The Salt Line, Vol. 73: Forty-Five Christmases Without a Raise, a Boat Ramp Charged With Being Parking, and Five Straight Wins in Biscuit Country

Minutes of the Bench of Review for Coastal Affairs, Perdido Key–Orange Beach Division, convened Wednesday morning at the usual picnic table by the Pass. Present: the Chair (me), a pelican with standing, and a man from Ohio who believed this was the line for the boat ramp and was allowed to stay because he brought a cooler. Quorum was declared on the grounds that nobody objected. The Bench notes for the record that nothing in this morning’s feed has a cone attached to it, and so proceeded without the plywood.

🦌 Item One: In re the Reindeer of Foley, Ages 45 and Up

The Bench takes judicial notice that the City of Foley has approved $8,535 to replace the reindeer on Santa’s Christmas parade float — a team that has pulled that float for the past 45 years without a raise, a union, or, as far as the record shows, a single sick day. Forty-five years. Those reindeer went to work when a beachfront lot on the Key was something you could still make a bad joke about affording, and they have hauled the same passenger down the same street every December since, while the man in the red suit got all the cookies. Organizations are now looking to display the retiring reindeer in a museum, which the Bench finds appropriate: very few public employees in Baldwin County make it to a museum, and fewer still without a scandal. Ruling: retirement APPROVED with full honors. The Bench further observes that $8,535 will buy you a fresh team of reindeer or roughly one summer of Bushwackers if you sit at the bar with the wrong people, and only one of those gets you into a museum.

🚤 Item Two: Gulf Shores v. A Boat Ramp, on the Charge of Being Parking

Gulf Shores will keep the Canal Park boat launch open after public outcry. The record shows a city report had suggested the launch’s parking represented an “underutilization” of public right-of-way that could otherwise be used to address parking and zoning needs for future retail, restaurant, and mixed-use developments. The Bench has read that sentence four times, once aloud to the pelican. Translation from the Municipal: a place where people park trucks with boats behind them could instead be a place where people park cars with nothing behind them, in front of a store that does not exist yet. Ruling: the public arrived, the public objected, the ramp stays. The word “underutilization” is hereby placed on the Bench’s watch list, alongside “right-sizing” and “stakeholder engagement,” all three of which mean somebody wants your parking spot and has hired a consultant to feel bad about it.

⚾ Item Three: The Fish That Would Not Lose in Montgomery

Let the record reflect that the Pensacola Blue Wahoos won their fifth straight, a back-and-forth affair against the Montgomery Biscuits — yes, the Biscuits; Alabama named a baseball club after a side dish and it stuck, which tells you everything about Alabama and nothing bad — to open the final road trip of the season. Matheus drove in four. Brandon Compton walked to the plate in the top of the first with two men on, one out, and a 14-game hitting streak riding on his shoulders, and the Bench will not tell you what happened next, because that is what the box score is for and this is a court of law. Ruling: the Bench, which spent June checking on this team the way you check on a friend who has stopped answering texts, notes for the record that it has been wrong before and has been wrong loudly. Five straight. On the road. In the last week of August, when every other living thing on this coast has given up trying. The Bench is not crying. It is humid.

⚓ Item Four: The Port City Would Like to Be a Destination, and Has Filed Paperwork

The Mobile City Council on Tuesday considered a marina and took another step toward a waterfront park, two projects tied to the stated goal of making Mobile “a destination.” The Bench, sitting in a place that became a destination entirely by accident and has been managing the consequences ever since, offers the following free consultation to the Port City: it will work. You will get the marina, and the park, and then you will get the people, and the people will be lovely, and roughly eleven summers from now a man in a visor will stand in your marina parking lot on a Saturday and explain to your council that it was better before he got here. Ruling: no objection. The Bench wishes Mobile well and reminds it that the first rule of being a destination is that the destination is now full.

🌧️ Item Five: The Culverts of Robbins Boulevard

A Baldwin County neighborhood has finally gotten flooding relief after years-long drainage problems: new, higher-capacity culverts and drainpipes now carry water from Robbins Boulevard to a small retention pond, which slows the flow into the Fish River watershed. Years. People bought on Robbins Boulevard as newlyweds and now have children who can define “retention pond” on a spelling test. The Bench wishes to be clear about the scale of this achievement. On this coast, moving water from where it is to where it ought to be, on purpose, is the entire history of civilization — the pyramids are just drainage that got out of hand. Ruling: the culverts are commended and wished a long career. The Bench notes that it is late August and the afternoon radar will schedule the inspection itself.

📋 Consent Agenda

• Navarre. Frontera Street is down to one lane between Montalban Street and Salamanca while Holley-Navarre Water System installs a waterline. The Bench has no ruling, only sympathy, and the observation that Frontera, Montalban, and Salamanca sound less like a lane closure and more like a vacation you cannot afford. Adopted without objection.
• Flag football. Twenty-four area schools are fielding flag football teams this season under the AHSAA, which has separated public and private competition. The Bench, which cannot get 24 people to agree on a lunch spot, is impressed. Adopted; the pelican abstained.

Adjournment

There being no further business, the Chair looked around and noticed that the picnic table it was sitting at is one man and one bird on a hundred square feet of public right-of-way, and that somewhere there is a consultant who would call that underutilized. The Bench therefore declared itself fully utilized until further notice, moved to adjourn to the sandbar, and reminded the Ohio man that the flags are whatever the flags are — check the beach page before you swim, because this Bench rules on reindeer, not rip currents.

— Chris

P.S. Know a boat ramp, bait shop, taco window, or Tuesday special we haven’t listed? Add it yourself — free, Alabama side or Florida side: /submit/