Floridiana: Skis Please!
Picture a five-level pyramid of peppy, smiling men and women, stacked foot-to-shoulder. No, it’s not an SEC cheerleading stunt; it’s a moving wall of colorfully clad waterskiers, traveling 24 miles per hour around a lake at the Cypress Gardens Water Ski Review in Winter Haven. This marvelous mobile formation was just one of the daredevil […]
Floridiana: Air Supply
When acclaimed Sarasota architect Tim Seibert remodeled a then-unremarkable house on Siesta Key in 1971, he dressed up the home with a lacelike curtain of mid-century modern breeze blocks along its western wall. The breeze blocks—concrete structures crafted in geometrically appealing shapes and patterns that facilitate the flow of air and outside views from inside […]
Floridiana: Little Red Corvette
When Ronnie and Pam Edge’s shiny Venetian red Corvette rolled off the assembly line, gas cost 31 cents per gallon, air conditioning was a novelty in Florida homes and Orlando didn’t have a Magic Kingdom. Nearly 60 years later, Florida has changed plenty, but the convertible—which has resided within a 30-mile radius of Jacksonville for […]
Floridiana: The Great Tablescape
When tourists visited the Sunshine State in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, they sought souvenirs that would last longer than their tans. Ceramics, linens and postcards commemorated vacations with colorful illustrations of Florida’s symbols and locales. Third-generation Floridian Tracie Schneider, of Tallahassee, has been amassing these kitschy relics since the 1980s, when she stumbled upon Larry […]
In the 1960s, Every Shade of Summer Was a Coppertone
Now and then, a scent lands us smack-dab in the middle of a memory. Growing up in 1980s Atlantic Beach, summertime was spent hightailing it on bikes to a glorious stretch of sand in front of the Sea Turtle Inn. Miles of shoreline pulsed with bronzed bodies and boom boxes, and the aroma of Coppertone […]
Flora-Bama Mullet Toss: A Tradition Across State Lines
St. Louis has the Gateway Arch. Seattle has its Space Needle. Los Angeles has the Hollywood sign. Yet, can any of these symbolic civic wonders really compare to the salt-crusted, mullet-tossed, beer-sodden glory that is the Flora-Bama Lounge? The Panhandle’s weathered monument to honky-tonkin’ good times is surely as alluring a roadside attraction as those […]
Julia Tuttle: The Mother of Miami
In the photos that survive of her, Julia Tuttle looks stern and unsmiling, a long dark dress buttoned up to her neck, priestlike, often with the frowning expression of a mother disapproving of a daughter’s suitor. Married to the owner of a foundry in Cleveland, Tuttle may have been destined for the carefree life of […]
18 Ways to Explore Amelia Island
Explore the Victorian village, historical sites and seaports of the Isle of Eight Flags.
You Get to Be the Chef at This Beloved Pancake House in De Leon Springs
The Old Sugar Mill Pancake House at De Leon Springs reopens its acclaimed griddles.
