A personal paradise lost

July 21, 2025

This is a hugely depressing story for me, partly because it’s about yet another MAGA type getting his way. This guy bullied the government of Walton County, Florida into letting him drape Trump banners all over his house in spite of a sign ordinance. However, it’s also a bummer because of the changes happening in the area, where my wife and I used to have a much-loved second home.

The stretch of the Panhandle along Highway 30A is often called the Emerald Coast for its blue-green water and white sand. Being within a day’s drive of several states, it’s long been a favorite vacation spot in the South, and for decades the visitors were mostly middle-class. Our community of Inlet Beach became known as Soldiers’ Beach after the government gave away miles of land to World War II veterans. A lot of their children and grandchildren were still around when we bought our first property in the late 90s.

Sadly, their small but sturdy houses have been replaced by ostentatious multi-million-dollar piles up and down the shore. As the New York Times put it, the typical visitors now are, “polished, moneyed Southerners who can otherwise be found in the region’s law firms, Pilates classes, Christian academies and fraternity and sorority houses. They tend to arrive on 30A in giant, late-model S.U.V.s. They eat $32 fresh grouper sandwiches and shop for Lilly Pulitzer ensembles at the Barefoot Princess boutique.”

It’s ironic that these folks compare their gentrified playground to the Hamptons, which have come to symbolize oligarchs, overcrowding, and excess, and are so expensive that the gardeners, restaurant staff etc can’t afford to live there. 30A is clearly heading in that direction if it’s not like that already. The traffic is so bad that the county had to build a new parking structure. That’s right: they really, literally, actually paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

The Panhandle was always heavily Republican, but nobody hung out their opinions for the world to see. I’m glad we sold our house before the MAGA man raised his first banner. I sure wouldn’t want my tax money going into the $42,000 settlement he got after he sued.