The Salt Line, Vol. 58: A TV Network Discovers Our Beach, a Report Card Worth Defending, and a Baseball Score That Belongs to a Different Sport
MINUTES of the Joint Committee on Sand, Shade, and Civic Ambition, serving Perdido Key, Florida and Orange Beach, Alabama without portfolio, budget, or anyone’s permission. The Committee convened Tuesday at the second-best bench near the Pass — the best bench had a pelican on it, and the Committee knows better than to litigate that. Quorum was established when the third member arrived holding coffee. Minutes of the previous meeting were not read, because no one took any. The agenda follows.
📺 Agenda Item One: A National Television Network Has Located Our Beach
The Committee acknowledges receipt of the news that Fox Weather’s “Beach House” will broadcast live from Gulf Shores starting at 11 a.m. Wednesday. The Committee extends a full and genuine welcome — the water is warm, the sand is the good kind, and the light after 10 a.m. will do half their production work for them.
The Committee does note, for the record, that it has been broadcasting this same coastline twenty-four hours a day with one camera, zero anchors, and no commercial breaks, and nobody sent us a satellite truck. The Committee is not bitter. The Committee is simply entering it into the minutes, which is what bitter people invented minutes for.
Ruling: Welcomed, 3-0, with one member abstaining until he sees whether they pronounce “Bon Secour” correctly on air.
🎓 Agenda Item Two: The Defending Champions Report to Camp
The Committee turns to Escambia County, where school starts Wednesday and the district enters the season defending its first A rating in recent memory, with 83 percent of schools holding or improving their grades. Understand what this means: an entire county school district is now the guy at the gym who finally hit his goal weight and must live, forever after, in fear of the scale. There is no trophy for an A. There is only next year’s A, and the year after that, stretching to the horizon like the world’s most academically rigorous treadmill.
Ruling: The Committee wishes every teacher a sharpened pencil, a working air conditioner, and a copier that jams for somebody else this year.
🏟️ Agenda Item Three: The Studies Have Concluded That the Studies Are Over
After years of studies, the Pensacola Bay Center project is finally taking shape, with a proposed $74 million first phase to modernize the aging arena while officials shop for a private partner to fund the rest. The Committee — which itself began as years of studies conducted from a bench — extends its deepest professional respect. “After years of studies” is the most honest four-word opening in the history of local journalism. Somewhere there is a filing cabinet that carried this project on its back for a decade, and that filing cabinet will not be invited to the groundbreaking.
Ruling: Approved in concept, which the Committee understands is the arena’s favorite kind of approval.
⚾ Agenda Item Four: The Committee Has Reviewed the Box Score and Confirms It Is, Technically, Baseball
The Committee reports without embellishment, because none is possible: the Blue Wahoos lost to the Montgomery Biscuits 19 to 9, surrendering 19 hits — the most Pensacola has allowed all season — in the series finale. Nineteen to nine. That is not a baseball score; that is a first-quarter football score. That is what a scoreboard says right before it enters the transfer portal. The Wahoos had won three straight and then apparently decided the series needed a twist ending. The Biscuits, a team named after a breakfast item, ate accordingly.
Ruling: The Committee declines to assign blame and instead assigns the whole pitching staff a beach day. The Gulf forgives everyone eventually.
🐔 Agenda Item Five: A Building Shall Fall So That Waffle Fries May Rise
The Escambia County Development Review Committee — a real committee, with actual power, and the Committee tries not to think about that too hard — has granted final approval for a Chick-fil-A on Nine Mile Road, to be built on the site of a former convenience store, which will be demolished. The Committee admires the ceremony of it all. In older civilizations, one temple was torn down so another could stand on the same consecrated ground. In ours, the ground is consecrated to the drive-thru, the congregation will form a double line by 11:45 on opening day, and — alone among the temples of any age — this one actually rests on the Sabbath.
Ruling: Approved, with the Committee’s standard warning that “grand opening week on Nine Mile Road” is a traffic event that deserves its own flag color.
⛽ Agenda Item Six: The Gas Prices Performed Interpretive Dance
Finally, the Committee received the fuel report: Florida’s average rose 14 cents early in the week, fell 10 cents by the weekend, and landed at $3.88 — a net gain of 4 cents — while Escambia County prices quietly dropped a few cents in the other direction. Up fourteen, down ten, county down, state up. The Committee has seen less erratic movement from a crab on hot sand. Somewhere an economist can explain this, but the Committee suspects the explanation would also rise 14 cents before falling 10.
Ruling: Noted, filed, and forgotten by the next fill-up, as is tradition.
ADJOURNMENT. The Committee adjourned to watch the weather come in over the Gulf, which remains the best programming on this coast. To our visiting friends at Fox Weather: enjoy Wednesday morning — you picked a good beach, because there isn’t a bad one between here and the state line. Just know that at noon you’ll pack up the truck and head home, and the beach will still be on the air. Some of us never sign off.
— Chris
