LET'S BUILD A FISHING PIER, DAMMIT!

Too bad the Flagship got blown away in Galveston, that used to be my favorite fishing pier.

We don't really have any monster fishing piers on the East Coast.... Insurance costs are prohibitively high... Everytime a hurricane swings through, the pier-owners file so many claims, right.

But I tell you this, people, if you start sending me your money RIGHT NOW, I will open a bank account specifically dedicated to building the LARGEST CONCRETE AND STEEL FISHING PIER ON THE EAST COAST... 

It will be massive, over a quarter-mile long, straight off Ocracoke Island, with a double-width breakaway boardwalk, fish-cleaning facilities, 24-hour security, emergency weather shelters, iced beer dispensers, flood lights, and a SOUND SYSTEM, so you can communicate with the pier house at 4:00 in the morning, okay? 

And we can listen to some goddamned George Thorogood and Mungo Jerry out there on the pier with us, blasting over the loudspeakers.

Of course, we'll allow local fishermen to make and sell their own tackle right there at the pier house. No "Made In China" shit on this one, baby.

Oh, and this is something I've thought about... We'll have 24 Hour Web Cams on this pier, with zoom and pan; but, ALSO, we'll run continuous fish-finding sonar, with OVERHEAD FULL-COLOR DISPLAYS showing you when the big shoals of fish come in, okay? 

And one-armed bandits.  Do it Las Vegas-style.

Yeah, there will be a bar, in the pier house, but you have to bring your own hard liquor and concealed weapons, because I'm not going to buy a license for selling hard liquor on my fishing pier. Too much bad shit happens with drunks and fillet knives, okay.

But we definitely need more guns out on the piers to keep everything rock-steady and POLITE.

We'll have an underwater television camera with lights to display in the pier house how muddy is the surf — or maybe even an ROV, so we can navigate around and find lost fishing rods and retrieve all those expensive, high-tech surf leaders that people lose by the millions.

Hell, if we can bring in enough capital, we can BUY an island with a MILE-LONG pier and helicopter landing pads.  I've always been an islander, I think.  I've got the temperament for it, and I know it. 

Everybody thinks it's beach blanket bingo and clambakes and margaritas all that stereotypical crap, but that's not island life. 

Island life is actually reclusive and isolated and hermit-like; but at the same time, all this marvelous NEW STUFF comes swirling in around you all the time, right?  The tide and weather bring all SORTS of weird things and changes on an hourly basis; and there's the influx of humanity, the tourists, who swarm through the island — yeah, like a swarm — and leave litter all over the place, but they drive the economy, so it's all good.

That's why islanders don't mind giving tourists the island "experience." Because they're robbing the tourists blind, and everybody comes away happy.

It's like sitting in a big Adirondack deck chair and just letting the world come to you, right?

Yeah, so there's this bicameral dynamic when you live on an island, there is a separate community.  There's the interaction with tourists, but it's kept separate from the actual RESIDENTS, okay.  I'm not talking about meresocial mores, I'm talking about a separate economy — islanders don't pay the same prices as tourists.  

I was fairly amazed one day when I realized I had been accepted into an island community when a cashier charged me only 79¢ for a can of Bumble Bee Tuna.  I even asked the cashier, "Is there some mistake?"  She said, "No mistake.  Island price."  The cashier raised her eyebrow, I smiled and accepted the discount.

Hey, you've gotta be LET INTO an island community.  Make no mistake, they don't want you there.  They see you as a transient, a glowing tourist, and they want your money, but they want you to leave.  I was permitted into the community and I served in it briefly.  

That, however, is another incredible story all by itself.