Daytona Beach - A Pirate’s Life is the Life for Me

By Greg Evans

Poet Ernest Dowson once said, “Gone are the days of wine and roses.” But he had never been to Daytona Beach. There is plenty of happiness and even more prosperity. How could you not be happy roasting in that Florida sun, watching the waves come rolling in and slurping down shellfish at Crabby Joe’s? An alcoholic decadent like Dowson would have thrived instead of dying in English poverty under chilly gray skies, gone with the wind. Daytona beach is the definition of prosperity - elegant sky-rise hotels and condominiums stretching as far as the eye can see, fine-dining, palm tree-lined avenues, upscale bars, and live music venues for the masses. Want to live easy on the coast, expect astronomy HOA fees that cost more a month than a 918 Spyder. That is what prosperity brings, friends, don’t complain. Prosperity is the mellow mood of a tropical date night under humid skies with a million stars and fluffy-cushioned lounges and late night walks on the beach. As the old 70’s saying goes amongst the great journalists of that era, “With enough expense money, all things are possible.”

I ended up in Daytona Shores because I had to flee the mountains. It wasn’t just the perpetual cold and unforgiving rain, a rumor was floating around that local developers were looking to give my head a “good country thumping” for some bad press that I may or may not have written.

Not only that, the annual ROTC National Drill Championships were going to take place and Em wanted to go. Sounded like a good time to me. Ten minutes later we had plane tickets, a Kia Forte, and an AirBnb overlooking the ocean.

Sitting at the airport I was immediately restless. Em is unfazed by my noticeable discomfort and irritation with how loud nearby travelers talk about their boring lives while I’m trying to read. I hate flying. I also hate having to do things I hate, such as waiting in a crowded gate for a twice delayed airplane. With the airport so crowded there were no seats at the bar. Generally, it takes almost as long to fly (door to door) as it does to drive and I prefer driving to flying any day.

People always say life consists of doing things you don’t want to do. That is the case for most people because they didn’t play their cards right. There is a saying that goes, “Either you carve out your own path in this world, or the world will carve one out for you and you may not like how it turns out.” Something like that. I have found if you think outside the box, live the best you can on your terms regardless of what people will think about you, and be willing to spend a bit of money, it is possible to mitigate many of life’s inevitable discomforts.

For example, if you don’t want to be fat, tired, and sick, exercise regularly, get lots of sleep, keep the drinking to a minimum, and eat clean. Sounds simple enough. It’s not.

We didn’t land in Sanford/Orlando until after 10 pm. Stepping into the warm and humid Florida night to pick up the rental car is like slipping into a dream .

Not too much it seems is open in Sanford after 10 o’clock. There is Rachel North’s Men’s Club and Steakhouse, Dancers’ Royale, the John E. Polk Correctional Facility - I think I’ll pass on that one, and down the road from the airport a lone gritty looking Circle K gas station with large yellow signs on the door that read $.99 cent 16 ounce single beer. Sold!

Walking inside my first impression was that an act of violent crime was imminent. I grabbed two Heinekens and put them on the counter. Em whispered, “This place is sketch.” An old weathered man with bloodshot eyes looked at me from across the counter.

“$6.04,” the old man said.

“What happened to the $.99 sale advertised on the door,” I countered.

“Them signs have been up there since the 80’s fool. You want this here beer or not?” He said. I watched him fiddling with his pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. I imagined it wouldn’t take much of an incentive for him to riddle me with bullets and claim I was holding him up for all the Heinyes in the beer case. I wondered if the beers were from the 80’s too.

Privateering is still alive and well here, I thought to myself. I’d expect nothing less.

I paid with cash and Em and I jumped back into our rental and headed for the beaches. As it were, a CVS was literally across the street from our condo and opened until midnight but I didn’t know then.

If you have never driven from Sanford/Orlando to Daytona Beach Shores, right on the edge of the town of Port Orange, it is a pretty straightforward drive, especially after 10 at night, but the amount of wildlife loitering on the side of the road and plenty of suicidal ones socializing in the middle of the road is like an African safari on blotter acid. And we thought we saw a lot of wildlife in the mountains of East Tennessee and Western North Carolina.

I was swerving around deer, possum, maybe armadillos… giant bats with red eyes, it was unbelievable. Em was shrieking, the Rolling Stones were blaring from the radio, it was Daytona Beach or Bust at this point. I needed a beer stat. I was out of tobacco and didn’t bother to bring any and knew it was going to be a long night if we wound up in one of these ditches full of alligators with a taste for pasty tourists.

We rented a room on the beach at the Pirates Cove, room #323. South Atlantic Avenue and Dunlawton Avenue was quiet at this time of the night. I sat out on the private balcony drinking beer and watching the waves rolling in. It was hard to find a room with private balcony in Daytona Beach Shores on such short notice. We got lucky with our place. The walls blocking out the neighbors made the balcony our own little world. Robert Frost hit the nail on the head when he said, “High fences make for good neighbors.”

By the time we reached our condo high tide was all the way up. The ocean was literally right up to the fence and the parking lot below. It is easy to see why hurricanes Ian and Nicole did so much damage. Humans have always displayed a hubris that they could control nature and maybe in some ways, like in rural Tennessee they are able to, but not in Daytona. On the coast the ocean does what it wants. The city is still recovering years later. The surge washed away landscaping, amenities, swimming pools, the first and maybe second floors of building’s and a few sun-burned retirees. It is not a laughing matter. People suffered greatly, financially and otherwise.

I like being close to the water. The smell of the salt in the air, the sound of the water and the perpetual wind gusts. Leaning forward off the balcony I can see a bit down the shoreline, to the north, maybe five miles, the neon seediness of the beach tourist community nightlife is glowing and alive.

Sitting out in the darkness, listening to the ocean I can’t help but think about the early merchant sailors and pirates traveling up and down this coastline. No doubt the seabed is littered with old wrecks and relicts, the souls of the doomed tarrying on in those strong gusts of salty wind.

Before the Euros came and built up the area, an indigenous tribe known as the Timucuans called Daytona Beach home. As hard as I try to picture them bashing in the skulls of the disease-ridden English and Spanish sailors, I simply can’t. I imagine them hanging ten on longboards along the gently breaking green waves, wearing sharks teeth and coral necklesses with beautiful caramel-skinned girlfriends with flowing jet black hair and wreathes of tropical flowers on their heads; grass mini skirts, clear and shimmering skin and perfect teeth. I don’t understand how anyone wouldn’t be mellow in a place like this.

The modern Daytona Beach was founded in 1870-71 by an Ohio newspaper publisher named Mathias Day Jr. Hence the name, Daytona. As a journalist, I too can see the inspiration and appeal of the place. He had purchased about a 2-acre tract of land once part of the Williams’ plantation now in the historic district and built a hotel. Not yet a hotspot for NASCAR fans, retirees, surfers, and beach bums, making a living was difficult, and in 1872, due to money troubles, he lost his sliver of paradise.

I woke up to the sun rising over the ocean, which I could see from my bed. The tide receded significantly and people are already down on the sand walking, jogging, wading in the surf, collecting seashells, yet I see not a single Timucuan. I wonder if any of them still exist. I watch the people and wonder how many are retirees, people who just live here and work and have normal lives and how many are tourists escaping their ordinary lives for a bit of salty, sandy bliss, each wondering why they don’t pack up and move here before the rheumatoid arthritis is in full effect.

Daytona Beach by day and Daytona Beach by night are two different animals, two living and breathing entities like the angel and devil sitting your shoulder, whispering sweet nothings while gnawing on the side of your head trying to eat your brain like a grapefruit.

Em and I wandered over to the CVS on Dunlawton Blvd., to buy a newspaper, some sunscreen and a bag of popcorn without that factory made neon liquid butter flavor better known as chemical agent X, the same stuff incidentally that they used to create agent orange, or so the rumor persists. We went up to the counter and the kid looks at me with dark beady eyes. “CVS card? What’s your phone number!” He shrieked.

I didn’t have a CVS card but I wanted a discount. I gave him my mom’s number because she used to have a CVS membership back in the 90s. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Never mind, don’t use it.”

The kid took a step back and scowled, “Don’t use what?!” I then heard him mutter under his breath, “Half-bald psycho.”

I reached for my canister of bear spray to blast the whimpering sot into hell-blinding misery but then remembered I was unable to take it onto the airplane. The puritan rules of civilized society rescued this cue ball from all kinds of discomfort and trauma. Instead, I pulled out my card and paid.

“Receipt?” He asked.

“No,” I said standing there. We stood looking at each other from across the counter for like 45 seconds, as if two old western leather faces about to duel.

“You are good man. You don’t want a receipt. Get out of here.” He said. Em and I grabbed our stuff and left. Out in the parking lot without looking at her I said, “That was a bit awkward.”

She responded, “It’s always awkward.”

Back in the room I sat on the balcony and wrote while skin-damaged beach enthusiasts of all ages frolicked and followed the sun across the sky, rearranging their towels and chairs to keep the tanning process undisturbed. I love to bake out in the sun with the best of them. I just don’t enjoy that vice anymore. Too much skin cancer these days. At my age it just doesn’t matter. A well done tan only really works for certain 18-25 year old girls with firm bodies and the right skin tone, and only up to a point. You can easily overdo it. Tanning I find is an addiction like prescription pill popping and a favorite hobby of more retirees than working folks. And they go overboard. Trip over one on the beach and you will, for a moment, suspect you just tripped over a piece of luggage on the sand washed up from 1730.

I finally finished writing, it was a work day for me and Em and I moved out of the room and down onto the sand in beach chairs.

I could tell dusk was nearing but still plenty of light to read. I like the unrestrained and whipping wind and rhythmic sound of the waves. It’s warm but chilly, wide open skies and endless flat green waters. A couple set up nearby. Too close for my liking. If they had beer it would have eased the tension.

It’s an oddity watching the rippling tide pools with grackles dipping into them instead of gulls or sand pipers. Grackles look like crows we have in the mountains. I felt like we were in an Alfred Hitchcock film. I actually thought they were fish slurping crows but Emma’s ROTC instructor, First Sargent James Byington, Army Retired, informed me otherwise.

One evening at about 10:35 pm., I was driving north on S. Peninsula Drive coming upon Silver Beach Avenue. We had the green light. The car ahead of me was entering the intersection and coming from the other direction is a car turning left but they were supposed to yield. You learn that when you are thirteen driving through the hollers. They didn’t though. The car ahead of me, maybe a distance 25 yards considered slowing since their brakes illuminated slightly but they kept going and plowed through the intersection, along with the other car. Both cars slammed on their brakes, and skidded head on into each other. The car in front of me turned slightly diagonally left at impact with the other car. Crunch! Glass, smoke, and stained rubber on the pavement. “These Neanderthals will never learn,” I mutter. The man in the car in front of me jumps out with his hand in the air. It is inevitable a confrontation is about to ensue.

I imagine tonight the other driver was either impaired or like everyone else, in a rush for no good reason.

I didn’t hang around to give a witness testimony as I drank an IPA over dinner. Over 2 or 3 hours had passed but God forbid it was still on my breath and I got hauled down to the pinta for drunk and disorderly. I quickly turn onto Silver Beach and head toward the Daytona Grand to pick up Em who was out with her friends. Can’t have her standing around on a night like this, too many werewolves on the prowl. It’s 78 degrees, Friday night, clear skies, and the place is hopping. It was a long week. People are ready to unwind.

Wrecks happen because humans behave like humans and they always will. I could list all the reasons, but what’s the point.

Saturday morning on Daytona Beach Shores is alive with a throbbing pulse. After a long week people have come for a few hours of easy living where nothing matters but catching the perfect waves, scouring for pieces of Spanish eight, closing your heavy eyes and feeling the sun enveloping your soul, evaporating, if only temporarily, the troubles of life, far away.

The surfers are lugging their boards, the beach bunnies are playing volleyball, others sun-bathing and jogging, the muscled bros are flexing like tattooed peacocks hoping to drum up the attention of a scorned housewife, couples out biking weave through everyone, the silver-mullet man doing his walking tai chi dips and spins like a bent slinky, and for a mere $33 smackers you can park your car on the beach. It was a genius idea. The city of Daytona Beach or Port Orange, whoever owns this stretch of urban paradise makes millions. Em and I live the beach life. We fit in here, in this weird, chaotic, diverse ecosystem where life only moves as fast as you want it to and everything within reason goes.

If you are going to come to Daytona Beach you have to just relax with a coffee or beer and watch people in this stress-free environment letting their hair down. The beach brings out the youth in all of us.

We decided to head an hour and a half up the coast to visit Em’s side of the family in St. Augustine. Bob and Janice are as righteous as it gets. Really good people. We planned for only a couple hours and back to Daytona so Em could party it up with her buddies and I could go night surfing with a leggy blond from Cocoa Beach.

It takes a lot of courage to paddle that long board out into those dark ominous waves during feeding time for the local black-tip, bull, hammerhead, and great white sharks.

We reached St. Augustine around a quarter to one.

“What’s the plan they?” They asked.

“We’re following you,” I said.

“Been to the fort yet? Or downtown?”

“Let’s do it.”

I’m a history junkie. A old 17th century fort made out of coquina seashells that is nearly the same today as when it finished completion in the late 1600s.

The Castillo de San Marcos, constructed over 22 years between 1675 and 1693 overlooking Matanzas Bay is the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States. It is a remarkable place. It is history at its rawest, virtually unmolested by generations of humans, particularly developers who long ago would have bulldozed it into the sea to build plastic and linoleum condos stacked on too of each other at $900,000+ a pop, not including HOAs.

The space is fairly large and can accommodate many people however when the British were attacking, 1,500 Spanish civilians, sailors, and soldiers took refuge within the walls with 2 months worth of food for weeks while the red coats tried to make entry.

Historical sights like these go to another level when there is actual tangible remnants of people on a personal level. At the fort you can see etchings on the walls, and graffiti of boats carved by the men, isolated and so far from home.

There is one etching on the wall called the “Mysterious Carving.” It was presumably all in Spanish but too much of it has eroded for it to make any coherent sense. Who was the hand that made that carving. What was going on in his mind. I imagine he was thinking, “Where is the beer and wine? How come we didn’t bring brewers and wine makers? Why didn’t we stock the ship 50% with beautiful bikini-clad women. What lowlife organized this horror of a mission? When the Spanish first arrived they built a wooden fort. As if that would prevent an enemy from invading, or lighting a match and burning it to the ground. The first one apparently did burn down, so they built another wooden one in its place. In fact, seven more wooden replacements would follow before they finally learned their lesson and pursued a stone, or unpenetrable seashell structure. This worked. This has stood for 332 years, unfazed by the yearly hurricanes that pound the Florida coastlines with violent efficiency.

After visiting the fort for a while we headed into the old town. I felt like we were on the set if pirates of the caribbean. Street after street of old looking tropical structures, flowers everywhere, packed restaurants, bars, and gift shops. You could spend a full week just exploring that part of St. Augustine.

Back at the “The World’s Most Famous Beach,” as Daytona is so affectionately called, I returned to my spot on the balcony to read about the old fort and do some writing. People travel all over the world, looking to scratch the adventure itch, looking for meaning, looking for fun or culture, scouring the globe for the answer to the eternal questions of life, and they should if that is what works for them. For me, the balcony overlooking the ocean with some historical literature is all I need. Sitting and watching the pelican’s floating on the wind, the fishing boats creaking along and the scantily-clothed 70-year old women rolling around in the sand, answers many of the questions I have about life. And the other ones, I’ll let them come out in the wash.

Curiosity got the best of me and I looked at available real estate in Daytona, as well as other communities up and down the coast to see what it was all about. At first things seem promising, a condo here or there for $155,000 or $172,000 with ocean views. Nowadays, working people would view a home in that price range at near poverty. But the average person can think what they want. I can stomach something like that but that is not where they get you. The dreaded, sleazy Home Owner’s Association (HOA) monthly fees are what rips your clothes off and molests you in the dark alley. These fees run you anywhere from $500 to $900 per MONTH! Instead of a $450-$550 monthly payment for a set amount of years your looking at nearly a grand forever. In 30 years (typical mortgage), with inflation, you’d easily drop over a million shekels. All for trash pickup, a dirty pool, if it’s even up and running, a grimy hot tub or a gym that never has anyone in it.

We eventually made our way up to the convention center to watch the ROTC cadets perform. They were incredible, spinning and flipping rifles, some with huge glistening bayonets attached. Groups of students completely in synch, practically laying their lives on the line to the hoots and cheers of their peers. It was remarkable to observe.

Em’s high school won 3rd place in one of their events. I was very impressed. I never could have performed with a rifle in high school like those kids.

After it was all said and done, we all spent the remainder the last day lounging on the beach. I could waste everyday away on the beach, watching tides come and go and the waves shimmering in the hot sun for eternity. A pirates life is the life for me.