Until late last month, it was a common sight in my neighborhood: women of all shapes and sizes wearing high heels on the beach. In ankle-breaking stilettos, these otherwise nearly naked souls would scamper across Gulf Boulevard followed by their male counterparts laden with coolers full of Bud Light and Four Loko. They'd strut in the sand in a way that I am pretty sure defies the laws of physics.
These women are gone now. My neighborhood is Treasure Island’s Sunset Beach, where the powers that be have famously established a partial alcohol ban on the beach.
But are residents and business owners united in saying good riddance? The answer — despite the irritation of spring breakers slurping shots of cheap tequila out of each other's navels — is no.
The Treasure Island City Commission ordinance, which passed on May 17, bans possession or consumption of alcoholic beverages on a roughly 15-block stretch of Sunset Beach. The ban applies only on weekends and certain holidays between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m., and expires in early October. The ordinance was whittled down from a proposal that would have banned public consumption of alcohol island-wide during the same time periods — a prospect that brought out a sea of angry residents from all over town as well as a handful of supporters.
City Commissioner Alan Bildz, who represents Sunset Beach on the commission, said the temporary ban buys the city time to draft a proposal for a permanent ban that can be placed on a ballot.
"With the intent to put this in front of the voters — and I think the voters will pass this — I think we're on good ground. I think we’re headed in the right direction," he said.
TI voters rejected a similar proposal more than two decades ago. The electorate spoke then, so, case closed, right? You'd think.
But a few years ago, a new crowd stumbled onto the sands of Sunset Beach — a vicious crowd that couldn't mix its booze with its sunshine, let alone the pills and lord knows what else they brought in.
Some say the laws on the books should be enough to ward off these inebriates; that DUI checkpoints and littering fines would have done the trick.
"We pay [cops] to be dicks, so let them be dicks," said one of my neighbors.
But ban proponents say a brawl that broke out Palm Sunday — one that caused the cops to clear the beach — demonstrates that no amount of enforcement could stop the Big One from happening. "What concerns me," said resident Jeff Warner at a recent meeting, "is that if you were to put 20 officers down there and something happened like [Palm Sunday], with 1,500 to 2,000 people down there, I'm not sure I'd want to be one of those 20 police officers."
As of press time, the ban has been in effect for three full weekends, including that of Memorial Day.
The swaths of beach north and south of Caddy's (where alcohol is still allowed on the beachfront adjacent to the restaurant) have been sparsely populated.
Treasure Island Police Chief Tim Casey said for law enforcement, it's like night and day.
"It was like somebody turned a switch," he said. "It went from 600-800 people to 25 — that drastic of a drop."
He added that the demeanor of the crowd — within and outside of designated drinking areas — was strikingly different. Over Memorial Day weekend, only a handful of people in the Caddy's vicinity got arrested — three for disorderly conduct and one for trespassing — whereas before, one used to be able to sit on the beach and watch a procession of (sometimes comical) arrests on any given Sunday afternoon.
"We've cut our detail from eight officers on the beach to two," Casey said.
On the flipside, a mellower beach may be tough on local businesses, given that fewer people are buying booze. The lines at 7-11 are shorter on weekends. Locally-owned At Cost Liquors, which has to compete with corporate giants to stay alive, is already seeing a distinct drop in sales, says owner Atul Shah.
"In double digits, straight away, the very first weekend," Shah said. "And it's only going to get worse."
He and other opponents say the ban disproportionately impacts Sunset Beach residents, who pay the same Treasure Island city taxes as everyone else. Blaming everything on alcohol — and not the other factors attracting crowds (over-abundance of parking, for example) — is causing the city to cut off its nose to spite its face, he feels.
"We got [huge crowds of spring breakers], and now we're trying to run them away," he said. "That's absolutely unheard of. In these economic times, you have to take what you can get."
Meanwhile, he said, cities like Ft. Lauderdale and Daytona would kill for such crowds. He's heard rumblings from business owners further north, away from Sunset Beach, that there's a perception that the ban applies citywide, but Treasure Island Chamber of Commerce President W.D. Higginbotham said any such effects are as yet tough to quantify.
"To my knowledge, there has been no impact island-wide as I have heard nothing negative from our restaurant, bar, and hotel Chamber Members," he wrote in an email. "However, it is a bit soon since the ordinance was adopted and our business(es) may not have had sufficient time to adequately evaluate any impact."
This isn't the first time Treasure Island has had to deal with revelers getting out of hand. Five years ago, the weekly drum circle behind the Bilmar was overrun by crowds of similarly obliterated partiers. Instead of banning drum circle, the city installed more garbage cans, kept the public restrooms open later, and stepped up police presence.
Some Sunset Beach residents in the ban area say a similar fix — using what's already on the books — should have been crafted instead of a law that criminalizes residents who just want to mix a rum and Coke and sip it on their neighborhood beach.
But some of my neighbors are getting clever. One suggested a floating apparatus for boozing offshore; you can drink on a boat, right? Why not an inner tube?
Shah said he and some fellow businesses have not ruled out a potential lawsuit over the ban, if they can find a clear enough correlation between the ordinance and a drop in alcohol sales. A question about the ban will likely go to voters in early 2012.
If the ban doesn't pass, there is at least one local who plans on celebrating on the beach, probably with a Mai-tai, barefoot.
Kate Bradshaw is a staff reporter at WMNF 88.5FM.
This article appears in Jun 9-15, 2011.