Category: Florida

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Miami River, an afternoon

The Miami River

Mouth of the River
The mouth of the Miami River

Draining, barely draining, from within South Florida’s Everglades, the Miami River forms near Miami Airport.  The river trickles east six miles through downtown Miami.  Flowing into Biscayne Bay, the Miami is a natural river, once home-ground to Tequesta Indians.

Shellfish were the Tequesta’s food of choice on date night.  Not clams, oysters or conch – of which there was plenty along the Miami River, rather turtle and snail.

In the 1890’s Florida was invaded by the railroad.  The Miami was dredged, bridged, commercialized and, by the 1950’s, polluted – all the way to its mouth; Biscayne Bay. The Tequesta were history.

Why this place appeals to me

Escape from downtown Miami’s touristy Bayside Market is an easy walk South through Bayfront Park.  Pick up the Miami Riverwalk.  Keep heading South, Miami Riverwalk curves west along the bank of the Miami River.  At the mouth of the Miami commercial ocean-going vessels destined for Caribbean Islands are being towed into Biscayne Bay, then released and trusted to self-navigate

The Miami River serves as the North border to Miami’s “Financial District,” Brickell Avenue.  South Florida wannabee financiers dubbed Brickell Avenue “Wall Street South.”  It’s not.  It is “South America Wealth North.” Spanish is the preferred tongue along Brickell Ave.  Spanish is often the sole language spoken by cabbies and UBER pilots.

Upriver the Miami brushes the North boundary of Little Havana.  From Brickell Ave it’s a 10-minute car trip to the music of Calle Ocho.

How Far Down the Block, or River?  

It’s Saturday 1 pm.  Time-out – Il Gabbiano (the Seagull) at the mouth of the Miami River is a worthy option.  But we’re going local, Down The Block. Or rather, Up The River.

Lunch is an old-school Miami mainstay, Garcia’s Seafood. A 1.5-mile stroll up the Miami River from Biscayne Bay.  After lunch, next door to Garcia’s a relative newcomer to the Miami’s dining scene awaits; Kiki on the River.

Why you might be nearby?

Garcia’s Seafood

A.  Absorbing the all-day music thumping from within Ball & Chain in Little Havana.

B.  Confirming payment on an undisclosed South American business transaction at Banco do Brasil Americas, 1221 Brickell Ave. office.

C.  Gaging behavior at Miami’s new hot spot along the river, Riverside, 120,000-square-feet of hedonism.

D. Brickell City Centre; landlord to SAKS, TED Baker, Coach and their retail cousins has occupied your morning. The North/South sidewalk along S. Miami Avenue, leads you 500 feet north towards the Miami River.

Lesser Known Facts   

The Miami is a River of Exports; 75 percent of the cargo floating downriver is tagged for foreign shores.

The goods are being transported to the Caribbean; the Dominican Republic, Haiti, the Bahamas. Only shallow draft commercial vessels can navigate the Miami River. Shallow draft is required to slip-in, dock and tie-up in many Caribbean harbors.

Local Recommendation    

Garcia’s Seafood smells a bit fishy.  Comforting since the patio seats are right on the river.

On the deck at Garcia’s Seafood

The seafood market, as you step through the front door, stuns with a selection of shiny claws and colorful creatures with fins.

Former guests and the Garcia Family are celebrated with pictures nearly every wall.

The downstairs/outdoor seating area, just behind the fish market, features wooden picnic tables, properly aged. Upstairs is only slightly more refined.

“My father, when he got here from Cuba, he didn’t know anything other than fishing,” explains the current Garcia overseer.  GOOD START.  The Garcia’s contract their own fleet of fishing boats.  Thus, FRESH is the seafood in both the market and the restaurant.

Garcia’s Seafood on the Miami River

Settle your tab at Garcia’s Seafood.  Out the front door, 200 feet north on the bank of the Miami River lies Kiki on the River.

Kiki On The River

Kiki parties all-day on Sunday – a tribute to the Sunday Soiree at Miami Beach’s Raleigh Hotel back in the day. Kiki’s isn’t priced as a “local hangout” – their signature cocktails cost $17.

Kiki on the River, dining area

Kiki’s allows a lenient outdoor smoking policy, perhaps defined as “South American.”  At the riverside bar, a slick-dressed, russet-skin fellow has a lady on each arm.  All three smoking cigars.

Eight elegant Spanish nymphs, each wearing white, chatter in Spanish around a square table.  Their apparel du jour, head-turning suggestions from the pages of Vogue.  Each top designed with a cleavage-relief plunge.  I wanted to wait their table.  

Next to me, at Kiki’s bar, the woman said, “You’re staring at that table.”
“I’m not staring,” I replied, keeping my focus on the group of eight, “I’m ogling. Ogling is a higher form of observation.”

The woman winks at a 50-ish man seated around the L corner of Kiki’s bar. He dressed French Resistance-style, sporting a European two-day growth. The man speaks sottovoce into his cell phone

Something for Nothing  

   

1.  A Spanish language lesson Spanish with your UBER pilot.

2.  Miami’s free transportation: 1) Metromover, 2) City of Miami Trolley

3.  The pedestrian walking path that circumnavigates Brickell Key. South on Brickell Avenue from the Miami River, turn left (East) onto Brickell Key Drive.  On the east side of the 200-foot causeway bridge over Biscayne Bay, step down to the shoreside footpath.  If a walking loop of Brickell Key (or several) induce thirst, repair to the outdoor deck of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, or the patio at Brasserie Brickell Key.

Categories
Florida St. Pete downtown; Hollander Hotel

Hollander Hotel – downtown St. Pete

A hotel that causes me to smile

Downtown St. Petersburg, Florida – not the beach

421 4th Ave North Street

Why this place appeals to me

“The Hollander is old Florida,” says a guest sitting on the hotel’s front porch.  Old Florida? Maybe: The Hollander is stacked with once-upon-a-time stuff.  STUFF packs the lobby, hallways and rooms of the Hollander.

An 80-year-old wooden phone booth stands a few feet from the hotel’s Check-In desk in the lobby. 

     “Phone doesn’t work, but it generates conversation,” says Will the front desk clerk at The Hollander.”

The Hollander Hotel; hip? Boutique? Hard to classify, The Hollander simply causes me to SMILE as I roam the building and its contents from time past.

Built in 1933, just as Prohibition ended.  The basis for the original name is mystery.  The Hollander went through several reinventions; it was a Travelodge, then the Bond Hotel.  And then sat empty from 1990 until it came back to life in 2013 as downtown St. Pete’s boutique-ish, lodging venue; offering a spa, a coffee shop/bakery and a tap room.

A poster on the wall of The Hollander’s outdoor front deck proclaims,

  1933 prohibition finally ends

FREE NEWSPAPER ANY DAY THE SUN DOESN’T SHINE

I SMILE!

The wall of the stairwell connecting the lobby to the upper 3 floors is hung with images of earlier St. Pete.  Couples in the 1950’s, wearing 1950’s-style bathing suits, sitting in the sand under 1950’s beach umbrellas cause me to SMILE.

How Far Down the Block?   

st pete, pier, florida, tom lane, cigar, hollander, kerouac, vintage, boutique hotel
The Pier, downtown St. Pete in 1950’s

Expressway I-375 routes you onto 4th Avenue leading into downtown St. Pete.  The Hollander is on the corner of 4th Street North and 4th Avenue North; just a few hundred meters from I-375 merge point with 4th Ave.

The Hollander front porch is a magnet for lodging guests. Travelers share weather updates from home-base, almost always somewhere north.  I light a Macanudo cigar . . . and SMILE.

The Hollander is a timepiece of Florida history.  The wide veranda porch features padded, rattan chairs. Half of the porch hosts outdoor diners being catered by the staff from The Hollander Tap Room; the other half of the porch is seated by visitors that are chatting . . . and SMILING.

Hollander Hotel, front porch

Entering the front door of the lobby, the vintage-style front desk is evident. After checking in, I skip the elevator, choosing to walk up the stairs to my 3rd floor room. Hallway flooring is 2.5” maple strips installed during construction in 1933. The slats refinished lacquer-bright, featuring scars acquired over the past 80 years.  The wooden seams creak with every step.  I SMILE.

Creaking hallway

The Coffee Shop just past the Tap Room offers not only traditional French pastries, but Italian cannoli.  Cannoli make me SMILE.

On a Saturday morning, I step into the first floor Tap Room; the Hollander restaurant.  Brunch is featured on weekend mornings.  At the edge of the bar, a sign suggests a do-it-yourself Bloody Mary, almost a brunch itself – I SMILE.

Do-it-yourself

When the Hollander re-opened in 2013, the former glory and the name were both restored. It breaks the mold of the everyday branded chain hotel. How to describe?  Unshackled lodging?

Why you might be nearby?

St. Pete Beach is a 20-minute drive from the Hollander.  Four of Florida’s Top Ten Beach Bars, chosen by an annual vote conducted by FLORIDA Beach Bars web site, lie within walking distance of one-another at St. Pete Beach.  A Florida pub crawl, eminently do-able.

Lesser Known Facts      

The Hollander Hotel drips character, with non-uppity charm.  Rooms feel Florida-warm. I drift back.  Maybe to another era, or maybe just a decade.  The façade of hotel today, remains exactly the same as when constructed in 1933.  The Bonnie & Clyde era look causes me to SMILE

“The City of St. Peter” Florida was named in honor of St. Petersburg, Russia.  The name chosen by Russian-born railroad builder Piotr Dementyev (Peter Demens).

Jack Kerouac authored On The Road, his roaming-about-tale of travel on America’s newly paved highways of the 1950’s.  Kerouac owned a home in downtown St. Pete in the late 1960’s.

Television had highjacked Kerouac’s theme, creating Route 66 (1960–1964).  Weekly episodes followed two untethered young men “on the road” in a Corvette seeking adventure; jumping from temporary job to temporary job.

Town-by-town from Chicago to California the two protagonists, Buzz and Todd, roamed.  They bore a resemblance to Kerouac.  Kerouac, didn’t like TV’s Route 66. He felt the show’s creators had ripped off his On The Road.  Kerouac wanted to sue, but on October 20, 1969, in St. Petersburg, Florida he lost his chance.  At 11 am that morning in St. Pete, Kerouac was sitting in his favorite chair drinking whiskey, chasing it with malt liquor, and working on another book.

He began to vomit blood. Blood transfusions later that day, failed.  Kerouac’s liver was failing, due to an untreated abdominal hemorrhage suffered in a bar fight several weeks earlier and aggravated by booze.  He died at 5:15 the following morning. Kerouac drank – a lot.

Local Recommendation   

Stroll downtown Beach Drive SE; the city side of Beach Drive is lined by the shops and watering holes.  Manicured city parks line the bay side of Beach Street. Late model luxury and vintage classic cars maintain an all-day parade.

Parkshore Grill, Beach Street, offers refuge under their sidewalk, tabletop, umbrellas.

Something for Nothing     

The Hollander provides free shuttle from hotel to downtown St. Pete; serving a 10-block area.

Free Shuttle

Parking at the Hollander is free. 

Every Saturday morning from October to May, St. Pete hosts a downtown farmer’s market in the parking lot at Al Lang Stadium, a half-mile walk from The Hollander.  Local vendors sell, fruits, foods, goods while live music plays.

6 pm Sunday evening, sitting on the Hollander’s outdoor front porch, piped-in music plays.  Will, the Hollander desk clerk of long standing, says,

     “In the morning, we play Petula Clark on Pandora throughout our public areas.  Afternoon is Debbie Harry.  Evening music here at The Hollander is Jack Johnson.  Do you like his music?”

I SMILE

Categories
Cedar Key, the island Florida

Cedar Key

cedar key florida, hidden, gulf of mexico
Cedar Key, Dock Street at sunrise

Cedar Key, Florida

at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico

The final 20 mile stretch west on Florida State 24 leading into Cedar Key is constructed six feet above the tidal swamp surrounding each side of road.  There is no shoulder defining the raised road.  Gators, snakes and slithery swamp critters watch my car roll down the two lanes of asphalt; swamp creatures tortured by perpetual hunger.

How Far Down the Block? 

Way down the block.  Over an hour drive West of I-75, Florida’s migratory route from those fleeing winter in Midwest America. 

Why Few People Live in Cedar Key

Cedar Key suffered defeat and humiliation every time the local folk gave progress a try.

The Cedar Key watchtower was erected in 1801. Spanish invaders destroyed the watch tower in 1802.

The U.S army constructed Cedar Key’s fort, hospital and a holding pen for renegade Seminole Indians in 1841. The next year, 1842, a hurricane obliterated the fort and hospital in 1842.  The walls of the holding pen collapsed.  Freed Seminoles made a run for Florida’s interior, never to return to Cedar Key.

In 1861, a train from civilization chugged down the newly laid track into Cedar Key; linking the goods of the Confederate South to the “port” of Cedar key.  Two weeks later America’s Civil War was declared. Cedar Key volunteers boarded the new train, relocating to Jacksonville anticipating a glorious defense against a Union assault.

In early 1862 with the Cedar Key volunteers on guard in Jacksonville, the Union vessel Hatteras sailed around the Southern tip of Florida, drifted into Cedar Key, and torched every ship in harbor.  The Union men bombarded all rolling stock in Cedar Key’s rail yard.  Then the sailors aboard the Hatteras burned down every Cedar Key building.  Before departing, the Northerners destroyed all salt production equipment in Cedar Key.

John Muir, famous American naturalist, before nudist camps were invented, walked into Cedar Key late fall 1867.  Muir walked all the way from Kentucky to Cedar Key.  Why didn’t he take the train?  Maybe the train hadn’t been repaired since the Union’s 1862 destruction of Cedar Key’s railroad yard. 

Muir was a curious guy.  At 42 years of age, John married for the first time – then spent the next 11 years wandering the boondocks of Alaska, without Louise, his wife.

As Muir trudged the last miles through the bog surrounding Cedar Key, a malarial mosquito bit him.  He was dizzy as he walked into town. When Muir gained consciousness some days later, he rolled left and said to his bed-side attendant, “Fuck this place,” 

Later that week Muir boarded a sailing boat out of Cedar Key bound for Cuba … rum, cigars and dark-skin women.

In 1889, 33-year-old William W. Cottrell, a nasty man, was elected mayor of Cedar Key. Cottrell’s margin of victory 101 for, none opposed, may have been due to his threat to have his minions kill any citizen voting against him. Mayor Cottrell appointed himself inspector of Customs, a remunerative position as the gay 90’s launched in Cedar Key.

Mayor Cottrell was inept, as well as violent.  Particularly when drunk.

Cottrell installed his own band as Cedar Key law enforcement.  Personal privacy was disregarded. Drunken revelries by the Cottrell policemen would find townspeople routed from their homes and forced to dance though the streets of Cedar Key at gunpoint. 

In Washington, the Secretary of Treasury dispatched the sailing vessel McLANE to Cedar Key. His orders for the sailors aboard; arrest Mayor Cottrell; if he resists, shoot him.

The crew of the warship McLane arrived in Cedar Key armed. They began searching for the mayor.

Cottrell eluded capture, trekking North along the Suwanee River.  The cutter McLane stayed in Cedar Key; Mayor Billy made it overland to Alabama.

There he resumed his malevolent behavior.  November 5, he was arrested after a bout of drinking that led to a fight with a Montgomery, Alabama restaurateur. Upon release from jail, former mayor Billy Cottrell declared, “I’ll kill that sonofabitch Police Chief.” 

Adolph Gerald was the Chief of Police in Montgomery, Alabama.

At just past 11 a.m. the next morning, Chief Gerald spotted Billy riding his horse-drawn buggy. Billy Cottrell stepped from his carriage. Police Chief Gerald raised his double-barrel shotgun and shot Billy twice.  There Billy died.

“A BLOODY AND GHASTLY SPECTACLE,” reported the Montgomery Advertiser.

Six years after the McLANE sailors shot Cottrell dead, a September hurricane surged head-on into Cedar Key killing 100 people.  All the commercial buildings were knocked to the ground. That same December a fire destroyed all homes of Cedar Key.  By 1909 Cedar Keys oyster beds were exhausted.  The lighthouse on Cedar Key was abandoned in 1952.

I drove into Cedar Key doing 10 miles over the speed limit.  Jimmy Buffett (radio) and I were singing verse three of “Why don’t we get drunk . . . “

Why Cedar Key Appeals To Me

King Neptune Bar inside The Island Hotel has five bar stools, 4 were occupied.  Behind the bar, two celebrity photographs were pinned on the wall. 

Richard Boone, (Palladin, a 1950’s TV western); an ominous-looking man who spent mornings writing poetry in the lounge outside the Neptune Bar. Jimmy Buffett made a 1983 appearance.  Buffett strumming his six string was recalled in detail by our bartender; she was 12 years old in 1983.

The portrait of King Neptune above the bar, looked eerily like the actor Richard Harris, strung out on drugs. The creepy Island House Neptune was fondling three naked teenager girls. Not the sculpted bronze rendering of Neptune that towers above Piazza della Signoria in Florence, Italy.

A husband/wife drinking team from upstate New York and domiciled in Cedar Key for winter occupied bar stools #4 and #5 to my left.  “If you’re a writer,” he said, “Don’t tell no one about Cedar Key.”  He drained his longneck and said, “Don’t need more people here.”

At last count Cedar Key had a population of 600, down from 900 ten years earlier.

Why you might be nearby?

You were fishing out of the port of Crystal River, Florida, 20 miles south of Cedar Key, when a Gulf of Mexico hurricane capsized your boat.  You had your safety gear on; you blew ashore at Cedar Key.  There is no other reason you would be nearby.

Local Recommendation   

Cedar Key clam and oyster beds eventually came back.  It is the only seafood harvested locally.

On Dock Street, a sandbar reaching into the Gulf, several seafood shacks hang over the water.

“What are you having tonight?” asked Corintha from behind her bar at Steamers on Dock Street.

“What’s best?” I asked.

“Clam chowder and oysters, oysters from right here in Cedar Key.”

Two rooms upstairs, above Sugar Shack candy shop

Across Dock Street, the Sugar Shack candy store has two rooms for rent on the 2nd floor.  Each room has a couple of chairs on landing.  The landing faces west, overlooking the Cedar Key pier.  I brought a bottle of French red wine and didn’t tell anybody where I was.

Categories
Cortez/Anna Maria; Annie's Bait Shop Florida

Cortez, Florida: ANNIE’S BAIT & TACKLE; Minnows, food, Heineken & cigars

Annie’s, Bradenton, Florida, bait, intercoastal, cigars, Grouper, Cortez, dockside, on the water, Anna Maria Island, Bradenton Beach, cold beer, locals, cheap meals, undiscovered, hidden, jogging, running, restaurant, bar, cheap meals, beer, price

Annie’s Bait & Tackle, Cortez, Florida (Bradenton Beach); An inter-coastal bait shop offering Heineken & cigars.

Why this place appeals to me

Annie’s explains their dining as EXTREMELY CASUAL – it is.

     “What time do you open shop?” I asked Bruce Shearer, owner of Annie’s Bait Shop for the past 18 years.

     “6 am, used to open at 5:30, but no reason any more, not busy in the morning,” Bruce said.

     “How come you’re not busy at 6 am, that’s when fishermen like to head out?”

     “They died,” the owner of Annie’s Bait Shop said.

     “The fish died out,” I asked.

     “No, the fishermen,” Bruce explains. “The old guys, down from Michigan, used to charter a boat for the entire season, one day a week, all winter December through April.  Now, an occasional old guy brings his grandson by once a year to show him what a rod and reel looks like.”

Florida, bait, intercoastal, cigars, Grouper, Cortez, dockside, on the water, Anna Maria Island, Bradenton Beach, cold beer, locals, cheap meals, undiscovered, hidden, jogging, running, restaurant, bar, cheap meals, beer, price
Annie’s sign from out front

Annie’s Bait & Tackle is local, but with a surprising touch of class.

Nancy pulled a cool Heineken from the cooler as I selected a Macanudo cigar from the humidor atop the bait counter.

“Need a cutter?” she asked.

Nice touch; a $7 cigar does not offend my yearning to go local.

How Far Down the Block?      From McKechnie Field spring training home field for the Pittsburgh Pirates it’s a nine mile drive.

From mid-crossing on the Sunshine Bridge spanning the entrance of Tampa Bay it is 37 miles to Annie’s Bait & Tackle.[mappress mapid=”8″]

Florida, bait, intercoastal, cigars, Grouper, Cortez, dockside, on the water, Anna Maria Island, Bradenton Beach, cold beer, locals, cheap meals, undiscovered, hidden, jogging, running, restaurant, bar, cheap meals, beer, price
Cortez Road Bridge from Annie’s Veranda

Why you might be nearby?      Social demands on Longboat Key have you seeking somewhere local to sip on a cold beer.  Grab the tender from somebody’s yacht and zip north to the Cortez Road Bridge, following the channel into Annie’s immediately northeast of the bridge.

Lesser Known Facts      Bruce Shearer once sold 15,000 bait shrimp daily to the fishermen pushing off from Cortez into the Gulf of Mexico.  Fishing in 2014 isn’t the same as the 1980’s, Bruce moved with the money.  Annie’s Bait Shop now serves cold Heineken with their signature Grouper Sandwich on the ten bar stools, four indoor tables or dockside on their … well, it’s just a dock..

Bruce, a refugee from Michigan – now proprietor of Annie’s Bait & Tackle, headed south in the late 1970’s with a stash of $1,800.  He stands the afternoon watch at Annie’s these days

Local Recommendation

     “What’s the specialty?” I asked.

Nancy, who came down from Cincinnati, was on duty at Annie’s. She said, “The Grouper Sandwich, 100%.”Florida, bait, intercoastal, cigars, Grouper, Cortez, dockside, on the water, Anna Maria Island, Bradenton Beach, cold beer, locals, cheap meals, undiscovered, hidden, jogging, running, restaurant, bar, cheap meals, beer, price

Nancy was right.

Something for Nothing      Park your car, lace up your running/walking shoes and head over the bridge towards Anna Maria Island.  Round trip from Annie’s n the east side to the base of the bridge on the West side and back is 1.5 miles.  Continue on the Gulf, extend your exercise routine and return to Annie’s thirsty.

Categories
Florida Fort Lauderdale; SNOOZE, the hotel

Fort Lauderdale: SNOOZE; a boutique hotel featuring just the essentials

Snooze, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, beach, undiscovered, hotel, A1A, deck, on the beach, beach, kitchen, boutique, waking path, jogging, ocean view, price, locals,

SNOOZE; a BOUTIQUE hotel featuring just the essentials.

Fort Lauderdale, FL        

     “Who owns Snooze?” I asked,

     “I do,” Robert said from his stool behind the small check-in counter.  Robert, once a London-based

      real estate investor focused on hospitality, had become an Owner/Registration clerk.  No uniform 

      required.

     “Nice place, great location, a bang for the buck,” I said.

     “Bang for the buck is our target.  Provide upscale essentials, just the essentials,” Robert said.

 

Snooze is located on the A1A strip in Fort Lauderdale Beach, far enough from the

Snooze, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, beach, undiscovered, hotel, A1A, deck, on the beach, beach, kitchen, boutique, waking path, jogging, ocean view, price, locals,
View from room 301

honky-tonk strip that only traffic sounds and Atlantic waves can be heard through your open window.  A 2nd floor deck offers box seats to view the fruit of A1A; the morning parade, afternoon bikinis and the stream of classic cars.

Why this place appeals to me.  The view, the refrigerator, the cleanliness and the walking options.

Snooze is the best of the Roger Miller’s 1960’s tune, “No phone, no pool, no pets …”  But Roger didn’t sing about offering the essentials; wine glasses, a corkscrew, refrig/freezer and three tables – one for work, another for vitals, and a 3rd for stuff!

How Far Down the Block?     [mappress mapid=”7″]

A 1.1 mile walk south on A1A to the Bahia Cabana bar on the inter-coastal.

Just step outside to join the A1A parade.

Far enough down the block to be out of range from the Spring-breaker throngs trying to resurrect the Elbow Room.

Why you might be nearby?

You’ve stayed at the Fort Lauderdale Ritz Carlton and this time you want to go local.

Snooze, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, beach, undiscovered, hotel, A1A, deck, on the beach, beach, kitchen, boutique, waking path, jogging, ocean view, price, locals,
Room 301

The Pillars is too wonderfully serene.

Lesser Known Facts

Snooze was formerly the eighteen room Ocean Holiday Hotel, distinguish by its flamingo pink exterior. A 360 degree view roof-top deck is planned for summer 2014.

Local Recommendation    Upscale local, walk two blocks to the Pillars for an evening glass of wine. 

Consider a cab ride to Casa D’Angelo for an Italian dinner.

Local, local; See if Jimmy Buffett stopped at the Bahia Cabana for a beer and takes the stage.

Something for Nothing

Snooze supplies free WiFi, free beach chairs, beach towels and umbrellas.  Each morning God and Mother Nature provide the A1A parade.  Two of everything joins the parade just after dawn.  It is not possible to feel uncomfortable or out-of-place strutting on A1A at 9 am on a March morning.