The Salt Line, Vol. 110: Foley Licenses the Knock at the Door
Foley gives the doorbell office hours
Starting Friday, October 30, anyone ringing a Foley doorbell to sell something will need a city permit, a background check at their own expense, a city ID badge on display, and an employer holding a Foley business license. Knocking hours are 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. The City Council has approved the new rules for commercial solicitors, and with them the part that matters most: a No Solicitation Registry for residents, or whole communities, who would rather not be asked at all, plus “No Soliciting” signs from the city’s online portal. Companies whose people ignore the sign face warnings, citations and the loss of their permits.
Consider what this does for the “No Soliciting” sign, which has spent its whole career as décor, a sentiment in vinyl lettering about as binding as “Live, Laugh, Love.” Foley has given it a registry and a citation book. That is the real news, and it is good news.
It is also a quiet confession. This is the city that last year paused new subdivisions to protect what it called its “small-town character.” A small town does not run background checks on the knock at the door, because in a small town you already know who’s knocking. In September, Councilman Timothy Lower said door-to-door solicitation “has become a real quality-of-life concern,” and Mayor Ralph Hellmich said, “We want to make sure that our solicitors are legitimate.” Those are the sentences a town says once it has stopped knowing everybody.
Shakespeare gave the knocking at the gate a whole scene and a hungover porter. Foley has given it business hours, which is more civilized and much less fun. The 7 p.m. cutoff protects dinner. The badge answers, before the bell rings, the question every homeowner has asked through a peephole. And the word “commercial” leaves the knock about your soul or your ballot where the First Amendment put it.
Orange Beach and the Key should read this one closely. Condo towers have a front desk that does this job for free. The new neighborhoods between the beach and I-10 do not, and every growing town here will be asked for one eventually. Foley’s best idea is letting a resident say no once, in writing, and have it stick. A sign that means what it says is a modest civic achievement. Around here it is also a rare one.
Two Pensacola archaeologists go looking for 1937
Will Wilson of UWF’s Archaeology Institute and Michael Krivor, co-founder of RECON Offshore, meet in Los Angeles on Saturday to set out for Nikumaroro, in the Republic of Kiribati. There a magnetometer and side-scan sonar will go over something in the lagoon called the Taraia Object, a name that belongs on a paperback with a foil cover, in hopes that it is Amelia Earhart’s Electra. Wilson calls it “by a long shot the highest profile project I’ve been on.” He works for a university that has spent years on the wrecks of Tristán de Luna’s 1559 fleet in Pensacola Bay, which is the right training. On this coast, nothing important that sinks is ever found quickly, and nobody here takes that as a reason to stop looking.
The rain was never the variable
The weekend forecast has emptied the calendar. The Santa Rosa Island Triathlon moves from October 3 to October 10, the annual Soul Bowl to November 8, the Walk to End Alzheimer’s to November 1, and two Escambia County high school football games moved up to Thursday night. The race director, Mindi Straw, put it with real precision: “We need a good window of at least six hours to put on a safe event,” and with lightning in the forecast there wasn’t one. The line worth keeping came from Escambia High’s coach, Mike Bennett: “Normally if it just rains you don’t cancel a game.” His field, the station reports, holds water in a heavy rain. It’s never the rain. It’s where the rain goes afterward, which on this coast has always been the real forecast. If you’d like to watch six good hours fail to materialize, the cam is live.
A second career for the souvenir T-shirt
Every dresser within twenty miles of The Wharf holds a drawer of T-shirts announcing that somebody, once, was at the beach. Two Orange Beach High School juniors have found that drawer a purpose: “Tees to Tugs,” Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. outside Shades at The Wharf, turns old shirts into braided tug toys for Angie’s Doghouse, a rescue in Foley. “You cut them up and then tie them and braid them together” is the full technical specification, which is more than most recycling programs manage to explain. The same day, Northwest Florida Great Dane Rescue holds Danetober Fest in Seville Square, theme: “Not All Heroes Wear Capes … Some Drool.” Both are outdoors, on the same weekend that just emptied everyone else’s calendar, so check before you load the car.
Closing time
Most of this week’s news turned out to be about windows. Foley drew one from nine to seven, a race director needed six hours and couldn’t find them, and two Pensacola archaeologists are flying halfway around the world to a window that has stood open, without result, since 1937. Knowing exactly how much time you have is most of the job, on a porch, a racecourse or a lagoon floor. The rain keeps its own hours, and it has never once applied for a permit.
— Chris
P.S. If you run a place on the Key or in Orange Beach and it’s on this site, it’s yours to claim, free, always, no background check: /submit/claim/
