My wife came home yesterday to find a big box on the front porch, which contained a small token of appreciation from the School of Kinesiology for one of their recent retirees.
Now we have a matching set.
Easy to know whose is whose:
Go Blue!
My friend Ken gave me a ride in his new Tesla (model Y (1)). the other day. Pretty fine car: beautiful deep blue, sleek clean lines, simple spacious interior, and plenty of power (though Ken says those surges are tough on the battery). Ken’s position as a UCSD professor places him square in the service class of La Jolla but with enough dough to keep him in nice cars. He says his Tesla was cheaper than his previous ride, a Beemer. Of course, he enjoys driving right by those $6/gallon California gas stations. Ken’s a lib, but not a mouthy one, so of course he gains satisfaction from his low carbon footprint. This week, the temp in LJ has not crept past 65 and the sun is rare, so we could use a little global warming around here, but it’s not coming from the likes of Ken.
Or is it? I remember Rush (God rest his soul) calling electric cars “coal-fired”. Although such cars don’t even have tailpipes, the energy that powers them comes from generators that have to burn something to make that electricity. I’ve wanted to get into the nitty-gritty of how those putt-putt plug-ins are powered, and Ken’s Tesla provided the impetus. So here’s what I found out about the costs and consequences of this ever more popular way of driving.
Fueling up
The full recommended charge for a Tesla on a home unit (which Ken paid $2500 to install) goes as follows. The home unit provides 240 Volt, 80 amps of current. This charges a Tesla much faster than the 20 amp 120-volt charger. With a 240-volt connection, you can charge a Tesla Model Y completely in between 6 and 30 hours. The 240-volt charger adds between 9 and 52 miles of range per hour of charging. Power companies charge per kilowatt-hour. Watts=voltage X current (amps). An installed 240 volt Tesla home charger running at max uses 19,200 watts, or 19.2 kilowatts. Running that puppy the 6-30 hours it takes to fully charge a Tesla will then consume 115.2 – 576 kilowatt-hours.
San Diego has the highest electricity rates in the country (2), but few actually pay them. Residents have 3 tiers of rates depending on time of day, with “off-peak” 9-midnight and “super off peak” midnight to 2 PM. So you plug in as late as possible. Standard residential rate is $0.39206/kw-h. So that “fill-up” will cost ya $45.17 – $225.83 in San Diego. My Michigan rate from DTE is $0.041760/kw-h, so my costs will be less than a 10th what I’d pay in LJ. And our gas is only ~25% cheaper. Per the Tesla web site, the Model S gets 396 miles on a full charge, which comes to 11.4¢ – $1.754/mile. To compare, my rickety but beloved ’11 Jeep Patriot gets ~18 mpg, so with the $4.20/gallon Michigan gas that’s 4.29¢/mile. Even with California gas, I think you can see the vinner here. Plus, my Patriot was paid for long ago and I don’t even want to think about Ken’s car note.
San Diego Gas & Electric offers 3 special packages for electric car owners (2). The best deal, at least as regards base rates, for a mere $16 month will lower your charges to 66¢/40¢/11¢ for basic, off-peak, and super off-peak. So you still have to wait till 9 PM to plug in to even get close to the standard rate.
But there’s other ways to juice up your Tesla. Virtue-signalling municipal governments everywhere have thrown up “free” charging stations (guess who’s paying for the juice?). Where’s my free gas pump? But such stations are ever less useful as more embrace electric cars and demand for those plugs expands. The short charge is never more than a top-off. Commercial charging stations have popped up all over in Southern California (4), but are already overtaxed. Ken keeps a map of all the charging stations in the region, but as the market for juice remains fluid, stations come and go.
Tesla has its own changing stations which promise to add 200 miles in 15 minutes. For commercial and municipal charging, they recommend carrying around a couple adapters in your trunk (5). Commercial chargers do not yet have uniform fee schedules, but are moving from charging by time plugged to charging per unit of energy. Right now, drivers in California can expect to pay 30 cents per kWh to charge on Level 2, and 40 cents per kWh for DC fast charging. So that’s a little higher than what they’d pay at home. And way higher than what I’d pay in my home state of Michigan, where electric car drivers pay 17¢/kWh (6).
But electric cars were never touted for their economy. Uncle still subsidizes every electric car purchase with a tax credit that starts at $2500 and can reach $7500 (7). As it’s usually the upper crust that buys these things, this sure ain’t addressing “income inequality”. Of course, California signals its virtue by offering an additional $1000-$7000 per electric vehicle bought or leased, although they no longer offer that for a Tesla purchase (8). In Michigan, our Governor Bimbo has proposed a $2000/car rebate plus $500 for a home charging station (9). Fortunately her January proposal has gone nowhere in our Republican led congress.
Whatever the rebate, these electric cars are way more expensive than your trusty gas guzzler. But you can’t put a price on the warm and fuzzy feeling you get by signalling your virtue. Getting behind the wheel of one of these means you’re doing your part to push back the climate catastrophe our betters are always telling us is barely 10 years away.
But are you really? For the sake of argument, at least for the rest of this post, let’s assume that CO2 emissions actually do influence climate and maybe it’s a good thing to reduce them. Does driving an electric car further those ends? Remember, those kilowatt-hours have to come from someplace, and I’ve yet to see an electric car bearing solar panels.
Ken’s source of juice, San Diego Gas and Electric, prides itself on its “clean” profile. They claim to derive 40% of their generation from “renewable” resources, wind, solar, and likely a bunch of hydroelectric. Plus they boast they have no active coal contracts. Whether there are some power plants with big paid-for piles of the black stuff outside, they don’t say. They are obligated by law to report their emissions, although the latest year covered on their web site is 2011. No telling what their fuel mix was then, but they put out 1,266,649 metric tons of CO2 as direct emissions and an additional 299,785 tons in indirect emissions (10). Once I’ve burned up the 6 cords of firewood out front of my house, I’ll have contributed 15 tons of CO2 to our climactic demise (11). But then, I’m not working to keep the lights of millions on.
To do that, for its 4,327 industrial customers, 104,875 commercial accounts, 4 transportation customers and 1,287,811 residential customers, SDG&E generates 5,320,873.84 megawatt-hours/year, proudly producing 5,276,870.41 of those from natural gas (12). (What happened to the 40% from “renewables”?). During the same timeframe, San Diego Gas and Electric generated 3,113,925 megawatt hours in power generation facilities owned by the supplier and procured 22,546,881 megawatt hours through wholesale channels. So SDG&E moved a lot of electrons. The relevant number for my next calculation is that 3 million plus number. That’s the juice they generated from the plants that spewed 1,566,434 metric tons of CO2 upward in 2011. In the decade since, you’ve gotta figure more, but those numbers aren’t available. So now for the grand equation. To generate 3,113,925 megawatt hours of electricity, SDG&E spewed 1,566,434 metric tons of CO2. That comes to half a ton of CO2 for each megawatt-hour (0.5030). Now take that down to Ken’s Tesla level. Recall that fully charging a Tesla S consumes 115.2 – 576 kilowatt-hours. With 1/10th of a half a metric ton of CO2 – 110.25 pounds – generated with each kilowatt hour, that charge is responsible for anywhere from 12,700.8 to 63,504 pounds of CO2. Taking it back to units in which CO2 emissions are usually measured, that’s 5.8 to 28.9 metric tons of CO2 per charge. Doesn’t that seem like a lot of CO2 for one car? And the owner is surely going to be charging it up several times a year. With Tesla’s 303 miles per charge, going 10,000 miles a year will require at least 33 charges. I’ll do the math for you: that’s 191 to 954 metric tons of CO2 per year. What about my little gas guzzler? While I don’t have stats for my dear Patriot, the EPA has kindly calculated that a car getting 22 MPG driving 11,500 miles/year emits 4.5 metric tons of CO2 (13). So for my part, I’m going to work to save the earth by bellying up to the pump every week. Each gallon of gas I burn will generate about 8,887 grams of CO2. With a million grams in a metric ton, I’ll have to burn a lot of gas before I ever come close to any Tesla. Elon Musk should put fake tailpipes on his cars and make them belch smoke just to keep things honest.
References
The ol’ Commander sang that he knew where paradise lies (1), but I don’t know if he ever made the 44 mile hour and a half trip south from his Stinson Beach home to Miramar Beach to eat and drink at the Miramar Beach Restaurant. For Kathy and me, that’s where paradise lies, especially after a long trip west come to visit the fam in nearby Pescadaro. Smack on the Pacific with the waves crashing in onto big rocks, California sun shining down, there’s no place we’d rather plunk ourselves as we wait for our seaside rooms to be ready at the generically named “Oceanfront Hotel” (once “Landis Inn”) next door. It’s a ritual we’ve been following for at least 2 decades: beers and a plate of oysters plus a view of the sea. It was the first place I seriously cheated during my enforced pee-tested abstinence in ’11, sipping that forbidden beer knowing they couldn’t chase me into the hills of Silicon Valley.
Miramar is a place name of Spanish and Portuguese origin. It means “sea-view” or “sea sight” from mirar (“to look at, to watch”) and mar (“sea”). Many luxurious places around the world bear this name.
The Miramar Beach Restaurant is steeped in sin. It was designed and built as a prohibition roadhouse. Half Moon Bay was an ideal site for boats laden with Canadian booze to unload, transferring their cargo to cars bound for nearby San Francisco. Then there was that prostitution thing. Let me paste in the story from the restaurant’s website and let that tell the story. From 1918 to 1955 a redheaded madam named Maymie Cowley, aka “Boss”, ruled the Miramar. During her reign, the roadhouse was raided numerous times for illegal liquor, gambling and prostitution during Prohibition. During this time the Miramar was a notorious drop off point for illegal liquor. Smugglers bought their booze in Canada and shipped it down the coast to Half Moon Bay. Under the cover of darkness, small vessels, known as “rum runners”, met the large ships off the coast and transferred the illegal cargo to shore. Rum Runners, because of their speed, were ideal vessels to make the transfer from ship to shore. Due to their agility and speed they were often able to out run Coast Guard patrol boats. Half Moon Bay was the ideal location for the transfer of this illegal cargo, as it was a small isolated yet still close enough to San Francisco for transport by car.
The Miramar Beach Restaurant (known as the Ocean Beach Hotel during this time) was originally designed and built as a Prohibition roadhouse. This meant that in order to keep the contraband hidden during raids, secret compartments and revolving kitchen doors were built into the building. The upstairs of the Miramar served as the Bordello. Ten small rooms each equipped with a sink, a light, hat rack and bell system to the kitchen below allowed the restaurant to serve their customers upstairs.
Since the Golden Era of the Half Moon Bay Coastside, nearly all the speakeasies of that time have disappeared. Miramar Beach Restaurant is one of only a handful of buildings from that time period still standing.
So as I sit in their outdoor deck taking my pleasure in my beer and the view, I wonder how my pleasures pale compared to prior denizens of this place.
But those pleasures are nevertheless ample, so let us review
Here’s the restaurant as a Rum Runner might see it (although I think they sailed at night).
You can only see the deck a little bit to the right, but since it’s a major feature now, see it all, inside and out
and what do you see from that perspective?
That’s Pillar Point off to the right. There’s been a military base there since 1940. Currently, that tower with the little ball is used by the United States Space Force for tracking polar-orbiting space satellites and operational intercontinental ballistic missiles launched from Vandenberg AFB,
But you can’t live by the view alone. The Restaurant offers an ample array of tasty victuals, mostly from the sea, of course.
Beverages are important, and you might figure a place born in Prohibition would appreciate booze. As indeed they do. I’ll bet the beer they serve now, even from their meager 8 taps, is tastier than anything those boats once deposited.
I can vouch that their 2 IPAs – Big Daddy and Animal – are outstanding.
The management has taken things a little modern here and there. They’ve even got a slick logo.
But thankfully, I don’t think the place has changed much since times when the action on the shore involved more than the crashing waves. Of course, now, I don’t think “Boss” can help you out with your desires upstairs. So far as I know.
And so to bed. Fortunately, right next door, the Oceanfront Hotel. Don’t try to book it online. Call 650-483-2228. All rooms face the ocean and who couldn’t sleep to the music and rhythm of those Pacific waves crashing against the rocks.
Reference
1. Two Triple Cheese Side Order of Fries – Commander Cody. YouTube 5/2/13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1Cvg5VCpT4
Settling in at two of the precious 6 stools at the bar at Mink brought back the same feelings when we settled in to a special evening at that hidden downtown Detroit gem Albena over 2 years ago (1,2). I felt compelled to communicate my find to my friend, now retired colleague, and fellow foodie Tim.
Hey, Tim. I’ve found another little Detroit hole-in-the wall for you and your Kathy should you be feeling adventurous. Our dear Julie Welch gave me the tip as I was bemoaning the demise of Republic and whining how hard it is to get to her niece-chef Sarah’s award-winning Marrow on the East side. Julie didn’t just pick this one out of the air. Sarah’s fiancé’s a mover for this new place. They’ve been open less than 2 years and seem to have survived COVID.
It’s an easy shot from AA. 40 minute drive on M-14, 3 blocks down Trumbull off the Fisher Service Drive, tucked next to a boutique aside a parking lot you can’t use. The place is only 360 square feet, but the waiter says they can hold 40 if they seat outside. The choice seats are at the bar where you can see the 4 chefs in action. You can book on line (3). They feature seafood, but don’t expect a big slab of Chilean sea bass on your plate. Oysters are always featured. Their prix fixe tasting menu (see below) will give you a few, but you might want to order some extry on the side. You can get your prix fixe with pairings, and those are adventurous. Our oysters came out with little glasses of sparkling sake! Didn’t even know there was such an item, but it went perfectly with the bivalves. Not much of a wine list if you want to supplement, but choices are high quality.
Kathy and I found the whole experience satisfying and thoroughly entertaining. The food was interesting and tasty, and nothing I could replicate in my home kitchen! The antics of the chefs were entertaining – you should see their blow torch! – and the wait staff friendly and accommodating. It was a pre-DSO dinner, and we left
thinking even if the performers at Fisher Music Center sucked, we’d have had ourselves a swell evening. Indeed, we ended up leaving
Paradise Jazz Series Big Band at the break, mainly ‘cause we were exhausted and anticipated more of the same in the second half. Not that it wasn’t a good show. But back to my main point, should you and Kathy be up to a foray into Wayne County to eat, you couldn’t do much better than Mink.
References
1. Ike B. the other Detroit restaurant, day after Christmas 2019. WordPress 1/13/20. https://theviewfromharbal.com/2020/01/13/the-other-detroit-restaurant-day-after-christmas-2019/
2. Ike B. ‘squeat*!. WordPress 2/1/21. https://theviewfromharbal.com/2021/02/01/squeat/
3. Welcome to Mink. https://www.minkdetroit.com/
My Musing Through a Pandemic series is coming to a close with Volume V. On the Sidelines. Foodies!, a celebration of all that eating and drinking that sustained us.
As a service to those who might be reading the paperback, I’m offerring this link that will allow them to access any of the posts and the links therein. So here’s the TOC, each one “hot” and linked
Out
restaurants Jan 12, 2020
the other Detroit restaurant, day after Christmas 2019 Jan 13, 2020
from Ike to Mike: advice for a trip to Ann Arbor Jan 15, 2020
Cigar City Jan 24, 2020
ice at the US Grant Jan 29, 2020
dinner with the McCarthys Feb 1, 2020
empties Jun 6, 2020
‘squeat*! Feb 1, 2021
drink down Dunedin Mar 3, 2021
two triple cheese… Apr 17, 2021
eat Harold’s May 23, 2021
ARB-KAL Jun 29, 2021
mainly a beer run Jun 29, 2021
green new deal Nov 7, 2021
Blue LLama! Feb 14, 2022
land of enchantment Apr 11, 2022
drinking down the Spit Apr 12, 2022
Mink Apr 30, 2022
Kathy drove us 3 hours – and $7.50 in tolls – to Cleveland yesterday to see James McMurtry – western writer Larry’s son – perform at the Music Box Supper Club (1). It was well worth it. Music Box was a great venue, with long tables angled to the stage and beverages flowing freely throughout the show. Food too, if you needed something like that. James held forth solo, with only his 12 string and sardonic baritone – well up to his lyrics – to carry him through.
Probably kept the ticket price down. Maybe it was absence of a backup group that kept him away from my favorite song of his, one that captures growing up, and growing older, in a little ’burg like the one I grew up in (2). A little halfway through his set, he performed “a medley of his hit”, about an Oklahoma outing where they “had us a time” (3). No loyal fan from the Music Box has yet posted his setlist, but his from a couple days back at the Birchmeier pretty well approximates what he did in Cleveland (4). Remember, the beauty of Setlist.fm is you can click on any song in the list and hear it performed. Great way to dive deep into any artist.
It helped to be plunked into pleasant surroundings. We were headed to stay in a condo in the Grand Arcade building on West St. Clair in the warehouse district.
Built in 1890 as an office building, converted to residences a couple decades ago, some of the “improvements” seem quite recent and show they’re still trying.
On the way there, we passed by Progressive Field, home of the Cleveland, um, baseball team. The season has started, and family friend Jeff has already been to a game
I asked Jeff if he saw Chief Wahoo anywhere. Jeff responded that for sure he was on the garments of all the fans.
If you want to read about Louis Francis Sockalexis, the first Native American player to play in the major leagues and the individual for whom the Cleveland Spiders became the Cleveland Indians in tribute, you can read here (5).
But whatever silly name they sport, the Clevelands will still make mincemeat of my slightly improved Tigers, as they always do.
Foot on the ground out of the Grand Arcade got us marching downhill to the banks of the Cuyahoga (no longer burning (6)) and the Flats. With riverside patios still closed to the cold, we were confined to interiors. Collison Brewing offered high ceilings and many selections which included a couple pretty good IPAs, one of which benefited ALS research (7).
Always ready to drink to a good cause. Good conversation with the barkeeps.
A couple steps in got us to our sumptuous Italian dinner at Lagos East Bank (8). When we got to Music Box via Uber later, we saw they had food, too, but no sautéed calamari, duck, lobster gnocchi or $100 bottle of Renato Ratti Barolo ’17 to wash it down. We did o.k.
So after a concert like that, for folks of our age, it’s back to the shack for a snooze then wake up to hit the road for home in the morning. AirBnBs tend not to offer waffle makers and hard boiled eggs, so it’s off exploring again for breakfast. What did we do before Yelp? Fashionable 27 Club Coffee was 0.1 mi away (9). Woulda made a nice walk if it wasn’t raining. With a skull logo and a support t-shirt for their “potheads”, we knew we weren’t in Starbucks. We chose to sit and partake of their breakfast items and were well satisfied. They even gave us some quarters to feed the meters outside. Like the Wise Men, we left Cleve-berg by a different route. All roads lead to I-80, so we got home eventually, and fast! Old Cleve-berg isn’t that far away after all. We’ve attended some Cleveland Events before: CSN, the R&R Hall fame, and Todd/Daryl just recently. We’ve always approached these trips with trepidation because the destination seemed so damned far. But maybe Cleveland isn’t so far. Surely a nice place to visit. But…
References
1. Music Box. https://musicboxcle.com/
2. “Just us kids”-James McMurtry. YouTube 12/7/10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH5hTwWgHp0
3. Choctaw Bingo by James McMurtry. YouTube 3/16/20. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nggqe-L9ZQ8
That’s what they’re saying in Philadelphia. No doubt the same cry will go up some other. Still required on planes and trains, I don’t mind the face diaper so much since my wife found the UnMask (1), which lets me breathe and doesn’t fog up my glasses.
I swore I wasn’t going to blog any more about Mr. Corona. I consider myself done with him. His effete mutant progeny will always be with us, but catching one should make no more than a bad cold, just like it was before the boys and girls at the Wuhan lab started tinkering. The next volume, #V, in my Musing Through a Pandemic series, about food and drink, will be my last.
But a couple days ago, I came across two articles on masks so excellent and so right on I felt compelled to share them.
Dr.Jeffrey Barke writes about the psychological effects of masking, particularly what they do to kids (2)
Steve Kirsch reviews a recent controlled study on whether masks protect, then discusses those results in the context of the only two earlier controlled studies of that sort from the COVID era (3). His treatise is quite extensive and concludes with a funny video.
I may never blog about Mr. Corona and masks again, but I may not be finished writing about the topic. One of my Barnes buddies Dave, a one-time academic endocrinologist now in a boutique internal medicine practice in Marin County, has observed two types of acid-base disturbances developing in chronic mask wearers. Each is an acidosis, i.e. more circulating acid than the system is supposed to have. The first is a respiratory acidosis, seen mainly in older patients, where the patient does not get rid of sufficient amounts of carbon dioxide, which turns to acid. Underbreathing, basically. The second is a metabolic acidosis, developing when tissues cannot get sufficient oxygen and switch the way they use energy to a pathway that generates more acid. Neither is very good for the patient. Unlike me in my day, Dave does not practice with an eye on what could be the next paper. I’m looking over some of the data he sent me to see if we have enough for, say, a letter to the editor.
References
Looks like the vaxxed have a permanent new friend.
Better like your spike. He sure don’t like you!
Don’t miss Dr. McCulloch’s short video (1).
Anyone who knew the least little bit about molecular biology had to know this was going to happen. Those who watched the first Jurassic Park would be concerned, too.
Didn’t we already know? (2).
References
2. It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature! YouTube 9/9/15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j12J3PCai5A
Seven weeks ago Friday found me solemnly executing my marital obligations by boarding the plane that would take Kathy (and me) to Florida for her last-ever Spring Break trip. We ended up in Madeira Beach, smack in the middle of the Pinellas Spit. The Spit is a slender strip of sand coursing 20 miles from Clearwater Beach Island to the north to Cabbage Key, which sits where Tampa Bay empties into the Gulf at the south tip.
7 bridges bring over folks from the mainland. There are 10 named beaches, but the sandy shore on the Gulf is pretty much continuous. Sea and sand are the main attractions, but there are bars aplenty to serve those who need a break. “Madeira Beach” names both the beach and the little town (pop’n 3985) that surrounds it. Madeira has the same glorious fine sand, going on forever, on the same Gulf as the highly rated Clearwater Beach to the north, but way less people both on the beach and trying to get to it. Beach denizens are a refreshing bunch of ordinary normal people with bodies to match. Let’s just say the swimsuit competition is a low-pressure event.
Of course, we wanted to spend as much time as possible on that beach. That boring 750 and sunny all the time just calls you to it. Life is loose and easy by the Gulf, and we were happy to join in. But a man needs goals in this life and getting to the beach every day seemed way too low a bar. Fortunately, a little pamphlet I picked up at the airport gave me the structure I needed.
Even without the pamphlet, I’d have had no trouble executing another goal of this trip, which was to hit as many beer bars in the area as possible. Mr. Yelp told us we had plenty of nearby targets.
That’s just the first layer. Yelp said there were 240 spots within 5 miles of my place.
But we like to go local. Less than half a mile from our AirBnB were the Salt Water Hippie, Lucky Lizard Tap House, The Reef Bar and Grill, Dockside Dave’s, Caddy’s, the Ember Rooftop Lounge, Pete’s Sushi and Poke (yes, they serve beer), Sweet Brewnette (mainly a great coffee shop – our go to spot – but they do serve wine and beer!), Gulf Bistro, Madeira Beach Snack Shack, and Daiquiri Shak Raw Bar & Grille.
All those choices call for some winnowing, and that’s what the little brochure provided. Put together by the St. Pete/Clearwater Tourist Bureau, the GulpCoast Craft Brewery Trail features 41 brewpubs and breweries scattered around the area, grouped into 5 regions. Training your phone on the QR on back of the brochure gets you your “Gulp Coast Craft Brewery Passport”, a list of places that link to a spot giving directions and descriptions. But it’s more than a high-tech guidebook. Many of the listed places have special deals for GulpCoast visitors, like 2 for one pints. And that trip on the trail has more benefits than just gallons of good beer. At each place you visit, you ask for a 4-digit code and enter it on a passport to get credit for the visit. 15 visits give you a GulpCoast custom T-shirt to commemorate the journey along the trail. A fatter GulpCoast brochure I picked up later in Dunedin said 10 breweries were sufficient, also offering a ”Silipint” to go with the shirt after 20 and a mysterious “Gulp Coast Prize Pack” for completing all 41.
With a goal to divide and conquer, I organized the breweries by location into the regions near us we were likely to visit: the Spit, Clearwater, St. Pete, and Dunedin. At the time, I was not aware of the fatter brochure, but 15 visits seemed doable. Smallest journey begin with single step too, so we stumbled on to the strip. First evening was an 0.08 mile ramble to The Reef Bar and Grill. No trip is without its disappointments, and here we’d meet our first. Their taps were totally out! Nothing but canned beer. Fortunately, they offered other beverages, including my “Shark Attack”. Whether it was to serve as enticement or defense was never made clear.
No shark came near me the rest of the trip. That about wrapped it up our first day.
Next day we took care of the low hanging fruit. Dockside Dave’s had an amazing grouper sandwich, good for lunch.
Lucky Lizards 0.2 miles away, featured a bar that let you sit outside
With a pretty good beer selection
Green Bench IPA, made over in Clearwater, is excellent.
Gotta love a place called “Saltwater Hippie”, another 0.2 miles away. But it would have to wait till tomorrow.
Then it was time to get in the Jeep and drive down the Spit. Had to stick to the GulpCoast guide and bypass all those other enticing bars along the way. First stop was Sea Dog Brewing, which is based in New Hampshire with 10 locations through NH, Maine, and Florida.
This section of the Spit is called “Treasure Island”. Didn’t see any pirates, but it was a tough yo-ho-ho left turn off the Gulf Boulevard to grab their parking lot and sorta sneak in by the back door.
Once inside, it was clear headquarters had them well equipped.
They produced a good IPA as well as Kathy’s new favorite sweatshirt.
Next stop was Mastry’s, showing what great use to which an old gas station can be put.
Their ample beer offerings were dispensed with gleaming precision.
We had a snack from their kitchen, conveniently parked out front.
After that we left the Spit over the big Treasure Island Causeway to venture to Anna Maria Island, where my mom hung out in her teens. That’s her mom with her’s.
The next day we’d finish the job by going a little north. Seeking an amusing Anecdote, we headed 7 miles up Gulf Boulevard to Indian Rocks Beach.
Choices were well spelled out
We met a couple from Peoria, there driving their 4-door convertible Jeep, just like we’ve been considering. But we shared way more than car talk.
Our trip back to Madeira Beach took up right by Saltwater Hippie, which we’d missed the day before. Coulda been the most fun bar of the whole trip.
They won an award in 2021 as best beach bar in Florida. It ain’t because of the extensive beer selection.
Our GulpCoast tour took us inland, of course, but this piece is about the Spit. So here we’ll stop with the beer places. Not that the mainland is without its delights: Old St. Pete, Clearwater with its great Capitol Theater (1), dandy Dunedin (2), and of course the stop on the way to the airport at the cottage Tom Brady rents from Derek Jeter on Tampa Bay (58 Bahama Circle, Tampa 33606). He wasn’t home when we stopped by, as I’m sure he would have welcomed in a couple of Wolverine fans who love him. We probably spent more time on the beach than in bars, but isn’t that what Florida is all about? Of course, we brought along a cooler.
Not all the brews we quaffed were malt beverages. We were happy to have discovered just a few blocks south of us Sweet Brewnette’s, a fine little coffee house with fresh breakfast items and an outside patio on which to eat them. An order at the counter got a tall metal flag bearing some movie star’s name that sat on your table till one of the girls brought the food out to you. The place was clearly owned and run (well) by women, as you could see in their sign.
Any doubts about that fact go away seeing what hangs behind the cash register
But estrogen adds no taste to any cup of coffee, so I was spared.
So, Kathy and I think we’ve stumbled onto a pretty cool part of Florida. She got to know Orlando and the Cape pretty well in her NASA years. My brother in Clearwater enticed us to the Gulf Coast, and we’ve enjoyed our stays in Clearwater Beach. It was a day with time to kill before the flight home a couple years ago that introduced us to the rest of the Spit. We drove it south to north, falling on a magical restaurant with a thatched roof right on the beach. We searched all over for the place this time, worried that such establishments had been bulldozed to make way for high rises. Thanks to Yelp and Dr. Google, we’ve found that such places still exist, right in St. Pete Beach, lower end of the Spit. We must have driven right past ‘em on our way to Anna Maria Island. Here are the two we found that might have been the place.
Undertow Beach Bar (3850 Gulf Boulevard)
I couldn’t find a thatched roof, and from their Facebook page it looks like they cater mainly to pretty young babes in bikinis (3).
Flippers Beach Bar (4900 Gulf Boulevard)
Not very thatched. The “beach bar” finder I found looking for Flipper’s (4) lists 15 beach bars in St. Pete’s Beach. Guess we have some exploring to do upon our return.
But regardless of what we find in St. Pete’s Beach, we’re very fond of Madeira Beach. Less crowded and less expensive than its more famous beaches to the north, the beach itself is wonderful, amenities ample and convenient, and people friendly. There’s even a great church (5). Kathy snagged a place right on the beach for us to occupy in October. 5 more GulpCoast trail stops to get that t-shirt!
References
1. The Ruth Eckerd Hall Experience. Billheimer Captial Theater. https://www.rutheckerdhall.com/bilheimer-capitol-theatre
2. Ike B. drink down Dunedin. WordPress 3/3/21. https://theviewfromharbal.com/2021/03/03/drink-down-dunedin/
3. Undertow Beach Bar. Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/undertowbeachbar
4. Flipper’s Beach Bar. https://www.floridabeachbar.com/flippers-beach-bar
5. Church by the Sea. https://www.churchbythesea.com/
Bob Ike's blog