Day 73 — Margaritaville — 3,323,197.6 Barrels Spilled
Jimmy Buffet’s free concert intended to boost morale and tourism, has been cancelled due to the surf created by hurricane Alex. Authorities say the stage on the beach may be in danger. The swell isn’t big, however, and the wind is calm. Some speculate that the sight of oil at the concert venue might be worse for tourism than no concert at all. Buffett has a lot of money tied up in a new Pensacola hotel that opened June 28th. Money aside, he’s still the area’s greatest cultural icon—having written the sound track for this coast. A Los Angeles Times article recently pointed out some of the irony buried in those lyrics:
Nibblin’ on sponge cake,
Watchin’ the sun bake,
All of those tourists covered with oil . . .
Buffett’s 162-room hotel, in fact, is named Margaritaville. The indulgence of that name is not lost on 24-year-old Sterling. Anyone who has followed his blog knows Sterling is a funny dude. In person that humor is more subtle. A conversational ploy he’s developed is to simply replace the names of ordinary things. “Sex,” for example, has recently become “pre-marital.” You can see the spark in Sterling’s eye when he drops “pre-marital” into a sentence where the word “sex” would have sufficed. “Do you think she has pre-marital?” he asks one day. It’s a loaded question here in the Bible Belt, this pre-marital. But just when those around him are confused, just that bit unsure of the situation, is when Sterling shines. They’re thinking about “pre-marital” and he sees them thinking it. This is funny, but not always a game. Lately, Sterling’s been referring to Pensacola as “Margaritaville,” and in this way, turning the decadent marketing of the name into a jab at those who accept it.
The return of Sterling’s humor is a welcome change. When I spoke to him over the phone a couple of weeks before arriving, he’d been troubled, morose even. Sterling’s had a rough start to the year, and his hometown has had a rough decade. He told me that after the hurricanes, rebuilding and recession, this was the year everyone was looking forward to. Considering what the year delivered, he’d said, “We can’t really process it.” Upon arrival, however, I discover the dark humor always bubbling underneath catastrophe seeping up into the entire Gulf landscape. In Louisiana, I learn, locals had begun to refer to the washed-up tar balls as “Obama eggs.”
Like Jimmy Buffett, the pop singer/song writer Jason Mraz has been threatening to arrive in Pensacola for days now. He is, in fact, somewhere on the Gulf Coast. Maybe he’s shucking oysters in the Big Easy, maybe he’s kissing babies in Mobile. But every few hours Mraz’s handler Joey Santley sends messages updating Sterling on Mraz’s tentative arrival. Sterling had never heard of Mraz. In fact, I realize, Sterling had never heard of me. I begin to have doubts about my presence on the Gulf at this time. I’ve begun to fall for it—the grass on the dunes, the long days, the Southern drawl. And yet, like the carpetbaggers 140 years before, journalists and celebrities are descending upon it, even Laird Hamilton. Is Laird bringing attention to the Gulf, I wonder, or the other way around? This may be the one disaster in living memory you can’t throw money or celebrities at and expect much outcome. Mraz’s campaign while on the coast, Santley tells Sterling via text, is to heighten awareness of recycling.
Sterling checks Mraz’s cred with some young women he knows, however, and he discovers that Mraz’s music seduces women into contemplating “pre-marital.” So when Sterling is asked to find a venue for the wooing of Pensacola’s females, Sterling organizes a club. Then Santley sends word that Mraz won’t be playing music when he arrives; he just wants to “hang out” with Sterling. Santley’s next text pushes the date of Mraz’s arrival forward a day. It’s like a bad Beatles movie. Which inspires Sterling to send a text reading: “Just booked the convention center for Mraz’s big gig. Seats 20,000. Cool?” Santley responds immediately. They’d need more time to arrange security, logistics, etc.—no can do. Sterling replies that he’s already put a $10,000 deposit down, non-refundable, impossible to back out.
Mraz never shows. Sterling never hears from Santley again.
This does not mean the fun was over. June and July would have been high-tide for party season had the disaster never occurred. And like spending money during the recession, there is a certain honor in pulling a good time out of this chaos. Bars and restaurants need to be patronized, the community must socialize. The result is something like a debouched wake. Mikey, Johnny and Sterling take me to an outdoor bar and grill on sunset. A live blues band plays at the shore of a back-bay. Fried pickles and beers circulate. Every table is filled.
Mikey comes from a family with deep roots in the community. His father is a legendary fisherman. I ask what his father has to say, but apparently the patriarch isn’t speaking much of the spill. When Mikey’s not surfing, he works the beach service. He sets up dozens of heavy wood lounge chairs on the beach, rents them to tourists and serves drinks and food. Lately he’s been dragging as many as 100 chairs down to the sand knowing 90% of their cushions won’t see a dent. B.P. is making up the difference in pay, but that means Mikey has to keep setting up empty chairs to collect it. The irony of it creates little eddies in the heart. For Johnny, this is a return from roaming, and well timed, because this tight little crew benefits from his enthusiasm at being home.
The three of them also have a blustery friend who’s been wheeling between tables. I hear him before I sort out where the ruckus is coming from. Collin, it turns out, is just off of his charter boat. In lieu of fishing, he’s been out working for B.P., and now he’s trying to drown the experience in Bud Light. I ask what he sees out there in the Gulf. “It’s black, it’s brown, and it’s red,” he hollers. “And everything is dead.”
Collin’s accent is thick, but next I catch a reference to “Rookie” Kruse, an Alabama charter boat captain who killed himself over the situation. “I’m not going out like that,” Collin says, “I’m gettin’ paid, and I’m getting’ laid.”
Collin spins off. Johnny says, “He acts like he doesn’t hate it, but he hates it.” Johnny doesn’t need to elaborate on what the “it” is. Oil is the topic of every conversation.
On the way to another spot, the four of us stop to check the surf at a sandbar the boys usually have to themselves. The light is quickly fading and this beach has already been hit with oil, but the curiosity remains. On approach, a white dune obstructs the view of the water but I watch Johnny run up the dune and back flip off. He disappears. I hear an “Aw, fuck.” Once on the ocean side of the dune, I see Johnny’s landed in oil.
Later we go to a club brimming with women. I’ve met Savannah before, and she and her friend Brigette pull me aside. “Our friends are tired of talking about the spill. They won’t hear another word, but I just can’t stop,” Brigette says.
“We need all the help we can get down here,” says Savannah, “Where’s the federal government? Why are they allowing B.P. to run things? Why are they allowing this to continue?” Both women have recently graduated college and have returned home to build lives. Now Savannah is volunteering for a citizen’s reporting group, and is traveling to various beaches documenting the degree of oil on each. Brigette planned to teach school in the fall but wonders if there will be students to teach. Conspiratorially, they nudge a friend of theirs into the huddle, a former fisherman now working for B.P. He asks me not mention his name before I’ve learned it. This morning, he watched three Sperm whales drowning in oil.
Disaster brings people close quickly. And even though I’m an interloper, I’m never made to feel that way. Sterling, Mikey, Johnny , and I spend most of the next day at the beach. Sterling chats with friends and watches. Most of us surf in shifts. At one point Yancy asks Sterling if he’s going to surf or not. Yancy knows the answer, and waves his son off the subject before Sterling can finish the sentence. I’m so hung over from the night before, I can’t muster a go out until late. I paddle into the tropical green water, luck into a couple, and then wait out a lull. Swell travels differently in the Gulf and you have to get used to its rhythm. I smell an odd something, but put it out of my mind. A crumbly set of waves come in, when I duck dive the last wave, I realize the water color has changed. It’s dark. That smell is thick. I’m swimming in oil.
The following morning Sterling is driving the two of us back to his house after breakfast. Pensacola Beach and its dunes are to our left, there’s a back bay to the right. I see some ducks crossing a parking lot on foot, and I can only wonder if they’ve quit the bay for good. During my stay, between 2.6 and 8.9 million gallons of oil have bled into the Gulf. As we approach some hotel towers, I ask Sterling what his plans for the future are. “When I was growing up,” says Sterling nodding at the hotels, “All of this was just . . . whatever. Ha. Now I’m starting to sound like my Dad. What am I going to do? I guess I’ll just laugh it off. That’s all there is left to do.”
He pauses, then sighs, “Poor old Margaritaville.”
It’s still out there.
