This is a travel article written some time back that I thought I would post on my website. It is about 1,700 words but worth a read if you are interested in this area.
Sunsets, Surrealism, Circus, and Seafood on Florida’s Gulf Coast
By E.C. Walsh
Looking into a gulf coast Florida sunset can remind you of Dante’s saying “nature is the art of God.” The evening sun sinks slowly on the horizon illuminating a palette of pastel patterns, casting its glow on the wavy waters below and the vast sky above. The mélange of colors seems like something from a Surrealist painting.
If Surrealism is your thing, you can observe the manmade version at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg. The museum contains the largest Dalí collection outside Spain, with more than 2,100 works including 96 oil paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, photos, and manuscripts. Some of Dalí’s glowing skies and brilliant, melting colors seem to emulate Florida sunsets. For me on this visit, lazing and gazing on the white sand beach of Longboat Key, an hour’s drive south of the Dalí museum, nature was enough.
When I was a child here in the late 1970s, Longboat’s beaches, boating, and golf courses were already a major draw for retirees and seasonal Yankee snowbirds. In his 1986 novel The Sportswriter, author Richard Ford has his hero end up on Longboat, which he describes as a place of “agreeable miscellany.” Returning today, I can see the town has attracted more tourism and residential land development, with luxury beach houses cropping up on what had been wildly wooded acreage across from the humble cottage where I lived. That ground-level abode and the dense foliage surrounding it were torn down and replaced with a new beach house and severely manicured lawn that meet modern requirements for elevated structures that avoid flood damage. Longboat does not have much undeveloped land left, only a few stray lots waiting for zoning permission or deep pockets. Preservation of natural landscapes is mainly limited to the island’s beaches, golf courses, and a mangrove bayside boardwalk designed according to stations of the cross behind the local Catholic church.
A few miles south, Siesta Key has become one of the most popular beaches in the country thanks to its fine white sand, turquoise waters, and azure sky. Florida’s population has more than doubled since 1975 to about 21.5 million in 2019. Sarasota and Manatee counties, which include Siesta, Longboat, Bradenton Beach, Venice Beach, and many other coastal destinations immediately south of Tampa, have seen their populations grow at an annual rate of 2.7%-3.0% between 1970 and 2018.
Immediately north of Longboat, Bradenton Beach has a more concerted nature preserve at Leffis Key, a saltwater wetland essential to the health of the local estuary. Leffis has a 26-foot high hill in the center of the restored area with a 360-degree view of Sarasota Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. The hill and surrounding walks were planted with native dune and coastal ridge vegetation and over 20,000 marsh grass plants thanks to volunteer labor. The site also has footpaths 1,500 lineal feet of boardwalks that meander through the mangrove forest, with strategically placed viewing platforms. Local authorities also protect mangroves on private land, as they grow quickly on bayside waterfronts and present a tenacious barrier for storms and floods.
For all the economic and population growth of Bradenton Beach, Longboat, Siesta, and neighboring city Sarasota, the brilliant sunsets and luxuriant beaches of the region have not changed. Local folklore holds that if you see glimmering green among the colors on the horizon just as the sun seems to submerge in the sea, your wishes will be granted. Renowned Florida writer John D. MacDonald named one of his novels, A Flash of Green, based on this belief.
MacDonald’s novel, dealing with intrigue and corruption surrounding a Florida gulf coast land development, was inspired by the late 1950s dredge-and-fill creation of Bird Key, a residential community between bayside Sarasota and the coastal keys. The author, famed for his Travis McGee series of thrillers, lived in Sarasota for a time, and the city commemorated the centenary of his birth a few years back with a day of events that included the screening of a film version of the novel. The Sarasota area’s coastal beaches also inspired Stephen King’s novel Duma Key, in which an aspiring painter protagonist combines sunsets and Surrealism.
Land development remains contentious today. Many locals protested a recent proposal to turn a disused commercial lot on the north end of Longboat Key into a hotel, arguing it would aggravate traffic problems. A long-closed gasoline station on the north end was converted this year into a pleasant bodega-style café that seems more amenable to the natives.
Construction cranes can be seen raising new buildings in downtown Sarasota, which offers more culture and commerce than the region’s beachside communities. In addition to shops, restaurants, theatres, and an opera house, the city is home to its own busy airport and The Ringling, the State Art Museum of Florida, an arts, architecture, and theatre complex on the waterfront former estate of circus impresario John Ringling.
Italiano-philes, John Ringling and his wife Mable, made very wealthy by their circus business and Florida real estate investment, built a 36,000-square-foot mansion in Venetian Gothic style during the Roaring Twenties. Dubbed “Ca’ d’Zan,” Venetian dialect for “House of John,” the mansion and the rest of the Ringlings’ Sarasota estate were acquired by the state of Florida in 1946, but the house went through years of decline before a $15 million renovation completed in 2002. Before its renewal, the dilapidated building served as Miss Havisham’s decaying mansion in Alfonso Cuarón’s 1998 modernized film adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Today it is open to the public daily.
Soon after finishing his mansion, Ringling opened nearby a 21-gallery art museum to the public stocked with his avidly purchased European paintings including Old Masters like Velazquez, van Dyke, and Rubens. Modelled on Florence’s famed Uffizi Gallery, the Ringling Museum of Art includes a courtyard overlooking Sarasota Bay with replicas of Greek and Roman sculpture that have as their centerpiece a bronze cast of Michelangelo’s “David.” Operated today by Florida State University, the museum opened a 25,000-square foot Center for Asian Art in 2016, diversifying its original Eurocentric focus.
If you want to get a better sense of how the public entertained itself before movies, television, and the Internet dominated leisure time, the Ringling Circus Museum recounts the history of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum Bailey Circus, also known as The Greatest Show on Earth. The estate’s 66-acre Bayfront Gardens has an extensive collection of banyan trees for children in search of natural jungle gyms (though they might not pass a safety inspection). The estate is also home to the Historic Asolo Theatre, first built in Asolo, Italy, in 1798, brought to Sarasota in the early 1950s, and restored in 2006. Asolo performances–which typically include classics like the works of Shakespeare, Arthur Miller and Noel Coward–are currently on hold, as many theatres have suspended shows for Covid-19, but the theater hopes to resume them soon.
Back on Longboat Key after a day at the Ringling, breezy evening temperatures make for a pleasant hike to Beer Can Island on the key’s northern tip. Technically a hooked spit rather than an actual island, Beer Can is formally known as Greer Island Park. It got its more common name from its reputation as a hangout for local beer buddies. While the beach here is cleaner than the name implies, it’s still a popular recreational area for boaters and beachcombers. It offers a scenic walk among thick mangroves (whose jutting roots can be treacherous: you may want to wear shoes), Australian pines seemingly fighting a losing battle with encroaching gulf tides, and loitering birds such as seagulls, egrets, and pelicans. Beer Can is located on Longboat Pass across from the larger and more crowded Coquina/Bradenton Beach, with its lifeguards, parasailing, and user-friendly parking, picnic tables, rest rooms, and changing rooms.
If you prefer something more active than lying and walking on the beach, fishing is of course very popular, and you can rent a motor boat from Cannons Marina on Longboat and jet skis from H20 Watersportz or Cortez Watersports in the nearby fishing village of Cortez. For a lower-tech, physically challenging tour of local waters, you can rent sea kayaks from numerous outlets in the Sarasota area. Kayaks can be a great way to observe schools of dolphins, manatees, and birds. I once had dolphins swim alongside my kayak on the key’s bayside as if they were a friendly escort. On the weekends you will see dozens of boaters moored at Beer Can Island and the neighboring Jewfish Key sandbar, and groups of jet skis. In this time of plague-like calamity from the coronavirus, some of these groups bring to mind what I think of as the four “jet ski boys” of the apocalypse. You may as well go out having fun.
As for eating out, Bradenton Beach and Anna Maria Island a short drive north offer a variety of cuisines and price ranges, and these towns also have more vacancies for short-term rentals and hotel rooms. Beach Bistro is among the more gourmet destinations, with a beachfront view and surf-and-turf menu. On my visit, local seafood was a must. From the north side of Longboat or Bradenton Beach, for a no-frills grouper sandwich or scallops, Star Fish Co. Seafood Market and Dockside Restaurant in Cortez offers tasty fare, outdoor tables, and a nice view. For slightly fancier presentation, Dry Dock Waterfront Grill on the south side of Longboat Key serves a larger crowd and even has three slips for customers arriving by boat. A brief drive from Dry Dock is St. Armands Circle, a network of boutique shops and dining places including Columbia Restaurant. The Sarasota area’s oldest restaurant, established in 1959 as a branch of its Ybor City, Tampa namesake, Columbia is famous for Cuban cuisine such as “1905” Salad, Spanish bean soup, Cuban sandwiches, and mojitos.
From Surrealism to Spanish bean soup, Florida’s gulf coast presents visitors with Old World influences and other-worldly vistas. Over the decades, year-round residents, seasonal “snowbirds,” and short-term vacationers seem to have struck something of an ecological balance. In-land areas like Bradenton proper are not as wealthy and have more problems with crime and addiction. But these areas also have the big-box stores that we all seem to need eventually. “The poor you will always have with you,” said someone famous.
