neighborhood, representing the builder and watching it fill with people while making relationships with those buyers,” Naumann said. “It’s fulfilling to create unique communities that are more than houses, but places where people can enjoy and interact with one another.”

For Naumann, cultivating quality relationships extends to his employees, as well. While other real estate groups tend to hire independent contractors, The Naumann Group operates as a collaborative team that

creates a synergy that leads to success.

“Building the team that I work with is what I’m most proud of,” Naumann said. “It took a while, but now we have a team with unstoppable momentum.”

That momentum has led to The Naumann Group’s expanded footprint encompassing much of Northwest Florida — and Naumann is confident that there is more growth to come.

He recognizes that buying a home is a major investment, one that takes careful consideration and complete trust.

At The Naumann Group, establishing a relationship of trust comes first, and then the fun begins — finding the home, business or neighborhood that checks all of your boxes.

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PROFESSIONAL PROFILES

Morgan Bailey, Commercial Banker; Bill Moore, Synovus Market President-Tallahassee; Chattie Winton, Commercial Banker

Synovus

B

anks have long served as pillars of communities, helping businesses, families, and individuals achieve their financial and life goals. At Synovus, team members view their customers as both business associates and friends.

Market President Bill Moore likes that chemistry and interpersonal dynamic, just as he has since he joined the bank in 1993. “It’s key that we operate like a small,

local bank in the way we make and sustain relationships, yet we provide the resources, technology, security, and expertise of the $57 billion bank that we are,” Moore said.

Synovus provides traditional loan and deposit services, along with merchant processing, fraud mitigation, financial planning, international transactions, employee management benefits, trust services, and much more.

“We strive to focus on banking holistically, not just transactionally,” said Morgan Bailey, a commercial banker. “Whether it’s a business or personal visit, we build relationships every step of the way.”

Synovus recently won 23 Greenwich Excellence Awards for Banking in the small

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business and middle market categories, consistently places on the Forbes’ list of America’s Best Banks and is a certified Great Place to Work company.

“Synovus team members carry their positive outlook into the community, where they engage in service projects and support nonprofits. The company has contributed $1.76 million to nearly 300 health, wellness, and education organizations throughout its five-state footprint,” said commercial banker Chattie Winton.

“Whether it’s by giving our time through service or through our banking tools and solutions,” Moore said, “helping our community will always come first.”

SPEC IA L A DVERTISIN G SECTION

Coldwell Banker Hartung CHIP HARTUNG, OWNER

C

hip Hartung, the owner of Coldwell Banker Hartung, is a people person. While his business specializes in residential and commercial real estate brokerage services, seeing to clients’ happiness by serving them as a

genuinely interested partner is a big part of the job.

Hartung began his career in real estate at a Tallahassee firm shortly after graduating college. Five years in, he decided to open his own brokerage, Chip Hartung and Associates. While

he enjoyed this venture, he aspired to the growth and recognition that larger, national real estate companies provided.

In 1981, he purchased a Coldwell Banker franchise, which provided him with vast industry knowledge and proven tools. Coldwell Bank Hartung has served Tallahassee, the Panhandle and South Georgia for over 40 years.

“When you first begin a business, it’s hard to fathom 40 years, but in retrospect the most rewarding aspect is owning a sustainable business because this means we’ve managed to satisfy our customers, stay true to our goals and maintain a respectable reputation for that long,” Hartung said.

The team’s hard work has paid off with earning coveted awards. In 2022, Coldwell Banker Hartung received the Chairman’s Circle award, the highest honor bestowed in the Coldwell Banker real estate network.

Such success stems from dedication.

Hartung hires only full-time professionals, setting a high standard for his personnel.

Those agents derive satisfaction and motivation from seeing clients excited with their new home or commercial property.

Community relationships extend beyond office meetings and house showings to events, volunteering and fundraising with organizations such as Adopt-A-Pet, Joanna Francis Living Well, Christmas Connection, Second Harvest of the Big Bend, The Kearney Center, United Way and more.

“We choose to do the right thing and make the right decisions for our clients every day,” Hartung said.

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PROFESSIONAL PROFILES

RECON Restoration & Reconstruction, LLC

S

teven and Ashley Wright have been involved in restoring properties for over 10 years.

All it took was being a part of the devastation experienced throughout the Panhandle from Hurricane Michael in 2018 to realize they wanted to help their neighbors as first responders. From there, they opened their own business, RECON Restoration & Reconstruction, LLC. The business provides resources to property owners with property damage and insurance claims.

RECON specializes in mold remediation, fire/smoke damage restoration, water mitigation, contents/packouts, eviction cleanings,

full-service cleanings, storm damage cleanup, reconstruction and soon, roofing. Their main focus is residential, student housing, condominiums and commercial spaces.

The husband and wife team both grew up in military families and have built their business around military values and expectations. They define their own success based upon the satisfaction of both their customers and their employees.

“We offer a customer focused experience — seamless communication, competitive and fair pricing, highly skilled IICRC certified technicians who are available 24/7 providing quality work every time.

Also, as a courtesy, we work with insurance companies to ensure all claims are handled appropriately and in a timely manner,” said Wright.

Their intention is that RECON is always synonymous with trust and quality work. To date, their copious five-star reviews reflect that. They are preferred vendors for the top insurance companies in Florida and are highly skilled in dealing with insurance property claims.

Whether it’s the roof over your head or the contents inside that make a house your home, RECON Restoration & Reconstruction, LLC is there to help you restore normalcy — with improvements.

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PHOTO BY JOHN HARRINGTON

STEVEN & ASHLEY WRIGHT, OWNERS/OPERATORS

SPEC IA L A DVERTISIN G SECTION

MillCreek Financial Consultants

WILLIAM GREEN, CFP®, PRESIDENT, FINANCIAL ADVISOR

William Green, CFP®

Robbie Kinney

ROBBIE KINNEY, PARTNER, FINANCIAL ADVISOR

M

illCreek Financial Consultants is in the business of providing tailored advice and solutions to its clients, recognizing that no two persons’ circumstances are exactly alike.

Seven years ago, after years in the financial planning industry, William Green and Robbie Kinney joined to form MillCreek Financial Consultants.

They shared a desire to take a different approach to financial planning, one that offered clients a strategic relationship rather than just a catalog of products.

MillCreek Financial Consultants offers services that span life insurance, IRAs, retirement planning, investments, financial management, business planning, stock portfolios and more. No matter your level of sophistication, the team is committed to thoroughly understanding your unique financial situation.

“We are financial coaches and educators,” Kinney said. “We specialize in strategy and macroeconomic

solutions. You can think of it as setting the game board for your financial life.”

Rather than assuming clients know their way around financial language or situations, the team aims to educate and ultimately build financial literacy and confidence.

When mapping out your financial plan, you have access to the entire MillCreek team. Where other financial institutions might direct your questions elsewhere, someone on the MillCreek team will find answers or locate someone who can, even if that means bringing in an attorney or CPA.

When hiring, Green and Kinney carefully describe jobs and then strategically consider candidates until they find people who are perfect fits and will be an asset to the company and the clients.

The company has grown largely on the basis of recommendations from satisfied clients.

“Our goal is for clients to leave with the confidence that we provided them with financial services they wouldn’t be able to get as comprehensively anywhere else,” Green said.

Securities products and advisory services offered through PAS, member FINRA,SIPC. OSJ: 3664 Coolidge Ct, Tallahassee, FL 32311, 850-562-9075 PAS is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America® (Guardian), New York, NY. Mill Creek Financial Consultants is not an affiliate or subsidiary of PAS or Guardian. 2022-138095 Exp 5/24.

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calendar PROMOTION

JUL/AUG 2022 For more events in Tallahassee, visit TallahasseeMagazine.com. compiled by JAVIS OGDEN,

REBECCA PADGETT FRETT ZANDRA WOLFGRAM

and

AUG. 20

EM ASSE AGAZI NE AH LL

2022

’S

BEST OF TALLAHASSEE

TA

SAVE THE DATE: OCT. 26

↓

Gather with us in person at the Dunlap Champions Club for the 24th annual of Best of Tallahassee event, presented by TA LL A H A S SEE Ox Bottom Animal Hospital, as we celebrate the community’s best of the best. Enjoy delicious food, specialty cocktails, live music and more as we honor the businesses that make Tallahassee a great place to live.

Visit 850tix.com/events/2022-best-of-tallahassee-10-26-2022 for more information and to purchase tickets.

FAMU Grape Harvest Festival The 2022 FAMU Grape Harvest Festival is about more than grapes; it’s about health, community and education. Events will include a grape-stomping competition, the annual 5K Vineyard Run and Walka-Thon, informational and community exhibits, grape picking, wine and grape sampling, live musical performances, a petting zoo, water slides, lots of food/ beverage/snack vendors and much more.

For more information, visit bit.ly/ FAMUGrapeHarvest22.

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PROMOTION

SEPT. 10

TALLAHASSEE BEER FESTIVAL

→ The Tallahassee Beer Fest, held at the Donald L. Tucker Civic Center, will welcome more than 70 home brewers and breweries that will offer nearly 200 beverages to sample, including ciders, ales, meads, sparkling sodas, wine and more. Festival-goers receive a tasting cup upon entry and may fill it as many times as they like.

For more information, visit TLHBeerFest.com.

REGIONAL

OCT. 15

Best of

“Civil Rights: Soul of a Movement” celebrates the faith, hope and resilience that prevailed during America’s civil rights movement. The event features the dynamic vocals of The Soul Collective and the JRive Quartet.

A narrator, Monica Woods, tells the story of the movement between songs and is joined by folk philosopher and storyteller Segun Williams, whose father knew Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

THE MOUNTAIN GOATS JULY 12

→ Join us for an evening of celebration at Grand Boulevard in Sandestin as we showcase the winners of Best of the Emerald Coast awards for 2022. The 23rd annual event will be a night of food, fashion and fun. Sip, savor and sample offerings from the best restaurants, shops and businesses on the coast.

The Mountain Goats return to The Moon for a performance of songs on their latest album, Dark In Here, released by Merge Records. visittallahassee.com/events/themountain-goats-at-the-moon

ROCK THE ROOST WITH LUKE BRYAN

To get tickets, visit 850tix.com/ events/2022-best-of-theemerald-coast-10-15-2022.

PHOTOS BY SAIGE ROBERTS (BEST OF TALLAHASSEE), LAND AIR SEA PRODUCTIONS (BEST OF EMERALD COAST), THE WORKMANS (PINNACLE) AND COURTESY OF FAMU GRAPE HARVEST FESTIVAL AND TALLAHASSEE BEER FESTIVAL

JULY 9

tallahasseearts.org/event/civil-rightssoul-of-a-movement

the Emerald Coast

JULY 13

REGIONAL

SEPT. 29

PINNACLE AWARDS

→ For the ninth year, 12 women will be selected to receive the 2022 Pinnacle Award, which recognizes women who have distinguished themselves professionally and as community servants. Honorees from throughout an 18-county region will be recognized during a luncheon at the Dunlap Champions Club in Tallahassee.

Visit 850BusinessMagazine.com/ pinnacle-awards to learn more and purchase tickets.

KNOW BEFORE YOU GO

CIVIL RIGHTS: SOUL OF A MOVEMENT

Check websites to see if the listed events will occur as scheduled.

Country superstar Luke Bryan and special guest Riley Green will headline the Rock the Roost concert created to support Tallahassee Community College’s Alumni & Friends Association.

All proceeds will support scholarships and programs. visittallahassee.com/events/lukebryan-in-concert

TROLLS LIVE! JULY 19–20 The world of trolls comes alive in this interactive, storyrich musical celebration of everything that trolls love — singing, dancing, rainbows, glitter and plenty of hugs.

The extravaganza uses the latest in scenic projection, puppetry and media technology and features a

host of special effects and interactive surprises. tuckerciviccenter.com/events/detail/ trolls-live

THE ADDAMS FAMILY JULY 22–31 The wacky and weird family you know and love takes the stage at the Young Actors Theatre. This original story features Wednesday Addams all grown up and falling in love with a respectable “normal” young man and revolves around the suitor’s experience at an Addams Family dinner. youngactorstheatre.com/2021-2022season.html

FIRST FRIDAY SIP AND SHOP AUG. 5 Start your weekend off right by sipping and strolling through the streets of Thomasville. Participating shops and restaurants will be open late, with live music from 8–10 p.m. thomasvillega.com

FUSION WORLD DANCE AND MUSIC LIVE AUG. 13 Dance to the beat of your own drum with electrifying music and performers from around the world. Join the legendary Matsuriza Japanese Taiko Drummers, Maharajah Flamenco Trio, Dr. Haiqiong Deng, Gitana de la Rosa, Omaris, Shoshanna Beryllia, Shalini Goel Agarwal, Vann Patacxil and more for an exclusive one-night, live theatrical showcase. visittallahassee.com/events/fusionworld-dance-and-music-live

NIGHT PROWL AUG. 13 Tour the Tallahassee Museum at night as a guide points out nocturnal animals that call Northwest Florida their home. tallahasseemuseum.org

HAVE AN EVENT YOU’D LIKE US TO CONSIDER?

Send an email to sbornhoft@rowlandpublishing.com.

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PROMOTION

SOCIAL STUDIES Launch Tally MAR. 23 Launch Tally, an organization designed to propel Tallahassee’s technology ecosystem onto the national stage, achieved liftoff in March. LaunchPad, an online and interactive portal offering lists of tech companies, service providers, and news and events related to technology in Tallahassee is now live. Organization founders are Ruvos, a Tallahassee software company; Florida State University; Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce; Florida Technology Council; Domi Station; TalTech Alliance; and The Workmans.

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PHOTOS BY THE WORKMANS

1 Jeff Whalen 2 Eduardo Gonzalez Loumiet 3 Corrie Melton

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3

Leadership Tallahassee Distinguished Leadership Awards MAR. 30 Leadership Tallahassee, a program of the Greater Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce, announced the recipients of four awards at the 26th annual Distinguished Leadership Awards, presented by Centennial Bank. More than 250 community and business leaders attended the event. Event proceeds benefit the Youth Leadership Tallahassee program for high school juniors.

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PHOTOS BY ANDREA JONES, LT 27

1 Sen. Bill Montford 2 Distinguished Leadership Award winners: Patrick O’Bryant, Leadership Pacesetter; Dr. Temple Robinson, Leader of the Year; Christic Henry, Servant Leadership; Sen. Bill Montford, Lifetime Leadership; and Darryl Jones, emcee 3 Hosts: Jasmine Smith, Emily Ely and Andrew Starr 4 Event co-chairs Nan O’Kelley and Khanty Xayabouth

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LOW VISION OR BLIND? Programs for every age. Learn solutions & strategies for living your life independently.

850.942.3658 | SeeingIndependence.org | info@SeeingIndependence.org

IMMERSE YOURSELF IN THE SPA EXPERIENCE WITH OUR FULL RANGE OF SERVICES

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HAIRCUT & COLOR MASSAGE SKIN CARE DERMAPLANING HYDRAFACIAL MICROBLADING BROWS FULL BODY WAXING DIP IT NAILS EYELASH EXTENSIONS PEDICURES MANICURES

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3427 BANNERMAN RD #201 (850) 894-4772 • TEXT US (850) 800-7551 MILLENNIUMNAILANDDAYSPA.COM TALL AHASSEEMAGA ZINE.COM

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PROMOTION

SOCIAL STUDIES Capital Medical Society Celebration Awards Dinner MAR. 31 This annual event coincided with Doctors’ Day and celebrated the medical profession. Two annual awards were presented. Robert D. Snyder, M.D., received the 2022 I.B. Harrison, M.D., Humanitarian Award, and Carlos Campo, M.D., received the 2022 Thomas L. Hicks, M.D., Outstanding Physician Award.

PHOTOS BY BETSY BARFIELD PHOTOGRAPHY

1

1 Front row, from left: Dr. Krista Rankin, Vicki McRary and Dr. Roy Forman. Back row, from left: Dr. Helen Paulson, Dr. David Jones, Dr. Amy Reimer Neal and Dr. Stanley Gwock 2 Dr. Paresh Patel, Dr. Robert D. Snyder and Dr. Richard Zorn 3 Dr. Alberto Fernandez, Dr. Carlos Campo and Dr. Paresh Patel

2

3

Night at the Net MAR. 31 Shiloh Farm hosted a fundraising event that netted $53,943 that will be used to create scholarships and otherwise benefit the FSU women’s tennis program.

Sharon Fallon and Dent Ward, event cochairs, worked with Coach Jennifer Hyde to make this a super success. The Groove Merchants entertained a crowd of more than 200 Night at the Net guests who enjoyed dancing, dining, a silent auction and mingling with the team, coaches and other FSU representatives. Next year’s event will be held March 2, 2023.

1

PHOTOS BY RYALS LEE

1 FSU women’s tennis team: Kianah Motosono, Olympe Lancelot, Anna Arkadianou, Lesedi Jacobs, Head Coach Jennifer Hyde, Associate Head Coach Mark Ardizzone, Volunteer Assistant Coach Giulia Pairone, Petra Hule, Victoria Allen and Alice Amendola 2 Kim and Greg Nichols with Christina and Rodney Reams 3 Beth Holz, Jennifer Hyde, Sharon Fallon, Kathleen Crosby, Melanie Flowers and Dent Ward

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Your treatment.

Our Journey.

You don’t plan for a cancer diagnosis. You want to find the best doctor. One you can trust to treat your unique cancer. Within 72 hours*, Gynecologic Oncology of Tallahassee will be by your side to provide treatments for a range of gynecologic cancers, including ovarian, cervical, uterine, vaginal, vulvar, and endometrial, among others.

Our specialist in gynecologic oncology, Dr. Margarett Ellison, provides patients with compassionate, personalized services backed by the most advanced cancer treatments such as chemotherapy, radiation, minimally invasive surgery, advanced laparoscopy, and pelvic reconstruction.

By your side – every step of the way.

Caring for patients at Gynecologic Oncology of Tallahassee, A Division of Florida Cancer Specialists.

Services • • • • •

Medical Oncology • Oral Oncolytic • Chemotherapy for Hematology Pharmacy (Rx To Go) GYN Malignancies Care Management • Gynecologic Oncology • Telemedicine Laboratory • Minimally Invasive and • Pet/CT Scan Clinical Trials Robotic Surgery

Margarett Ellison, MD Call: 1-888-GYNONC1

Tallahassee Cancer Center, 2351 Phillips Rd. A U.S. Mentor Case Observation site *All required paperwork must be provided at time of referral.

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PROMOTION

SOCIAL STUDIES Tallahassee Tennis Challenger APR. 18–24 Tennis professionals from around the world competed in the 21st annual Tallahassee Tennis Challenger, an ATP Challenger 80 event. More than 300 volunteers, many of whom work yearround, combine to make this one of the best tournaments in the country. The event was broadcast on Tennis Channel this year and garnered international attention via live streaming. Proceeds go to the Vogter Endowment at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, which supports programs in the hospital designed to improve patient care and enhance education for staff in the neuro units.

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PHOTOS BY SHEMS HAMILTON

1 Mark Webb with Maria and Mark Yealdhall 2 Perry and Anna Jones with Armin Friedli 3 Brenda Cross and Mary Warner 4 Jeff and Leah Merschmann 5 Lori Willyoung and Sue Ault

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LeMoyne Chain of Parks Art Festival APR. 23–24 The 22nd annual Chain of Parks Art Festival was another huge success with over 40,000 visitors enjoying art, local food trucks, live entertainment and family-friendly activities during the two-day festival in the parks. Participating artists reported excellent sales. The 23rd annual Chain of Parks Art Festival will be held April 15–16, 2023.

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PHOTOS BY BY BOB O’LARY

1 Festival sponsors enjoying the VIP experience 2 Artist Eluster Richardson receiving the Best in Show award with Kelly Dozier, festival chair; Sheri Sanderson, artist relations manager; and Powell K. Kreis, festival manager 3 Jeanne Breland and Charlie Adams 4 Kelly Dozier, Caroline Kuhlmeier, Chloe Patterson, Brenna Miller and Grace Atkins

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Thanks for voting us Tallahassee’s Best Painter for 11 years.

EXPERIENCE

exceptional results

where expertise matters for over 20 years

not actual patients

As we celebrate our 22nd year in business, we thank all of our customers for their continued support.

Interior/Exterior • Pressure Washing Carpentry Wood Repair • Wallpaper Removal Father-and-Son Owned • Licensed • Insured • Worker’s Comp

(850) 297-1882 • SuperiorPainting.net

With unique complementary expertise, board-certified physicians Ben J. Kirbo, M.D., Laurence Z. Rosenberg, M.D. and Chris DeRosier, M.D. are compassionate and committed to providing outstanding patient care. They stay current with technological advancements that enhance your experience for exceptional and natural results.

~ Breast Enhancement ~ Facelift ~ Hair Restoration

~ Tummy Tuck ~ Liposuction ~ Nasal Reshaping

The SPA at Southeastern Plastic Surgery provides results-oriented medical spa treatments given by experienced professionals featuring miraDry®, laser hair removal, injectables, facials, laser therapies and more!

GET SERIOUS ABOUT CYBERSECURITY

Our cybersecurity solutions deliver enterprise-level protection in one simple, affordable package.

ENABLE PASSWORD MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE SECURITY AWARENESS TRAINING

LEARN MORE AND WATCH PATIENT TESTIMONIALS AT

www.se-plasticsurgery.com

Ben J. Kirbo, M.D. ~ Laurence Z. Rosenberg, M.D. Chris DeRosier, M.D. CERTIFIED BY THE AMERICAN BOARD OF PLASTIC SURGERY

850.219.2000

PHISH YOUR USERS

SEE THE RESULTS

(850) 385-7000 Support@t3crew.com T3crew.com

2030 Fleischmann Rd. ~ Tallahassee, FL

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dining guide AMERICAN ANDREW’S DOWNTOWN

After 49 years, Andrew’s is still an energetic, casual, see-and-be-seen spot.

House favorites include a popular lunch buffet, hamburgers, salads and pasta dishes. Downtown delivery.

228 S. Adams St. (850) 222-3444. $$ B L D

BACKWOODS CROSSING ★

TA L

2021

S E’

850-597-7552 OverUnderBar.com

SSEE MAGAZ HA IN LA

BEST TA L

of

L A H A SSE

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Thank you for voting us Best Bar

(850) 422-0071. $ B L D

Rd. (850) 513-2114. $$ L D

DOG ET AL ★

Foot-long and veggie entrees alike grace this award-winning menu. Also ask about their incredibly valued family packs. 1456 S. Monroe St.

(850) 684-2117. $$/$$$ B L D

FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD ★

The name says it all! This restaurant boasts a palate-pleasing combination of personalized service, eclectic ambiance and award-winning cuisine and is the Best Desserts winner for 2017–21. 1950 Thomasville Road.

(850) 224-9974. $$ L D

HOPKINS’ EATERY ★

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300 S. Duval St. in Kleman Plaza Tues-Sun | 8am-2pm (850) 907-EGGS (3447)

TALLAHASSEEMAGA ZINE.COM

A Best of 2021 winner, Hopkins’ provides favorites such as the Ultimate Turkey, the Linda Special and a variety of salads to keep customers coming back. Multiple locations. Hours vary. $ L D

HORIZONS BAR & GRILLE

Classic, homemade American cuisine along with a full bar serving premium liquors, local craft beers and wine.

3427 Bannerman Rd., Ste. 104.

(850) 329-2371. $$ B D

THE KEY ★ 2021 Best

of Tallahassee Winner

Located in the Four Points by Sheraton Downtown, this cool lobby restaurant offers breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Unique dishes include tapas with a twist, such as the Georgia peaches with caramel. 316 W. Tennessee St.

LIBERTY BAR AND RESTAURANT ★

Carefully crafted unique cocktails mixed with a gourmet menu that features fresh, local produce. 1307 N. Monroe, Unit No. 2.

(850) 354-8277. $$ D

LOFTY PURSUITS ★

This old-fashioned soda fountain serves ice cream, milkshakes and candy — plus brunch dishes and a selection of vegan, vegetarian and gluten-free options. 1355 Market St.,

A11. (850) 521-0091. $ B

This relaxed, fine dining establishment is equipped with a beer garden, wine cellar, casual cafe, open-air alternatives and a gorgeous view that has become a Tallahassee favorite. 470 Suwannee St.

3740 Austin Davis Ave. Tues-Sun | 7am-2pm (850) 765-0703

Get baked! This 2021 Best of winner for Best Wings won’t serve you up greasy, fried wings; instead Island Wing bakes them fresh. 1370 Market St. (850) 692-3116. $ L D

DISTRICT 850

Mix an on-site restaurant and a full bar with a wide range of activities, like laser tag, a ropes course, bowling and much more, and you get Tallahassee’s premier entertainment location. 2662 Fleischmann

THE EDISON

Great Friends

ISLAND WING COMPANY ★

JUICY BLUE

(850) 222-4099. $ L D

Great Food

Hummingbird brings together great wine with house-made plates and paninis for the perfect after-work or evening get-together — or start your Sunday off right with an early brunch.

1216-4 N. Monroe St. (850) 296-2766. $$ D

Sit down at this 2021 Best of winner for fresh gourmet food at Tallahassee’s farm-to-table, destination concept restaurant featuring locally caught and produced soft-shell crabs, sausage, duck and blueberries. 6725 Mahan Dr.

(850) 765-3753. $$ L D

Live Music Specialty Cocktails

HUMMINGBIRD WINE BAR ★

MADISON SOCIAL

Whether it’s for a social cocktail, a quick lunch or a place to gather before home football games, Madison Social offers something for everyone.

705 S. Woodward Ave. (850) 894‑6276. $$ B L D

OVERUNDER BAR + LOUNGE ★

Two experiences under one roof, OverUnder features specialty cocktails plus curated food and drink pairings and is a 2021 Best Bar winner. 1240

Thomasville Rd. (850) 597-7552. $$

PROOF BREWPUB

Tallahassee’s first brewery, Proof’s brewpub in downtown offers shareables, such as sliders and fried oysters, plus burgers, sandwiches and tacos to pair with their tasty craft brews. 1320 S. Monroe St. (850) 577-0517. $$ D

R&R EATERY

Located in Hotel Indigo, R&R Eatery is a modern American restaurant with fresh takes on classic dishes and a mix of signature craft cocktails. 826 W. Gaines St.

(850) 210-0008. $$ B D

The restaurants that appear in this guide are included as a service to readers and not as recommendations of the Tallahassee Magazine editorial department, except where noted. $$ Moderately B Breakfast/ Outdoor Dining L D

Brunch Lunch Dinner

Live Music Bar/Lounge $ Inexpensive

Expensive

$$$ Expensive

228 S. Adams. (850) 518-0201. $$$ D

SAGE RESTAURANT ★

Sage’s menu masterfully melds regional influences, including Southern and French. The setting is gorgeous but cozy, and the outdoor patio sets a charming, romantic tone for a relaxing evening.

3534 Maclay Blvd. (850) 270-9396. $$$ B L D

SAVOUR

Ave. (850) 765-6966. $$$

D

TABLE 23 ★

This “Southern porch, table and bar” is cozied up among oak trees on one of Tallahassee’s favorite street corners.

Lucky Goat coffee-rubbed ribeye and Schermer pecan-crusted chicken are among the regional offerings.

1215 Thomasville Rd. (850) 329-2261. $$$ L D

UPTOWN CAFÉ

Specialties at the bustling, family-run cafe include apricot-glazed smoked salmon, one-of-a-kind omelets, banana bread French toast and flavorful sandwiches. 1325 Miccosukee Rd.

A 2021 Best Asian winner, Masa’s menu offers a creative blend of Eastern and Western cuisines. 1650 N. Monroe St. (850) 727-4183. $/$$

NAGOYA STEAKHOUSE & SUSHI

Dine in or takeout, Nagoya offers a wide variety of authentic Japanese cuisine, including hibachi, salads, sushi and sashimi. 1925 N. Monroe St. (850) 553-1867. $/$$ L D

OSAKA JAPANESE STEAKHOUSE AND SUSHI BAR ★ Rated Best Hibachi for 2021, Osaka provides dinner and a show, with the chefs seasoning and preparing your meal right in front of you. 1489 Maclay

Commerce Dr. (850) 900-5149. $$$ D

ROCK N ROLL SUSHI

SSEE MAGAZ HA IN LA

This American-style sushi chain born in Mobile offers fresh rolls, salads and hibachi — all with a rock-and-roll theme. 1415 Timberlane Rd., #305.

(850) 999-1748. $$ L D

BARBECUE WILLIE JEWELL’S OLD SCHOOL BBQ ★

Platters, sandwiches or by the pound, Willie Jewell’s, the 2021 Best Barbecue winner, offers smoked brisket, pork, turkey, sausage, chicken and ribs with a bevy of Southern sides. 5442 Thomasville Rd.

(850) 629-4299. $ L D

2021

S E’

Downtown fine dining with a vision for seasonally inspired, regionally sourced and creatively prepared cuisine, such as bourbon-brined pork chops, Gulf Coast bouillabaisse or miso marinated grouper. 115 E. Park

MASA ★

TA L

ROOTSTOCK

With an ever-changing menu of unique flavors, Rootstock offers shareable plates, artisan cocktails and a selection of 25 wines by the glass.

BEST TA L

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INDOOR DINING NOW OPEN CARRY OUT AVAILABLE Killearn Shopping Center (850) 222-5458

Ocala Corners (850) 575-5458

KIKUBOGO.COM

KIKUTOGO.COM

CLOSED SUNDAYS

CLOSED MONDAYS

(850) 219-9800. $ B L

VERTIGO BURGERS AND FRIES ★

BREAKFAST/ BRUNCH/BAKERY

Vertigo is home to some of the juiciest, funkiest burgers in town. The modern building provides a no-frills setting to enjoy such favorites as the Vertigo Burger — a beef patty served with a fried egg, applewood bacon, grilled jalapenos, sharp cheddar and Vertigo sauce. 1395 E. Lafayette St. (850) 878-2020. $$ L D

CANOPY ROAD CAFÉ ★

WALK-ON’S SPORTS BISTREAUX ★

(850) 668-6600. $ B L

Not your usual sports bar, this import from Louisiana offers seafood, traditional Cajun cuisine and burgers built for two hands — plus 40 beers on tap and wall-to-wall TVs for the big games. 3390 Capital Circle NE. (850) 597-7736. $$ L D

ASIAN AZU LUCY HO’S

Enjoy an extensive array of classic dishes with a modern flare, including gyoza dumplings, crab rangoon, General Tso’s chicken and Szechuan beef, all in a relaxed setting. 3220 Apalachee Pkwy., Ste. 13.

(850) 893-4112. $$ L D

BORU BORU

A fast-casual eatery inspired by Japanese cuisine, featuring sushi bowls, poke bowls and sushiburritos. 1861 W. Tennessee St., #290. (850) 270-9253. $$ L D

KIKU JAPANESE FUSION ★

From tempura to teriyaki and sushi to sashimi, Kiku Japanese Fusion, voted Best Sushi in 2021, fuses vibrant flavors with fresh ingredients.

800 Ocala Rd. (850) 575-5458, 3491 Thomasville Rd. (850) 222-5458. $$ L D

Traditional breakfasts, fluffy omelets, skillets, French toast and sweet potato pancakes keep customers coming back to this 2021 Best Breakfast winner. Canopy also goes all out on lunch favorites. Multiple locations.

Family Owned Since 1999

THE EGG CAFÉ & EATERY

When you’re looking for breakfast favorites, even if it’s lunchtime, The Egg is the place to be. Second location now open in Kleman Plaza. Multiple locations.

(850) 907-3447. $$ B L

TASTY PASTRY BAKERY ★

Tallahassee’s original cakery and 2021 Best Bakery winner features fresh breads, bagels, pies, cakes and catering. Mon–Sat 6:45 am–6 pm. 1355 Market St., No. A-5.

(850) 893-3752. $ B L D

TREVA’S PASTRIES & FINE FOODS

Specializing in sweet treats, cakes, pastries and croissants, this bistro-style pastry shop and fine foods store also uses 100% natural ingredients to make savory sandwiches, salads and soups. 2766 Capital Circle NE. (850) 765-0811. $$ L

CAJUN COOSH’S BAYOU ROUGE ★

This Best Cajun Restaurant winner for 2021 brings a menu jam-packed with Louisiana-style dishes, including favorites like jambalaya, crawfish etouffee, po’boys

Serving Over 25 Craft Beers & 30 Wines Secret Bread Made Fresh Daily on the Premises Dine In or Carry Out LUNCH TUES - FRI 11AM - 2PM | DINNER TUES - SAT 5 - 9PM 1950 Thomasville Road | RiccardosTally.com | (850) 386-3988 TALL AHASSEEMAGA ZINE.COM

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BUY FRESH BUY WILD BUY SOUTHERN WE’RE THE BEST PLACE FOR ALL YOUR SEAFOOD NEEDS. NEEDS. FROM OUR FISHERMEN TO YOUR DOOR.

NOW OFFERING HOME DELIVERY. 1415 TIMBERLANE ROAD in Market Square

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and seafood gumbo. Multiple locations.

(850) 894‑4110. $$ B L D

CATERING BLACK FIG ★

Voted Best Catering in 2021, whether you’re planning an event for five or 500, Black Fig offers a bevy of dining options, including catering-to-go. 1400 Village Square Blvd, #7. (850) 727-0016.

CATERING CAPERS

Offering meals, bar services and more, Catering Capers makes entertaining and planning corporate events, weddings or private parties in Tallahassee easy. 2915 E.

Restaurant, El Jalisco, where they do Mexican cuisine to perfection. Multiple

Classic, house-made American cuisine.

Full bar with a variety of refreshing signature drinks

locations. $ L D

EL PATRON MEXICAN GRILL & CANTINA

Find all your authentic Mexican classics such as tacos, quesadillas, fajitas and burritos, or take a sip of a yardstick margarita. 1170 Apalachee

Pkwy. (850) 656-7264. $$ L D

THE IRON DAISY

Made-to-order Mexican food with a Florida flair, The Iron Daisy blends traditional cast-iron cooking with the funky vibe of the Arts District.

507 W. Gaines St. (850) 597-9997. $$ L D

Park Ave., Unit 4. (850) 385-5953.

ITALIAN/PIZZA BELLA BELLA ★

Voted Best Italian in 2021, this locally owned and operated restaurant has a cozy atmosphere and serves all the classics to satisfy your pasta cravings.

SEAFOOD/STEAK THE BLU HALO ★

Blu Halo is a high-end culinary experience featuring dry-aged steaks and fresh seafood along with fine wines and a martini bar. A private dining room for up to 20 guests is available. 3431 Bannerman

123 E. 5th Ave. (850) 412-1114. $$ L D

Rd., #2 (850) 999-1696. $$$ L D

GAINES STREET PIES

CRAFTY CRAB

No. 3, (850) 765-9275; 1184 Capital Circle NE, Ste. E, (850) 329-2141; 1122 Thomasville Rd., No. 4. (850) 765-4120. $$ L D

Apalachee Pkwy. & 2226 N. Monroe St. (850) 671-2722. $$ L D

Locally owned and open since 2012, Gaines Street offers fresh ingredients and inventive pies, such as the Metal Mike with Sriracha. 603 W. Gaines St.,

IL LUSSO ★

Homemade pasta, local seafood and a choice of prime steaks define this downtown fine dining experience.

201 E. Park Ave., Ste. 100. (850) 765-8620. $$$ D

MOMO’S ★

After devouring a slice “as big as your head” at this 2021 Best Pizza winner, chain pizza simply is not gonna cut it. Multiple locations. (850) 224‑9808. $ L D

RICCARDO’S RESTAURANT

A Tallahassee tradition since 1999, Riccardo’s features savory Italian classics, from pasta and pizza to homemade subs and calzones — plus a wide-ranging selection of wines and craft brews. 1950

Thomasville Rd. (850) 386-3988. $$ L D

MEDITERRANEAN SAHARA CAFE MEDITERRANEAN CUISINE

This 2020 Best Ethnic Restaurant winner is a family owned and operated restaurant. Sahara Cafe has been serving homemade Greek and Lebanese food to Tallahassee for 15 years. 1135 Apalachee Pkwy.(850) 656-1800. $$ L D

MEXICAN EL JALISCO ★

In the mood for sizzling enchiladas and frozen margaritas? Make your way to the 2021 Best Mexican/Latin American

Offering the freshest seafood and most authentic recipes in the area, including crab, crawfish, calamari, lobster, oysters, mussels, scallops and more. 1241

GEORGIO’S FINE FOOD & SPIRITS George Koikos has over 50 years of experience in Tallahassee restaurants, and his hands-on commitment has made this upscale restaurant a local favorite featuring local seafood, prime steaks and banquet rooms for private parties. 2971 Apalachee Pkwy.

DINNER • SUNDAY BRUNCH • HAPPY HOUR

3427 Bannerman Road, Suite #104 850.329.2371 • HorizonsBarAndGrille.com

Know about the fun things happening in our city!

(850) 877-3211. $$$ D

HARRY’S SEAFOOD BAR & GRILL

Serving Southern, Cajun and Creole flavors in classic and modern dishes since 1987. Full bar is available at each location. 301 S. Bronough St., in Kleman

Plaza. (850) 222-3976. $$ L D

SHULA’S 347

Located in Hotel Duval. Keep it light and casual with a premium Black Angus beef burger or a gourmet salad, or opt for one of their signature entrees — a “Shula Cut” steak.

Reservations suggested.

415 N. Monroe St. (850) 224-6005. $$$ L D

7PM! LIVE! IN TALLAHASSEE

THURSDAY FOX 49

SOUTHERN SEAFOOD ★

Whether you’re looking for fish, shrimp, oysters, scallops, crab or lobster, the 2021 Best Seafood Market winner brings the ocean’s freshest choices to Tallahassee. 1415 Timberlane Rd. (850) 668‑2203.

THE SEINEYARD ★

Fried, grilled or blackened, the area’s best and freshest seafood is found at The Seineyard. Grab your basket or mix it up with a plate of grouper, catfish, shrimp, oysters, scallops and more.

Multiple locations. (850) 421-9191. $$ L D

Visit our comprehensive, searchable dining guide online at TallahasseeMagazine.com/restaurants.

Follow us for daily content on Facebook and YouTube LiveInTallahassee TALL AHASSEEMAGA ZINE.COM

Joel Silver

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postscript

BASE PATH Legislative mandate created opportunities for softball players

by MELINDA LANIGAN

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← Jaden Martinez winds up on her way to delivering a pitch while playing for Chiles High School.

↑ A quartet of Chiles High School teammates, photographed at a tournament at Florida High School, was all smiles despite the fact that Brooke Lanigan, second from left, had sustained a broken tooth. From left: Rylie Batcheller, Lanigan, MacKenzie Blume and Grace Xu.

In Tallahassee, I started coaching my youngest daughter in the Rookie League that is part of the city youth league. At that level, she learned the basics of the game, sportsmanship and friendly competition. Soon, she was hooked, and so was I. She now plays for her high school and the Tallahassee Fast Pitch Softball Association, which promotes fastpitch softball in the spring and fall and conducts games at a field reserved for fast-pitch play at Tom Brown Park.

She’s also stepped into another aspect of the sport. It’s called travel ball.

Parents of travel ball players soon learn that their free and easy weekends will disappear into a world of road trips filled with coolers and collapsible wagons; snacks and enough Gatorade and water to quench the thirst of clay-dusted (at times encrusted), ponytailed girls; trips to far-away ball parks before the sun rises; and when your team plays deep into a tournament, drives home in the dark. It’s not cheap,

and it’s not easy, but for the girls involved there is an irresistible upside.

They crave travel ball’s competition and camaraderie.

My oldest daughter has been immersed in this world for years now with her daughter, and it’s been tremendous to see the results of so much hard work. She’s played on teams in Tallahassee, Atlanta, Orlando, Gainesville and has filled spots on other teams throughout Florida and neighboring states when they might be short a player. One team took her all the way to California to play in a tournament for a week.

The result for my granddaughter?

She landed a Division 1 scholarship to a school here in Florida.

Am I a very proud Mae Mae? You bet. Her hard work and dedication (not to mention the dedication of my daughter who provided support all these years), has paid off in a big way.

We can’t wait to see what this game holds in store for her.

Play ball! TM

PHOTOS COURTESY OF MELINDA LANIGAN

n 1993, the world of softball in Florida was about to change.

At that time, only 14 of the 67 counties in Florida played fastpitch softball, but the legislature would soon change that. Mary Ellen Hawkins, a state representative from Naples, introduced a bill that would require high schools to change from slow-pitch to fast-pitch softball.

The reason? Scholarships.

“The girls who played (slowpitch) softball were not able to get scholarships,” Hawkins told WTXL in 2018. “Only to community college, and that wasn’t good enough.”

Slow-pitch softball programs in Florida were strong, and many high schools did not welcome the change.

But in the end, the bill passed.

Florida held its first state fast-pitch championships in 1994.

There’s been no looking back for the last state in the nation to adopt this game at the high school level.

Florida is now a hotbed of fastpitch talent, although that was not always the case. At first, teams brought in pitchers from California and other parts of the country that had top high school programs. Over time, the supply of homegrown lady studs in Florida and the South multiplied, giving rise to a community of competitive fast-pitch teams and the creation of fast-pitch associations and tournaments.

Outdoor Oasis

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Bring classic style and comfort to your outdoor oasis. Shop this stunning look, as well as many more outdoor furniture options at Turner’s Fine Furniture, and let our talented designers help you create a space full of beauty and relaxation.

(850) 210-0446 | TurnerFurniture.com Mon–Fri 10am–8pm | Sat 10am–6pm | Sun 1pm–6pm 2151 US Hwy 319 (10 Minutes North of Chiles High School on Thomasville Hwy)

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Urgent Care, Cold, Flu and COVID Testing 8 locations many open 8:00am – 8:00pm, 7 days a week New procedures to keep you safe while in-clinic In center lab testing to diagnose and treat you on the spot New location now open on Buck Lake Road

850-URGENT-1 • PatientsFirst.com