Apalachicola Seafood Festival

Rolled into Apalach with Brother Boydly Friday. Hopped aboard Buddy Ward & Son’s shrimpin’ boat, Buddy’s Boys during the annual Blessing of the Fleet. Queen Isabel and King Retsyo (Stan) did the blessing and waved at the crowds gathered in Apalach’s downtown waterfront. We hit the carnival fairly hard with a round on the Loop-Dee-Loop that had Michael speaking in tongues and nearly upchucking on the poor young girl seated a few rows up.

We camped in our usual spot behind the shrimp boat marina and backed by a 40-foot-tall mountain of oyster shells. Sometimes a few would slide down the side in the middle of the night, stopping again at their angle of repose. It sounded like oysters skiing.

We ran the Red Fish Fun Run, a 5K through Apalach’s old neighborhood and back to the historic Gibson Inn. We shot some magazine photos in Tate’s Hell State Park under the long-leaf pines and beside the saw palmetto. We drank coffee with Tamara at Cafe Con Leche, listened to blues at the sponge shop courtyard Friday night, drank rum on the back patio of newly-opened Green Door shop, and we listened to Tracy Lawrence sing with a large, well-lubricated crowd. In a half-hour of concert action we had front-row seats to two drunken fist fights. That kind of entertainment never makes it on the itinerary but it always fascinates.

Here is why I have a huge crush on Apalachicola:

– Cafe con Leche plays good music, serves strong coffee, and lets me sit and work for hours. They also have good art books to look through and Tamara is pretty dang cool.

– The buildings are old and amazing, especially when reused well: The Green Door, The Garden Shop, the new raw bar, the Oasis Bar, the Gibson Inn bar, the Book Store.

– Locals get together and belt out the blues in the side courtyards of downtown businesses.

– Rusty old shrimping boats still tie up to the downtown waterfront and they actually work. Tin oyster houses still shuck and package on the same waterfront.

– Richard Bickel’s gallery shows the best images ever taken of the fishing industry in northern Florida and overall local life.

– In November it is cool, sunny, and the bugs have frozen.

– They have a pageant, elect a seafood queen and king who then stand at the bow of a rusty shrimping boat and wave at the crowd in order to bless the fleet.