APALACHICOLA, FLORIDA | MONDAY, APRIL 5, 2010 - Just some highlights, quick rundown of towns to jot down, to skip or to visit, whether as tourist or anthropologist may determine decision.
Apalachicola, FL - a beauty. small, walkable, fishing port with seiners, draggers, shrimpers, other boats. but a small port. no wharves to speak of. but deep water access. old settling buildings with idiosyncratic bone structure and organic rooflines. streets pleasant. coffee delicious. We stayed here for a bit, had first meal of day around lunch. had only driven about 47 miles. but put off the call of the road, put off the duty to get some mileage in. The place was just a good little town, maybe eight blocks at most. plenty of cafes, shops, antiques, saltwater sponges, work trucks coming thru hauling boats, that kind of thing. menfolk can entertain themselves in shady courtyards, look around, while womenfolk glean the sparkly things
Seaside, FL - this is one of urbanisms great triumphs of city planning. Established in 1981, mostly from scratch, Seaside is eerily perfect and appears to successful. The inhabitants, anyway, are happy. The Truman Show, if it wasn't filmed here, easily could have been. There are children everywhere, or robot children anyway, unaccompanied by adults, taking pictures of themselves, riding one-speed, old-fashioned Schwinn bikes. The planners appropriated airstream trailers for a line-up of picturesque food carts along the main street, which drew us in, almost, but we were repelled by the weirdness of all the homogenized, somewhat racially diverse, but upper middle-class only perfection. A child brought up here would have the strangest expectations, and probably tepid passions. It feels like Buckminster Fuller's bubble city, at least that image of it, of being hermetically sealed up from any outside intrusion. This place has no connection to the actual world, to actual conundrums, difficult or intricate things. Even the beach is perfect. Nothing washes up on it. The sand is pure crystaline, white. We left without eating, as quickly as we could.
Panama City and coast line west to Fort Walton Beach - Skip it. Infernally slow, menacing traffic. Shoot up to I-10 as soon as West 98 starts to clog up with traffic lights, probably around Port St. Joe. This area is just another succession of binge strip cities, like Daytona Beach and Myrtle Beach. Nothing but mini-golf heaven, artificially colored waterfalls, smoky volcanos, giant shark entrances to t-shirt shops. The one exception, a brief moment of hilarity, we were passed by a squadron of drunken shirtless boys on mopeds, they went flying past us in the breakdown lane, hooting to each other, and then were gone. It was a brief moment. But it stirred us awake. At the next turn off we sped away from the coast as fast as Yellow Truck would take us.
strangely, at this point, we are beginning to look forward to Texas. Alabama and Mississippi will go past quickly. but then there's Louisiana, and New Orleans...haven't seen since Katrina....closing in on B20, we hope, this morning, in Pensacola.
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Inspiring pictures and writings, a much needed break from the workaday drudgery. I'm jealous.
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