The Salt Line, Vol. 79: The Minutes — A Boardwalk Authorized by a Binder From 2018, a National Search That Found One Guy Already in Town, and 80 Yards of Immediate Answer
The Joint Committee on Coastal Whatever convened at 6:12 a.m. at the picnic table with the wobbly leg, a quorum being defined here as me and a coffee. Minutes of the previous session were approved without being read, because they never are, anywhere, by anyone. Old business was tabled. New business follows.
📜 ITEM ONE: The Sacred Text of 2018 Is Read Aloud, and the People Are Troubled
Santa Rosa County brought forward a boardwalk and event center for Navarre Beach, and the room brought forward its opinions, and the two did not shake hands. The commission chairman’s defense was, essentially, canonical: the project was spelled out in District 4’s 2018 master plan.
Behold the master plan. Drafted in 2018, filed in a cabinet, consulted by nobody for the better part of a decade, and then produced at a public meeting with the quiet confidence of a man pulling a deed out of a hat.
I love this genre of governance. Somewhere in Florida there is a binder that has more standing than most of us do. It sat in the dark through a pandemic, through hurricanes, through every single person in that room getting eight years older — and it emerged unamended, unbothered, still calling for a boardwalk. The Committee finds no fault. The Committee finds it a little inspiring, honestly. Motion carried, subject to the binder.
🎓 ITEM TWO: A Nationwide Search Concludes, Having Located One (1) Human
Pensacola State College’s trustees wrapped a national search for their next president and recommended a sole finalist — J. Alex Kelly, currently Secretary of the Florida Department of Commerce.
Sole. Finalist.
The Committee notes, without comment on the gentleman himself, that the phrase “sole finalist of a national search” is doing an Olympic amount of work. It is the résumé equivalent of “undefeated in fights I have been in.” A net was cast over the entire nation, all fifty of them, and it came up with one fish, and the one fish was already swimming in state waters. Efficient. Certainly cheaper than airfare. Received and filed.
✈️ ITEM THREE: Gulf Shores Reroutes Aviation Itself
East 29th Avenue in Gulf Shores is closing, and it affects traffic to the airport.
Understand the scale of what is being described. An avenue has been removed from service, and the consequence ripples outward into air travel. One street in Gulf Shores went down and now the sky is involved. This is the closest the Alabama Gulf Coast has ever come to an air-traffic-control situation, and it is being handled the way everything here is handled: orange barrels and a sign you don’t read until you’re already past it.
The Committee’s guidance to anybody flying out of Gulf Shores this month: leave early, take Canal, and accept that your detour runs past somebody’s second cousin’s landscaping trailer. No action required. Vibes only.
🎡 ITEM FOUR: Eleven Days, and I Need You to Sit Down for the Lineup
The Pensacola Interstate Fair released its full 2026 entertainment schedule — eleven days of concerts, competitions and attractions, headlined by Hunter Hayes, Lauren Alaina and The Band Perry.
Now. Between us. You and me and nobody else at this table.
Nobody in this county has voluntarily thought about The Band Perry in a decade. Everybody in this county will know every word. That is the specific magic of the Interstate Fair: it books the artists you’d swear you were neutral on, plays them at nine at night through a haze of funnel-cake smoke, and turns you into a person with feelings. Eleven days is not a run. Eleven days is a tour of duty. The Committee will be attending in an unofficial capacity and will not be answering questions about it.
🏈 ITEM FIVE: A Question Is Asked, and Answered Immediately, Over 80 Yards
Baldwin County High School senior receiver Ashton Cox won Wind Creek Play of the Week for Week 2: a quick pass to the outside from quarterback Rayvon Johnson, taken 80 yards to the house.
That’s the whole play. A five-yard throw and seventy-five yards of no thank you. Somewhere there is a defensive coordinator who drew that route on a whiteboard Tuesday, labeled it “contained,” and has since revised the file.
The Committee wishes to enter into the record that this is the correct amount of football to have opinions about in September, and that no master plan, from 2018 or otherwise, has ever contained a line item for a kid who is faster than the plan. Commended unanimously.
🎣 ITEM SIX: Fishing, for a Reason
The 13th Annual Backpack Project USA Family Fishing Rodeo runs September 10–12 in Pensacola — prizes for anglers, proceeds toward local students.
Thirteen years. That’s a rodeo that has outlasted several boats, at least one bait shop, and every “we should do this every year” ever said out loud on a dock. If you wanted a weekend where the fish you catch does measurable good for a kid with a backpack, the Committee has located it for you. Entered without objection.
🌀 OLD BUSINESS: The Part Where We Don’t Joke
Our week looks like September: hot, humid, a few afternoon storms, and the tropical system in the Gulf tracking away from us. Dry here. Not dry everywhere — that system is aimed west, and the people over there are doing the thing we’ve all done, which is move the patio furniture and go check on the neighbor with the bad knee.
We know exactly how that week feels. Send it west with something better than a punchline.
The Committee finds that on this coast a boardwalk can be authorized by a binder, a nation can be searched down to one guy, and an entire airport can be inconvenienced by a single avenue — but a seventeen-year-old with a step on the corner remains ungovernable by any document ever filed. The 2018 master plan does not mention him. It should have.
Meeting adjourned. Somebody fix this table leg.
— Chris
P.S. Know a restaurant, charter, shop, or event we’re missing? Add it — free, Florida side or Alabama side: /submit/
