Want some golf-course alternatives? | Mann Overboard
Bill Mann
Bill Mann
What to do with all this prime terrain if we transform our golf course?
I pass the course almost every day, and even in the summer I’m surprised how few golfers there are. It doesn’t seem to be sustainable.
I’m always on the lookout for hackers whose swings are even worse than mine when I wasted far too many hours fussing over the little white pill. The nearby pool, on the other hand, is usually so busy that swimmers often share lanes.
Full disclosure: I am NOT anti-golf, but I am pro-swimming, especially since the number of swimmers far outnumber golfers here.
The city continues to collect information and 76% of respondents in its online survey support alternative uses for the golf course. Parks Director Carrie Hite says the public consultation process for the course (and pool) is underway. As of this writing, walking and hiking trails, as well as habitat restoration, are the biggest voters for alternative uses of the golf course.
This fellow citizen feels it is my duty to suggest other alternative and sustainable uses for the nine-hole course. Here are some suggestions:
• Paintball.
• Putt-putt course.
• Beer gardens.
• A croquet court.
• Convert sand traps into kitten comfort stations.
• Expand cemeteries to include, according to Trump, spouses buried on the fairways.
• Frisbee Golf!
• Clay pigeon shooting.
• Park benches with advertisements like those at bus stops, for the increase of municipal revenues.
• Archery range.
• Goat pastures.
• Fairways converted to sod (town revenue).
• A new location for the Kinetic Skulpture Race (with waterways).
• New bowling alley.
• Batting cages.
• Cornhole boards.
• Shooting location for Golf Channel merchandise testimonials
• A second local drive-in.
• Animal cemetery.
• Outdoor painting.
Painting with words: There are few funnier people in the media than former GOP strategist Rick Wilson. Wilson’s three books against Trump are hilarious, and his Lincoln Project anti-GOP videos are classics of sarcastic and effective political attack.
Wilson isn’t on TV as much as he once was. More is a pity. But if I hear he’s coming on CNN or MSNBC, I’ll tape the show immediately.
Wilson lives, of all places, in Tallahassee, next to the Riviera Redneck, from where he keeps a yellowish eye on the dismal DeSantis estate.
Here’s how Wilson recently described his nutty territory:
“I’m a fifth-generation Florida man. My people (as they say here in the Deepest of the Deep South, ironically the northernmost part of Florida) are colorful. We are Red Hills, crackers, hog farmers, shark fishers, citrus growers, and fried crackers.
“I’m such a Florida man that you might expect one day to see police helicopter footage of me running naked down a freeway median with the family alligator on one shoulder as I flee the Detonated ruins of the family compound’s meth lab trailer, chased by my fourth common-law wife, who also happens to be a first cousin, my parole officer, and a Santeria priestess.
Wilson laments and identifies the Sunshine State’s growing MAGA population:
“Steve Bannon is plotting a world revolution (and hiding from the law) in Sarasota. Don Jr., Kimberly Guilfoyle and their independent pharmaceutical representative Skeeter have moved to Jupiter. Newt Gingrich is in Naples. Rudy has a place in Palm Beach. Former Met Gala non-attendees Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump build a post-modern stack in Miami. Tucker Carlson lives and often broadcasts from his home near Gasparilla. Mike Flynn is close to Florida’s center of conspiracy culture in the Tampa area, as is MAGA plagiarist and con artist Benny Johnson. This list goes on and on…”
It really makes you want to move there, doesn’t it?
“Finally, as the locals say at this time of year, it’s time to get out of the dodging. We’re heading to our former, warmer home territory of Sonoma County in Northern California’s wine country. I will report. I could spend February in worse ways than swimming outside in a heated pool.
(Bill Mann can still be reached at [email protected])