ANNA MARIA – Youth soccer on the Island goes into the month of May with playoff games on the horizon.
In the 8- to 10-year-old league, The Intuitive Foundation team is holding on to the first-place position over team Solid Rock Construction. With their one-point win against Isola...
Just when you think they’re too old to influence the smart, better-educated and computer-savvy younger generations, they raise their grey and balding heads again to remind their kids and grandkids they are still alive and influential.
For years, the prediction would be that boomers would start to sell...
BRADENTON BEACH – Crime is down in Bradenton Beach.
“Last year I stood up here and I told you crime couldn’t go any lower in the city of Bradenton Beach, but our overall crime went down 43.5% from last year,” Police Chief John Cosby said during his annual...
Extending approximately 5 miles from Anna Maria Island to St. Petersburg, the mouth of Tampa Bay is fronted by the barrier islands of Egmont Key and Passage Key. The surrounding waters are beautiful, ecologically important and provide anglers with some excellent fishing opportunities. The history surrounding the...
ANNA MARIA - Anyone who regularly attends performances by the Island Players is used to lighthearted comedies that have the audience in hysterics for a great deal of the time they are in their seats.
With performances of “Later Life,” “Farce of Nature,” “The Mousetrap” and “Communicating Doors,”...
MANATEE COUNTY – County commissioners asked the county’s seven fire chiefs to consider merging their districts at an April 23 meeting.
Commissioners said they would support doing a study to look into the benefits of consolidating fire districts, adding that they would bring state leaders and the Office...
MANATEE COUNTY – County commissioners and officials from the Town of Longboat Key discussed a petition from the Jewfish Key Preservation Association to de-annex Jewfish Key from the town at a joint April 30 meeting.
If the de-annexation is successful, Jewfish Key will become part of unincorporated Manatee...
BRADENTON BEACH – The 80 newly-planted palm trees on Bridge Street will need a regular watering schedule, and on May 2, the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) unanimously approved the expenditure of up to $7,500 to have an irrigation system installed along both sides of the road.
CRA members...
BRADENTON BEACH – With the city officially announcing the resignation of Public Works Director Tom Woodard at a May 2 commission meeting, it was also announced that Police Chief John Cosby will fill in as interim department head during the search for Woodard’s replacement.
Woodard, who has been...
LONGBOAT KEY – Citing a study concluding that the 1.7-mile stretch of Gulf Drive from the Longboat Pass Bridge to Cortez Road is one of the most unpredictable in the region in terms of traffic expectations, Longboat Key Public Works Director Isaac Brownman asked the county to...
BRADENTON BEACH – The free dockage for commercial vessels at city docks may soon come at a cost.
A discussion of the $5,000 cost to replace several floats lost on the floating docks during high surf in April turned to the city’s overall cost of dock maintenance and...
BRADENTON BEACH – Casey Hoffman and Paul “Big Sexy” Weremecki have written a book about the Drift In bar.
Published in March, the 144-page book is aptly titled, “Drift In, Stumble Out” and tells the tale of one of Florida’s great dive bars.
Chapter 1 opens with the following...