On the Road (2): Destin

 

Destin, March 23

The beach in Destin is one of the few I’ve ever seen that can sell itself. It is way out on the Florida Panhandle toward Pensacola, surprisingly far from the rest of the state, and has clever marketing team at work for it that has come up with the name “the Emerald Coast.” That’s fair: the sea is a bright, lively green, especially in contrast with the perfectly white, powdery beach. It checks every box: the sea was even warm enough in March to go into it.

Beach economies tend to be so similar that the small distinctions become big differences. The infrastructure in Destin at first glance is very familiar: a strand of beach, fronted by hotels, with a strip just inland of eating and entertainment options (things to do in case it rains).

But Destin’s big advantage is that it is new. The hotel where we stayed was just across the beach road from the great ocean-fronting behemoths, and was so new it appears on Google Earth as a construction site. It is so new that no older, shabbier layers of development are present — the small motel-like places you find in older beach areas. The restaurants are new and mostly chain locations, which lack in local character what they make up in reliability. The alternative entertainments aren’t limited to just mini-golf places, but include some pretty rad-looking go-kart racetracks. The common denominator you’d find anywhere by the shore are those giant discount beach-supply emporiums, spaced on nearly every block which sell cheap beach towels with SEC team logos, novelty shot glasses, and spade-and-bucket sets for kids.

This sudden growth around the area shows just how efficient market capitalism is in talent-scouting. But this moment in capitalism isn’t much interested in long-term, sustainable development, but in developing resources and extracting as much money out as quickly as possible. So you see some big new hotels, and a lot of condos crowded wherever they’ll fit within walking distance of the beach. Most of them seem to be built on this generic ideal of fancy Southern living, with big galleries and porches and plenty of space for rocking chairs. They seem pleasant and comfortable, but blank.

All that newness is reflected in who you see there. We saw a lot of families with kids, a lot of late-model SUVs with stickers for soccer associations and the like in the parking lots. No battered sedans that look like they won’t make it back to where they came from, no rusting campers, nothing that a successful upper middle class family would be ashamed to climb into.

Word of this complacent bourgeois atmosphere has apparently gotten around. I read in the Pensacola newspaper an article about the Spring Break economy, which noted that college kids in the region had decided that Destin is boring as hell and to be avoided in favor of places like Panama City Beach. This was a relief to us, even if we did spy more than a few beer funnels on display at the beach shops, and a smattering of college kids on the beach who seemed pretty well-mannered. 

Unconvincing

It was interesting to see how these little groups of college kids interacted and spent their days. The girls would arrive in groups, content to lie in the sun listening to music on their headphones, occasionally taking photos of themselves. The boys would arrive a bit later (go-karts?), stand in little circles around a cooler of Bud Light and chat. Occasionally they’d take a break to throw around a football. Eventually, a group of the girls would take the initiative to go talk to the boys, they would throw the football around altogether, and there, temporary friendships are sealed, I suppose.

It looked a bit backwards from how these things happened when I was their age, but the elements were all the same. What has really changed — and so much so to be alarming — is how technology has butt in to even the simplest things. One night, we went to a restaurant on the main drive, one of those giant seafood shack places. As we waited for a table, an enormous group of college kids arrived and was seated at several long tables pushed together. This kind of group you expect to be loud and fun, but on the contrary, they were dead silent. Each of them settled in, whipped out their phone, and stared down, maybe occasionally showing something in a whisper to their neighbor. To be young, at the beach, with an abundance of people to flirt with, and they stare furiously at their phones imagining they were elsewhere. I fear how crippled these kids have become.

I think my phone stayed away most of the time we were there. When I wasn’t silently judging college kids in my near vicinity, I was busy just enjoying being outdoors in the warm air, rejoicing to be outside again and not freezing to death. Who could ask for more?

Our seaside fortification, Destin, Florida. March 22.