The Salt Line, Vol. 106: The Cheapest Gas in Florida, and Other Consolation Prizes
First in Florida, and Still Paying for It
On Sunday, Escambia County had the lowest average gas price in Florida: $4.08 a gallon, against a state average of $4.37, with warehouse clubs in Pensacola down to $3.86. By the standards of the weekly price report, this is a parade.
The rest of the report is less festive. The state average is 41 cents higher than a month ago and $1.42 higher than a year ago, and filling a 15-gallon tank at that average now costs about $65, against $44 last year. To be first in Florida this week is to be emptied a little more slowly than anyone else in the state.
AAA’s spokesman, Mark Jenkins, explained the week this way: “Gasoline prices bounced higher last week, in response to oil price gains the week before. Fortunately, oil prices moved lower last week. That could ease some of the upward pressure on prices at the pump.” It rewards a second reading. Prices bounce, like a ball nobody threw. Oil moves, the way weather moves. And relief could ease some of the pressure, a promise that hedges twice before it reaches the pump. None of this is a knock on Mr. Jenkins, who is accurately describing a market nobody on this coast controls. That is the point.
A beach town spends the fall trying to look worth the drive. The fair up the road has just cut its weekday price. Condo managers, restaurant owners and festival committees on both sides of the state line are deciding what October should cost, and nearly all of them will hear about it at the grocery store if they get it wrong. The first price a visiting family pays, before the rental or the first plate of Royal Reds, is set by oil a week earlier and explained afterward in the passive voice.
So take the ranking for the one piece of practical advice it contains. If you’re driving in from elsewhere in Florida, the averages say to wait and fill up once you’ve crossed into Escambia County. If you’re coming from the Orange Beach side, the report offers no opinion on Alabama, and I suspect you’ve formed your own. And if you live here, enjoy being the cheapest in Florida quietly. Nobody puts “Least Painful Fill-Up in the State” on a welcome sign.
A Carnival Discovers the Virtue of Planning Ahead
The Pensacola Interstate Fair, back October 22 through November 1 with a stage lineup that runs from The Band Perry to Bee Gees Now, has lowered its weekday admission: adults pay $12 Monday through Thursday instead of $14, and weekends stay at $14. The real bargain is the advance ticket. Buy by October 21 and adults get in for $7, children for $3, and parking is $5. At the gate, parking is $10, collected as you leave, when a family’s capacity to argue is at its lowest. The fair has built a price schedule that rewards the one virtue no carnival in history ever asked of its public, which is planning. It has also restated the morning’s theme without meaning to: on a weekday at the gate, the car costs nearly as much as the adult driving it.
The Seafood Festival’s Other Catch
The Pensacola Seafood Festival wrapped its three days on Sunday, and the most interesting thing in the report on the weekend isn’t the seafood. It’s the more than 150 artists who came from around the country, and how they did. Randy Gould, a vendor out of Mobile who works festivals from Slidell to Panama City, said they sold “a lot more than we thought we would on a Friday.” Drew Brass, who drives over from Apopka, said, “We always seem to do well here in Pensacola, a big fishing community.” And a winning piece of artwork was auctioned off for the art program at Baghdad Elementary, a Title 1 school that, per the report, has no dedicated budget for art supplies. An art program with no money for supplies is being paid for, this round, by art. One half of that sentence is the festival’s achievement. The other half is somebody else’s homework.
A Model Number in Search of a Sentence
On Monday’s Gulf Shores City Council agenda: a resolution to buy an “MVB3X Vehicle barrier system” from Advanced Security Technologies, LLC, in an amount not to exceed $205,000. As reported, that is the whole of it: a model number, a vendor and a ceiling. Nothing about what the barriers are for or where they would go. It may be an entirely sensible purchase. It probably is. But a city asking residents to trust $205,000 of its judgment owes them more than a part number. A modest proposal for every agenda on this coast, Alabama side and Florida side: under the model number, one plain sentence saying what the thing is, where it goes and what it’s for, short enough to read at a red light on Highway 59 before the light changes. A part number is precise. It is not the same thing as an explanation.
Fortune’s Wheel, Highway 98 Edition
Two weeks ago, Elberta was the team Murphy beat to end a 24-game losing streak, a thankless way to appear in someone else’s good news. On Friday, at Chickasaw’s homecoming, Elberta snapped its own 15-game skid, 52–18, with senior running back Moose Owens scoring five rushing touchdowns. Boethius, who wrote the book on consolation, observed that if Fortune ever stood still she would stop being Fortune. Elberta’s coach, Joel Williams, reached the same philosophy without the prison cell: “Our program’s not built on wins and losses. You’ve heard me say that before, but I’m really tickled for our guys.” Boethius took five books to get there and never once managed “tickled.”
A coast can’t set the price of getting here. It sets nearly everything after that, and most of those decisions get made in rooms with public agendas and folding chairs, by people who could, in principle, be asked why. Oil will go on bouncing in the passive voice. Everything else has names attached, which is comforting or not, depending on the room.
— Chris
P.S. Run a place on the Key or in Orange Beach that’s already on this site? It’s yours to claim, free, always: /submit/claim/
