Spring Break Cleanliness

Spring Break is a big issue around here, and for a good reason. There is money to be made, but many of the breakers give the area a bad reputation. The media and mass public feed on the crimes and inconsideration of others, and our students give them plenty to feed on.

It has been said by many that the bad stuff is isolated, and the shows such as Court TV's "Ocean Force" had difficulty finding juicy sins in 2007. But you can't hide from the fact that they completely TRASH the beach.

We might not be able to control their actions, but thanks to a college-serving non-profit called Break Away, we will be getting at least 50 college students from Appalachian State, East Carolina and Florida State universities to do nothing but pick up trash and help spread the word of keeping the beach clean.

We have the main sponsor on board, but I have some really neat ideas about how other sponsors could jump in, help keep the beach clean, and meet some new potential customers in the process. Please email info@KeepTheBeachClean.com with your contact info, and I'll email to set up an appointment.

With my own ears...

At a TDC Bed Tax Committee meeting, I heard the Mayor of Panama City Beach, Ms. Gayle Oberst and County Commission Chairman Mike Nelson say that the dirty beaches (and lack of lifeguards) were at the top of the list of complaints their offices received. TDC Chairman Andy Phillips said he is on the beach often, and admits that there is a trash problem.

These are three very important leaders in the tourism industry, so it was good to hear it with my ears instead of just seeing it with my eyes (and camera).

BIG changes are needed in the philosophy and processes of how Bay County TOURIST TAX DOLLARS are spent to Keep the Beach Clean! What kind of big changes?

WARNING: SOMETHING YOU'VE HEARD FROM ME OVER AND OVER AGAIN AND WILL HEAR FROM ME OVER AND OVER AGAIN IS ABOUT TO BE WRITTEN:

1. strictly enforce litter laws

2. get people on the beach instead of machines to clean it up

3. provide trash bags at public beach accesses and hotels / condos

If you disagree with this, please send me an email and let me know why... Kirk@KirkLancaster.com

Keep the Beach Fun!

Congratulations to Bay Families with Dogs and the PCB City Council for designating a dog-friendly area of the beach. It will be just west of the Dan Russell City Pier (across from the new Pier Park!)

My wife and our dogs will choose that spot regularly from now on! I encourage all other dog-lovers to help KEEP THE DOG BEACH THE CLEANEST IN BAY COUNTY!

(our girl Pixie!)

Summer's Over

In the second season of trying to clean up the beaches, I made some progress by being appointed to a Tourist Development Council marketing committee, which has given me an opportunity to understand the marketing of Bay County's Beaches. Everything is going to take some time, and I am not going to stop pushing the effort to make the beaches cleaner and safer.

Please join the effort by submitting your email address. You will not get spammed.

(Enter your email in the right side of page where it says *** Subscribing Means Staying Informed ***)

The photo above was not staged. Just a good ol' can of Bud left on a public walkway, overlooking God's beautiful beaches and man's overturned trash cans.

Thank you, Patty!

Since comments are not easy to see in this Blogger interface (maybe I haven't figured it out), I will gladly print this comment from a recent visitor to our beaches:
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(From Peggy:)

I am 100% behind the efforts to keep Panama City Beach clean!! We just returned from a week's vacation at The Summit. Everything was wonderful until we hit the beach. Since there were lots of people on the beach, we really didn't notice the trash. However, once we got into the water, we were amazed to find several beer cans and beer bottles floating in the surf. At first we just assumed it was probably just 1 or 2 people who had been in the water drinking and just got lazy with their trash. However, we were utterly shocked at what we saw during an early morning trip to the beach.

Trash was everywhere -- mounds of beer cans and miscellaneous trash strewn everywhere. Items such as pop cans, food wrappers, sandals, towels, children's toys, and even a tent were literally covering the beach. I kept thinking that the condo must send out crews in the morning to pick the trash up but in the hour and a half that I was out there, no one every showed. My son and I took on the rather large task ourselves, filling approximately 2-3 of the blue trash cans (I KID YOU NOT!). It took us well over an hour but it looked great (and we felt great) when it was done! If there are crews that do clean those beaches and it was just a matter of timing, I'm sure they were pretty pleased to see their work was all done!

Prior to this vacation, we were so excited because we had heard how wonderful Panama City Beaches are and how they were rated as the most beautiful. The beaches are beautiful, when they are clean! To be honest, I came across this website while investigating cleaner beaches for our next vacation. I couldn't believe that THESE were the same beaches which were given such a high rating. Please do what you can to get people involved. It really doesn't take that much time and it is SO worth the effort.

If a couple lowly vacationers can take an hour out of our limited vacation time to do some much needed cleaning, surely neighbors to the beach would also be willing. Your beaches are beautiful and I would love to come back again! P.S. If we do come again, my family and I will definitely do our part!
August 7, 2007 3:05 PM

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P.S. Patty, if you see this, will you please let me know where your family lives? We'd love you to come see us again!

Tent City on the Beach

A couple of locals have pointed out the rising amount of beach items such as tents, umbrellas and chairs that are left in the sand once the visitor leaves. These items have become so cheap that it's easier to just leave them for "the next lucky vacationer" than take them home or dispose of them.

The tent above was on Thomas Dr. for several days during the week of the 4th. They do not get removed quickly in most cases. I guarantee you that you can go to the beach today and find an abandoned tent.

UPDATE: 07-22-07

This article was in today's Panama City News Herald. It seems that our neighbors to the west are always more proactive about keeping the beach clean, and we need to follow their lead.

Bigger Problems

Update: July 13, 2007: I promise I didn't squall this!

A funny Squall yesterday said folks like me need to worry about bigger problems than trash on the beach. I knew from the beginning that most locals won't see this as a big issue.

I'll just have to keep trying to communicate how I believe it's just as big of an issue as property tax hikes, home insurance costs and airports. So let me try to put it in a new nutshell to change this Squaller's view...

THE IDIOTS WHO LITTER OUR BEACHES ARE NOT GOOD CUSTOMERS OR CITIZENS TO OUR COUNTY AND ECONOMY.

BY ENFORCING OUR LITTER LAWS AND CLEANING UP OUR BEACHES, WE WILL RUN OFF THE FEW BAD CUSTOMERS AND ATTRACT MORE GOOD CUSTOMERS WHO WILL PUMP MORE MONEY INTO OUR COUNTY ECONOMY.


WE'RE MISSING OUT ON BIG DOLLARS COMING TO OUR COMMUNITY WHICH COULD HELP LOWER PROPERTY TAXES AND RAISE INCOMES SO WE MIGHT BE ABLE TO AFFORD INSURANCE IN THE FUTURE.

Independence.

Thank you very much to the few of you who wrote in and said you would work some of the beaches, including the bays. We didn't have enough sign up to come near full coverage, but we'll keep working on it.

Warning: the following photos should be extremely offensive and disturbing. Click on photos for larger images.

All photos taken AFTER trash crews came by to empty the blue cans.

KeepTheBeachClean.com Fireworks Cleanup Day - JULY 5

As much as I hate to see federal dollars spent on issues that should be resolved by locals, thanks to our hard working senators, we now have National Clean Beaches Week during July 4th.

Please sign up to join the first annual "KeepTheBeachClean.com Fireworks Cleanup Day." We'll do it Thursday, July 5th.

All you have to do is send an email with or without your name and let me know what stretch of beach you will cover that day. I will announce through the site what parts are covered, as well as photos. Send an email to info@KeepTheBeachClean.com. Thank you!

More Treasure in the Sand

Replacing trash with treasure is one of the goals at KeepTheBeachClean.com. An article in the AJC today reports Atlanta is rich and getting richer.

The article quotes other media as well:

"Atlanta consistently ranks as a city hospitable to the rich:
• Business 2.0 reported that Atlanta "leads the nation in attracting the labor market's most coveted demographic: college-educated workers ages 25 to 34."
• Kiplinger's Personal Finance said metro Atlanta is the largest U.S. city in the "married with kids" age bracket.
• Black Enterprise magazine said Atlanta and Washington are at the top of the list of "10 best cities for African-Americans."
• Fortune said Atlanta ranks third behind New York and Houston as home to large public corporations on its Fortune 500 list, such as Home Depot, UPS and Coca-Cola."

There are great people in Atlanta who do not know how to look beyond the "drunk-fest" image to see our amazing beaches and environment in Bay County. It's not just about the summer vacation season either; we should be targeting businesses to have meetings, retreats and presentations down here year round. I don't believe many Atlantans realize that on some of those cold, rainy February mornings, we have sunny 60 degree weather down here. Corporate folks love to "get away" to make big, important decisions.

We need to improve our product and image to appeal to them; it is the easiest path to improving our county's tourism industry, and possibly Bay County's entire economy. We should be known as "Atlanta's Beach."

To Rake, or Not to Rake?

We currently spend over a half million dollars a year in Bay County to clean our beaches. It is expensive to operate high-tech machinery and tractors to groom the beach. According to this article on beach grooming from the Surfrider Foundation, grooming has its negatives, including:

• Significantly lower diversity and abundance of wrack-associated animals (wrack is seaweed that washes up on our shores from time to time.)


• Lower abundance of shorebirds


• Higher relative numbers of flies


• Lower numbers of native plants


• Coarser sand

In another article from Surfrider, it claims that the federal government does not allow grooming on most beaches during sea turtle and shorebird nesting seasons, unless a special annual permit is granted where it is proven that no nesting activity exists. As many crazy hoops as Bay County already has to jump through to protect the turtles, how do we avoid this one?

Last year, the TDC renewed a 5 year contract with a company to continue to use tractors, trailors and Barber Surf Rakes on the beach. By the time that contract is over in 2011, I hope to have the TDC convinced that people, not machines, are what we need to keep the beaches clean.

Sticker

I'll get this on any beach window that will take them.

Glass Half Full

I really believe I'm a glass-half-full kinda' guy, so I really don't find too much pleasure in complaining all the time about trash and PCB's image. I can look at this photo above, and in a glass-half-full kind of way, see that gorgeous Gulf and rush to get in the water. I can see how kids getting out of the wagon after an eight-hour drive would react to the white sand and green-blue water.

But why, oh why, does that pile of trash have to greet us? Why can't we make sure we do not have trash? It might be a small issue compared to insurance and property taxes -- which are money issues -- but I see the trash and image as a money issue too. I'm not a tree-hugger trying to save the earth. I'm a marketer who believes the product of Bay County's beaches is much, much better than the marketing behind it and the customer reps who take care of it.

These ARE the World's Most Beautiful Beaches!

So why would anybody do this?...

Marketing Atlanta

Today's Atlanta Journal Constition home page has a couple interesting features that should grab our attention in Bay County.

First, if there's any negative news about our town, Atlanta loves to poke at it. Girls Gone Wild and Spring Break stories are always promoted at the front, and it always makes Panama City out to be a trash hole.

Panama City Beach is the closest beach to Atlanta. We're even just as close as Hilton Head, SC, and closer than Georgia's own St. Simons Island. It's arguable that other Georgia beaches are closer, but when comparing that part of the Atlantic to our Gulf... is there really any comparison?

Our image in Atlanta is terrible. When I told this to TDC leader Bob Warren, he snapped back that "21% of our visitors come from Atlanta."

Really? A whopping 21%? (that's almost a million visitors.) Don't you think we should be able to boost that number significantly for a huge city that's only a short drive away? (and soon to be completely 4 lanes?)

We're 5 hours away from 5 Million people, and the former TDC group decides to spend money marketing to places like Cincinnati, OH. The biggest problem is that the higher-income Atlantans are heading an extra 40-60 miles west of us, and plopping their money in Walton and Okaloosa.

We should focus on renewing our image in Atlanta before we do anything else. They are our low-hanging fruit, and if we clean up this place, we'll see loads of dollars coming across the Hathaway bridge.

The other interesting article on the AJC site, appropriately titled "Lessons in Hospitality," indicates a pet-friendly hotel in midtown is doing well. People love their pets, and most markets carve out at least a little place to attract dog owners. It's crazy to me how the dogs-on-the-beach issue is more important to most Bay Countians than the trash issue. Would you rather step in dog poop, or glass? Or how about a dirty diaper?

What's wrong with Destin?

I've heard several times since I started the Working Billboards project last summer that "We don't want to become another Destin." Most recently, I read that the new mayor of Panama City said it when he became elected last month. (He's not the beach mayor... what's he worried about?)


Anyway, when I go to Destin, I see:

• excited tourists, mostly from within driving distance, mostly from Metro Atlanta.
• crowds. period.
• expensive cars.
• nice shops and restaurants.
• money.

What's wrong with any of that? In comparison, I drive PCB and see moderate crowds at best, a lot of hootin' and hollerin', and a dollar store or head shop every 100 yards.



Please someone, tell me, what's wrong with trying to be more like Destin when it comes to having a clean image and attracting more money to our county's economy?

No Butts On Beaches

This is a tough one... it's going to be hard to keep smokers from flicking butts. But we need to try to let smokers know that the butts are killing the beach. Read AP article here.

The Beach is Looking Good!

But the entrances and parking lots are not. I'll say it til I'm blue in the face... if we clean up the trash, and enforce glass and litter laws (the way we enforce dog laws) we will send a message that Panama City Beach is serious about keeping our World's Most Beautiful Beaches beautiful.

Fantastic Weekend

I saw more people and less trash today than any of the 14 weeks I've monitored the beach. Of course I could show you a dozen photos of inexcusable trash from today, but it was just too good to complain.

KeepTheBeachClean.com is about showcasing the positive side of our beautiful beaches too. Please volunteer to send a few photos each week of crowds, trash... and beautiful photos of our paradise on earth.

There were great crowds, but there were still stretches of perfect, isolated beach that could have used a few more visitors to the World's Most Beautiful Beaches.

Who Needs a Motel Room?

With all the new condo$ on the beach, and not many $40 rooms around anymore... well, who needs a room anyway when you can live on the front porch of paradise?

Memorial Day 2007: After

Ahh, the crowds have died down, the cleanup crew has emptied the dirty blue cans (oops, except the county folks (you know, we have two crews covered by tax dollars) at the entrance of one of our nicest beach parks, but I'm sure they'll get to it later.) The bums are drinking malts before 9AM, welcoming all who hit the beach early. Sure, there are plenty of bottles left on the beach, but "don't they look pretty stood up next to each other with them opposite colors like this!" Things look back to normal on PCB!

Memorial Day 2007: During

The crowds seemed better than normal at the county pier, and kept the place fairly clean. (It's sad that I have to say "fairly clean" when we should still be saying "it's trashed." But you take what you can get.)

Memorial Day 2007: Before

The beach looked better than normal the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend kicked off. What we still need to work on is the entrance ways to the beaches... what a terrible first impression when they are not clean.

Wal-Mart Trash

If Wal-Mart sells it, it ends up on our beach. Funny how many times you see old Sam's name in the sand... on trash.

Thunder Beach, Spring 2007

This is AFTER the cleanup crew came by. Those hogs on hogs leave a lot of slop.