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No-frills beach bums find home at Gandy's 'Redneck Riviera'

Tribune photo by MICHAEL SPOONEYBARGER

Beachgoers enjoy the sun on the stretch of sand along Gandy Boulevard.

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By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 22, 2009

ST. PETERSBURG - Mary Fields likes the sun-splashed spit of sand on the south side of Gandy Boulevard because, well, she doesn't much care for an untanned tush.

The self-proclaimed free spirit from Brandon makes the drive every weekend to hit the "Redneck Riviera" on the Pinellas side of the bridge, to soak up the sun in her thong bikini, hoist a few beers and party with regulars who have made this spot their own.

"Yeah, it's great here," she says in the sparkling sunshine of a recent Saturday afternoon, as her SUV, with four doors and rear hatch open, blasts AC/DC's "Big Balls."

"At the other beaches, you can't wear your T-back, you can't have a beer," she says. "You can't drive on the beach or play your music, or bring your dog for a walk."

Behind her, a big mixed breed dog on a leash sniffs a piece of flotsam on the beach, lifts its leg, does its business and walks on. No worries here.

Cars whiz by just a few yards from the sunbathers-on-the-bay. Some motorists must wonder what the attraction is here. And while the crowd looks a bit unrefined, with their pickup trucks, fishing poles and thong bikinis, authorities say seldom is there a problem at the Gandy. The crowd here is far from the highfalutin folks lounging on deck chairs on the Don Cesar beach, but it ain't Devil's Night in Detroit, either.

The water is tidal-basin warm and murky. The sand gets a little mucky offshore, and the Progress Energy power plant looms directly to the south. There are fishermen with hooks in the water next to children splashing about and a sprinkling of beer bottles and cans, scattered like passed out sunbathers, on the sand.

But perhaps it isn't the sun, water and sand that make this beach so popular among the locals.

"People show up here with tents and have cookouts," says Fields, 38, a property manager at a sprawling complex. She's a regular here, saying even the swimming pool rules at her complex doesn't allow the skimpy bikini she wears here. Ice cream vendors in vans cruise up and down the beach behind the parked cars, bubbling with those melodious tones: "Do Your Ears Hang Low … "

On the west end, mangroves encroach onto the open beach, leaving private cuts to the water every 30 feet or so. Here, the more solitary people gather, having their own private piece of the bay. Pickup trucks with confederate flag tags on the front and homemade barbecue grills in the back are nestled into the mangrove shade, sending small crabs for cover. Many trucks bristle with fishing poles.

It is all good here, at the place occasionally called Beer Can Beach. A beachgoer once dubbed this place the Gandy Ghetto Yacht Club and Beach Resort.

"This is Florida," Fields says. "This is Tampa. This is not Miami. It has a lot of freedom; that's why I drive all this way."

"Some people call this the Redneck Riviera," she whispers, as though the name is a secret password known only by those who are here. "What the heck. There are a lot of rednecks in Florida."

"If that's the reputation it has," she says, "rock on."

No pants, no service

Linda Csiki drives all the way from Plant City, dragging her hot dog cart all the way.

"Yup," she says, "it's 35 miles one way."

She's been coming here since March, six days a week, "making a living," she says. "Selling hot dogs."

Like the new kid on the block, she has had to fit in and now recognizes all her repeat customers. She greets a shirtless guy toting a sweaty bottle of cold Coors Light. Todd Bickel of Seminole orders four wieners, two with relish and mustard, two with just ketchup.

"I come here every weekend," he says as Csiki piles on the condiments, "every weekend since last summer."

He lives just five minutes away and could go to the fancy, schmancy beaches such as Treasure Island or Sand Key, he said. But he enjoys it here.

"It's good times," he says. "The people are great. You can drive right up to the beach. You can have your radio on and the camaraderie … it's more the people than the beach," he concludes with a little bit of thought. "You can't get any better than this."

He gathers up his dogs and heads back toward the water.

Csiki wipes down the shiny counter. She says she has seen some weird things here.

One time a short time ago, a man pulled up in a truck a few yards from Csiki's hot dog stand and asked if she could bring him a hot dog. She complied.

"He was wearing a short skirt and fishnet stockings," Csiki recalls with a giggle. She shook her head at the time, took the cash and returned to the cart, with a good Gandy beach story to tell. "You get all kinds."

Another time, another customer pulled up and made the same request. Csiki prepared the dog and walked it over to the truck.

"He didn't have any pants on," she says. "I did call the law on him."

But most of her customers are just everyday people out here for a good time, she says. "There are a lot of regulars out here. It's a big diversity. There are kids and older people, people with dogs, and they all seem to know each other."

"I like the people."

Most here know of the plush beaches that line the west coast of Pinellas County, places with fancy names like Fort DeSoto State Park, or Caladesi Island, which perennially are among the picks for the best beaches in the world. The sand is virginal, the water a tropical blue-green and clean.

But the Gandy crowd can do without all that. Having to pay to get in or to pay for a parking spot or putting up with the crowds and restrictive rules about behavior and what you can wear just irks the Gandy-ers.

They also don't like having to walk a couple of hundred yards from a parking space on hot asphalt, toting a chair and cooler and umbrella.

Colorful, not a trouble-filled spot

Marianne Pasha has been with the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office for a number of years and said the folks who hang at Gandy represent a wide variety of people, although mostly locals.

By and large, though, the beach is not considered a problem spot. It comes with the same issues as any other place where lots of people gather to have a good time and maybe tip the brown bottle a bit.

"Occasionally, things flare up," she said. "But generally people behave themselves."

Besides the usual things that crop up when folks drink, like fights and boorish behavior, there's the occasional domestic squabble or kid who wanders away from the blanket.

Only on Gandy beach, she said, could a bag full of cremains wash ashore and few beachgoers raise eyebrows.

The beach was crowded that day, when "someone's ashes in one of those double-thick plastic bags with their name on it wash up on the beach," she said. "Apparently, some family members went out (into the bay on a boat) with the bag to scatter the cremains and before they could do it, the bag slipped out of somebody's hand and bloop, it went in to the water."

"It did create a bit of a stir," she said, "among the beachgoers."

The Web site for the St. Petersburg/Clearwater Area Convention & Visitors Bureau says this about Pinellas beaches:

"Home to America's Award Winning Beaches. Caladesi Beach, America's No. 1 beach in 2008. Also home to Fort DeSoto State Park, America's No. 1 beach in 2005. We offer 35 miles of white-sand beaches on some eight major barrier islands."

The Web site lists 20 beaches in Pinellas, from Egmont Key to Honeymoon Island and beyond, but there's no mention of the Gandy beach.

There just isn't the space, said convention and visitors bureau assistant director David Downing, to list every beach in the county. Those listed are just the ones with adequate parking and facilities. There's no slight aimed at the Gandy, he said.

"We are a peninsula on a peninsula," he said. "There's water everywhere. People come here for different reasons, and a lot of people go there to go fishing among the mangroves." Mostly, he said, the Gandy is populated by locals, not tourists.

He said he drove by the beach on a recent weekend and was amazed at the number of people crowded on the narrow spit of sand.

"I think it has a little bit of the allure of Daytona Beach," he said, "with you being able to drive right up to the water and all."

Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760.

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