Signs Of A Fine Establishment, Pt. 3

(Perdido Key, FL. 18 June)

Ah, the Flora-Bama.

A new experience for me. A cultural pilgrimage, of sorts. And well, well worth the trip.

I am a newcomer - completely, undeniably. My first exposure to this poster bar of Gulf Coast mystique was at Mobile's hometown Mardi Gras this year, a sign on a Comic Cowboys float that read only this:

TO HELL WITH IRAQ, REBUILD THE FLORA-BAMA!

The state-line-straddling Flora-Bama, as i soon learned, was a beachfront establishment of truly singular repute. Practically destroyed by Hurricane Ivan, it was reopened as soon as enough of its graffiti-scrawled treated lumber could be found to knock back together. Curious, i did what any shameless modern-day tourist would do. I found their website. And when i read the words "21st Annual Interstate Mullet Toss," well, my duty was clear.

We sat on the upper level overlooking the emerald ocean. Bonnie Raitt and Lucinda Williams drifted out from somewhere in the back. Leather-skinned beach bums joined leather-clad bikers and elderly couples in pink polyester while the band warmed up on the sandy floor below. And the Flora-Bama joined a short list of utterly unique places in my mind: Mama Noot's; the Gringo Bar; Fitzgerald's on Roosevelt; the Expatriates Bar in La Ceiba; even The Westoe in South Shields. Even, i suppose, McGuire's. Not to mention that one restaurant in Freeport where, we found, they chummed for eight-foot reef sharks four times a day, a few hundred yards from where we'd been swimming.

But the Flora-Bama doesn't quite make that list yet, when i think about it, because i'm not sure you can really say you've been to a place unless you've been more than once. At the least, a second visit moves you from the realm of baldfaced name-dropping (as also seen above) into more legitimate territory of true exploration. It says I cared enough to get to know it a bit. If you're a culture vulture just looking to notch your LP guidebook, well - there's no end to that.

That's the thing about the Mercy Ships lifestyle, one of so many i used to love so much about this ship. By the time we left a city, we'd been there. To the clerks and cops and street people, we were regulars. We knew names, personalities; faces, at least. There were real tears when we left, and if the itinerary permitted, there were warm welcomes on our return.

The ports were pretty haphazard, in terms of intentional travel - we might as easily have tied up in backwater Haiti as in Baltimore's inner harbor. And we did - back to back, in fact, for those two - and that was the beauty. Among the usual must-do Edinburghs, Utilas, and New Yorks, i now have in my head the side streets and shortcuts of thirty or forty ridiculously random cities and cultures i neither wanted to visit nor knew i'd enjoy. I spent seven years in the Chicago suburbs before that, and i didn't even get downtown enough to know what street the Sears Tower was on. I may never see most of those ports and places again, but when i was there, i got to know them. I got mail. It was more than a stay - i was living.

Truly, i was lucky.

The snotty ironics say I used to go there all the time. Back when it was still good.

The cynical, the world-weary, say It's not authentic. If you're new, you'll never really belong.

And i have been those. But now i say:

I'll be back.