The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera: An Insider's History of the Florida-Alabama Coast

8. Playing by Different Rules

129 By the id-1980s, most counties along the Redneck Riviera had a tourism development council working hard to attract people to their stretch of beach, and the “tdc” stenciled stamp was appearing on everything from park benches to trash cans. Council promotional efforts sent a mixed message to visitors. The stamps, on one hand, suggested order and organization, cleanliness and consistency, safety and security. On the other hand, tdc advertisements that featured pictures of scantily clad young women, spilling out over their bikini tops, and the slogan “When you got it bad, Florida’s got it good,” suggested something else altogether. Though some critics found the line both “grammatically and morally incorrect,” most Riviera visitors had little problem with it either way. The more sophisticated chuckled at it. The less so liked what it promised. Even more to the liking of both groups was another poster, also featuring a buxom young woman, which told folks, “Come to Florida. The Rules Are Different Here.” If nothing else, that was truth in advertising. Alabama tourism officials could have borrowed the slogan and used it without fear of contradiction, for as has been noted before, no matter the state, when travelers crossed the Intracoastal Waterway and caught a whiff of the salt air, restraint went into neutral and they arrived at the beach knowing they could do things there they could not do, might never do, back home—and get away with it. They could sit eight Playing by Different Rules 130 chapter eight on the sand in the sun, empty the cooler while the kids played in the surf, take a nap, and go out in the evening to eat something fried. They could fish in deep water or just float in the Crab Island shallows at the mouth of Choctawhatchee Bay, dive for hermit crabs, play water football, and wait for the ice cream boat to arrive. The options were limited only by the imagination . Meanwhile more-affluent visitors could go to Seaside or Sandestin and for a little while live in a fancy house or condo, eat at upscale restaurants, play tennis or golf or even croquet, drink wine, nibble cheese, and listen to chamber music at sunset. Whatever rules you wanted to follow or break you could follow or break along the Redneck Riviera. You could also make money. One of the many attractions of the coast was that the different rules opened the door for dreamers such as Robert Davis as well as for speculators who came down to get rich and get out. A lot of the latter group went to Destin. Destin’s cycle of economic ups and downs was re-created all along the Riviera, and though the rises and falls, the highs and lows, varied with the circumstances, they all came at about the same time and had many of the same consequences. But Destin seemed to come out better than the rest—or worse, depending on how you look at it. As Panama City Beach and its environs recovered from Eloise, Destin expanded to take up the tourist trade pcb could not handle. By the time Panama City Beach was back on track, Orange Beach and Gulf Shores were picking up the pieces left by Frederic, and folks who might have gone there but couldn’t looked east and found Destin open for business. Then came the first shots in the Reagan Revolution. Congress passed the president’s Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 which, among other things, allowed investors to avoid paying taxes by buying rental property. Taxpayers, according to a later Destin Log assessment, “took the bait and bought rental property, especially condos.” Although the units might bring in little rental income, they “could justify the purchase based on tax benefits alone.” Existing rental property was not enough to meet investor demand and the building boom began. The “Destin city bird,” the Log noted, was not the pelican or the sandpiper, it was the high-rise construction crane. With the boom came media attention. In 1985, Good Morning America did a feature on Destin as one of the “great places to vacation in America.” It was great because it had beautiful beaches, deep-sea fishing, amusements, good playing by different rules 131 places to eat, and condominium units to rent at a reasonable price. Where once cottages with kitchens attracted families, now...