Florida is portrayed in the news as an odd place, where a cigar-chomping man holds an alligator’s jaws open so his dog can break free and a developer relocates protected gopher tortoises in the middle of the night so he can get approval to build on his land.
Being part of Florida, Anna Maria Island is no different.
We’re, well, a bit quirky.
We have Roger the mannequin, a second-floor patio resident who was kidnapped and dismembered with his head left on the beach, only to be returned in pieces by the mystery assailant when The Sun publicized his plight (Roger is reassembled, has a girlfriend, and is feeling much better).
Second Place
That is so… Florida
2021
In the “What a way to run a government” category, Bradenton Beach mayoral candidates Bill Shearon and Jack Clarke got the same number of votes in 2015 but didn’t have a runoff. They cut playing cards to decide the winner. Shearon drew the ace of clubs and won.
We have quirky people who built a tree house partly on the public beach on phone poles disguised as tree trunks that faked out a city inspector and has been in litigation for years now, and one who built a net camp built on phone poles in the middle of Sarasota Bay, which also has been in litigation for years now.
The U.S. Supreme Court finally had to weigh in on a case involving local commercial fisherman John Yates, who was taken to court by wildlife officials for tossing undersize fish overboard after being caught. He was prosecuted under a law prohibiting document shredding, and the case became known as the “fish-shredding” case. After being jailed for 30 days, he won, but quit fishing and opened a gift shop with his wife.
We had long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad train here to swim from Havana to Key West – hiring a Sun staff member to captain one of her chase boats – and successfully fight her way into Cuban waters only to be defeated by jellyfish.
We’ve had a coyote walk down the beach like someone’s dog; razorbills – which look like penguins – swimming in the Gulf due to a lack of food in their northern waters; and octopus raiding fishermens’ stone crab traps.
It’s an interesting Island. Pick us up or visit us at amisun.com and see what happens next!
