October 10, 2021
Three years y’all. How are you doing?
For better or worse, Oct. 10 will always be our shared anniversary. So I guess the question is, how are we doing?
Are you proud of us? Are we where you thought we’d be? Three years on from our collective beating, do you puff your chest when you talk about Panama City?
The storm washed away a lot but, like any trauma, it also revealed. We found that we are made of pretty strong stuff and can do hard tasks. Michael also taught us that some of our foundational thinking was flawed and antiquated. Those nauseating winds stripped our trees but also tore away old ideas about who we are and should be.
In other words, our storm brought more than destruction ashore three years ago. It brought opportunity.
For instance, the idea that murals and brew pubs in our historic districts would attract the “wrong element” and cause drunken street brawls has been given the lie. These areas get more delightful with every wall painting and more compelling with each quirky storefront. We now have proof of concept for what many of us always thought was right. We will no longer hear piffling First Baptist arguments for retarding our renaissance.
Michael gave us that boldness. It is no accident that, since the storm, public art increasingly brightens our walls and young people with nose rings take selfies at the Craft Beer Empourium while 50-somethings listen to Bruce and the Legends at Millie’s next door. It’s beautiful and long overdue.
The same is happening in salty old St. Andrews, where the Tan Fannies strip club used to be the defining landmark. I imagine Millville or Glenwood will be the next to flower. Here’s hoping.
We have hit a tipping point. This is clearly who we want to be – we feel more like ourselves now – and there is no going back.
Local politicians and city offices should reward and enable this invigoration, in deed and attitude. As our local entrepreneurs will tell you, however, they are often met by the City with discouragement that borders on intimidation.
Yes, there should be land development rules and code enforcement. Of course there should. But healthy development should not happen in spite of the City and only after bureaucratic wars of attrition. Citizens should not have to “outlast” their City – agencies employed by those citizens – to build something beautiful.
It is time for our local government employees to act more like attentive consultants hired to help us build what we want instead of gatekeepers from whom we must gain permission to spend our own money and improve our hometown.
Their first response should not be “no” but “let’s see how we can get you there.”
And let’s flip the script on land development. How about we reward local investment and actual building of things over distant land speculators who own a quarter of our most valuable properties and intend to leave them vacant or derelict indefinitely? The speculation game is to let locals take all the risks and do all the work to beautify neighboring properties, let land values increase accordingly, then gouge the locals when they want to buy back these crucial assets. This is craven – legal by letter but morally wrong.
It can be modified. A land value tax is one way to discourage speculation and freeloading while encouraging local investment and creativity. There are additional approaches. Just takes a little Googling and guts.
A last note on our relationship with local government. It has always been needed for elected officials to communicate with their constituents at more than election time. Since Michael, we have several glowing examples of commissioners and City offices providing consistent, detailed accounting of what is going on, where the money is and is not, and fielding questions and frustrations from a recovery-weary electorate. Jenna, Josh, Quality of Life and City Manager Mark McQueen are Exhibit A.
Then there are the others. If, in 2021, you cannot be bothered to engage your citizen-employers through social media, when it has never been easier or cheaper to do and we have suffered the collective traumas of Michael and COVID, you do not want this job bad enough. Next please.
Despite this municipal sclerosis, we have a few champions in City Hall who are doing their best to write our next chapter in a thoughtful, equitable way. You can disagree with their decisions – I sometimes do – but you cannot say that, after the storm, you had no chance to make your opinion known. The City begged for in-person and virtual attendance at charrette after charrette.
These open forums continue with efforts like the future of the Martin Luther King Recreation Center, the historic St. Andrews School, and our performing arts center. These are healthy signs.
Another sure sign of a community’s health is diversity. Like with any organism, a shallow gene pool spells deformity and weakness. Variety is not just the spice of life, it is life.
Since the storm, several new voices have joined the conversation about who we should be. They have brought their stories and talents and made us better. That’s what diversity does.
Our black community has emerging leaders like Tony Bostick, Alesia Rhodes, and Robert Stewart, who are showing up at meetings, starting businesses, sponsoring events, and working their way into positions of influence. They have a plan.
Search #CleanUpJoeMoody for a sample.
We just had our first Hispanic Heritage Festival. It was a celebration of the thousands of Hispanic cultures around the globe. I ate a guava and cheese empanada from the Cuban food truck Havana1980 while enjoying a live mariachi band as kids bashed a piƱata nearby. Exactly the kind of thing we need.
And the best part? The event was founded and run by four local Latinas.
This diversity mindset is taking hold in less traditional places as well. I was recently part of a citizen’s group formed to provide a vision to City officials for the next iteration of our events and performing arts centers.
After our first meeting, several members noticed, and mentioned independently, that the group was too … white.
Would that have happened 30 years ago in Panama City, Florida? Would the lack of ethnic and cultural diversity have been as obvious? Not sure but, by our next meeting, the group had more faces of color and was better for it.
Speaking of performing arts, ours are struggling.
Did you know Panama City has a world-class symphony orchestra? It is called, predictably, the Panama City Symphony Orchestra. It is led by Dr. David Ott, a world-renowned Pulitzer Prize nominated conductor and composer. Did you know that? The symphony keeps a full schedule despite losing its home at the Marina Civic Center to the storm and suffering the deprivations of COVID.
They currently perform at the Gretchen Nelson Scott Fine Arts Center at Mosley High School. The Scott Center is a lovely facility to be sure, but not of the caliber needed to market and showcase a proper symphony.
Community theatre is barely hanging on. Michael destroyed the Martin and the Kaleidoscope. The Martin is under renovation, set to reopen in the next few years. The Kaleidoscope is making due in borrowed venues and high school facilities while they rebuild their home base.
It is not all bad news though. We now have a growing stand-up comedy concern in Panama City Comedy. We have the Panama City Songwriter’s Festival. We have the Juneteenth Celebration. It is starting to add up.
The visual arts have also seen some success since the storm. Bay Arts Alliance and the Panama City Center for the Arts, under the valiant leadership of Jayson Kretzer and his team, have provided not only the murals I mentioned earlier, but dynamic community events like the Flluxe Arts Festival and an artsy Halloween spook house called Ravenwood Forest, among others.
Oh, and check out the yearly projection art festival Public Eye Soar. You’ll thank me.
I provide this menu of arts organizations for two reasons. First, you may not have known about them. The second is because the people behind these supremely important artistic efforts are tired.
I know them, we are friends, and they are tired.
They won’t tell you this because they are warriors. So I will. They need better facilities and more money and increased attendance at their events. They need clearer sailing through bureaucratic processes and, most of all, they need encouragement.
The math is simple: A town with no art equals decay and, ultimately, demise. Failure to support our arts community is suicide.
Michael may have put our arts scene on its heels, but it brought us great food. One incredible bonus of a diverse community is ethnic restaurants. Any city worth visiting has these places – usually a small dining area flanked by a specialty market. The best ones are where I am the only person speaking English.
Panama City now has several of these jewels from multiple ethnicities, including Mexican, Indian, Thai, Jamaican, Korean, and Filipino, among others. Add that to traditional Southern soul food places like Josiah’s and Bistro Southern Cafeteria, and we’re getting somewhere.
On the topic of food culture, Hurricane Michael gave us Bay County Foodies – a Facebook group founded on pure joy in and encouragement of local eateries. The founders started it as a platform for food enthusiasts to promote local restaurants as the industry crawled toward recovery. Foodies has more than 10,000 members now, a self-regulating cheer camp of positive vibes and hyper-local information. It has worked. Local establishments are now crediting the group with building their business.
This is what a community worth living in looks like. Let’s push for more.
What we’re really talking about – and what will make our kids want to stay here – is our soul. Yes, there are still insurance disputes and flooding issues and tussling over the Marina. But what we really found after Michael dissipated was our town soul. That is what we should keep fighting for.
You don’t get many chances in life to hit the reset button. Most people are afraid to; we were forced. So folks, what kind of soul do we want?
I want one with color and heart and passion and care, one I see growing but isn’t fully there yet. I’m excited but not totally satisfied. I am going to keep pushing. Push with me. Let’s make our very own Belle Ćpoque.
Show up for meetings, attend each other’s events, patronize a new restaurant on a Tuesday evening and leave a good review on the Foodies page. Make yourself uncomfortable. Like, comment, share.
After all, you don’t get what you deserve in life. You get what you reward.
Kevin
Qwirkery 
Leave a comment