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Headline Surfer photo by Henry Frederick / New Year's Eve revelers like this couple drink on the public sidewalk in front of the Om Bar on Flagler Avenue in New Smyrna Beach during New Year's Eve 2011, afraid neither of the media nor the cops.
NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Come with me tonight to Flagler Avenue or later on to Main Street in Dayona Beach where you'll see how valuable your CRA and advertising authority dollars are to who else, but the bar owners. It's all about pushing the booze.
As much as politicians talk about wanting to clean things up and push economic development, tonight is New Year's Eve. It's the start into the new year and what a way to ring it in with two big street parties. It's a cash cow for the daily print newspaper of record, too.
Check out the big spread in the Sunday Daytona Beach News-Journal on the dropping of the big beach ball on Main Street. The News-Journal is well connected politically, financially and otherwise with municipal governments and their CRAs, the three regional advertising authorities, especially in Daytona, the publicly subsidized indigent care hospitals and county government as well beyond the legal advertising requirements.
The funny thing is I wonder how many News-Journal reporters will be out there tonight with me capturing all the decadence on my video camera. If the past few years are any indication, I'll be out there on my own.
Besides the bastardizing of the taxpayer monies, what bothers me even more is how the merchants of Flagler Avenue blatantly put up their banner -- "The Party's on Flagler" -- and hold fireworks at 9 p.m., promoting it as a family event. All you have to do is look at the videos I shot last time around and it's clear to see the fireworks aren't even worth the $6,500 in taxpayer money, if you can even call them fireworks, that's how cheap they are in quality.
But it's a compromise for the restaurants wanting to draw the family crowds. It's really too bad many of these families with small kids will be forced to interact with e adult partying crowd already in the bars that will spill out onto the sidewalks and avenue itself to watch 5 minutes of a lousy fireworks show while screaming out obscenities like (expletive)-A.
It's great the Hampton Inn opened just before Christmas, but with 112 rooms expected to be filled, there are only enough parking spaces for about 72 vehicles. That means the balance of guests will be forced to park across the street where the CRA is paying the church there for the dirt-covered parking area.
The reality of a night like this with a few thousand people converging, parking is extremely hard to come by, requiring people to park several blocks into the much narrower side streets, many with inadequate or no sidewalks at all.
The locals on these side streets don't like the zig-zag of vehicles squeezing into every available space, including their front lawns, which to one arrest last time where a homeowner keyed a car out of anger.
Tonight, the NSB Waterfront Loop is more about getting looped and than doing the loop, the city's expensive marketing campaign that has demonstrated nothing in the way of justifying the expense, but that's an argument for another day.
Tonight, the NSB Waterfront Loop is more about getting looped and than doing the loop, the city's expensive marketing campaign that has demonstrated nothing in the way of justifying the expense, but that's an argument for another day.
Tonight, it's about making the almighty buck, but then again as I've said before and I'll repeat it again many times over: What do you expect when the mayor is an admitted DUI offender who owns two wine bar restaurants.
The record is clear how this mayor, Adam Barringer, has supported and encouraged CRA funding for the bars more than just about anything else since he took office in 2009.
Let's just hope and pray nobody is injured or killed by a drunk driver. Perhaps I'm being melodramatic and surely I'll be accused of being ant-business, but is it all worth the loss of a single life, never mind the waste of limited tax dollars.
Videos produced by Sera Frederick / Check out these videos from New Year's Eve 2011 on Flagler Avenue in New Smyrna Beach where traffic was allowed to pass through, even after the fireworks started. You'll see plenty examples of adult revelers walking around with open containers of alcohol, in beer bottles and plastic cups, going in and out of the bars. With a handful of cops on patrol, enforcement of the open container was non-existent.