On a sultry, First Friday Art Walk evening in August, we met some friends at The Book Cellar to listen to some great music and to see who was out and about. As the event space for Page & Palette, The Book Cellar is becoming the go-to place for music, drink, and author events. There’s an author event this evening that I wish I could attend featuring Rinker Buck as he will tell tales of his “Huck Finn” style adventures in Life on the Mississippi. It starts at 6:00, but arrive early to get a good seat, meet friends and chat over a cool libation.

I once heard someone say, “Hurricanes are devastating, but every time one hits, we recover, and we make things better.” JR McKinny might agree. He and his wife, Barre, own It’s Tamale Time in Phenix City, Alabama. How they got there is a fascinating story.

It's so much fun to go out for drinks with girlfriends and Downtown Fairhope has many excellent places to imbibe. The newest addition to the GNO (girls' night out ) scene is The Monkey Bar on Section Street. Ellen Semple, the owner, acquired the old PNC bank building and renovated it to open Five Gold Monkeys, a boutique store specializing in fine furniture, fabric, accessories, and gifts. This is the second location of the store, the first being in Mobile.

I had never heard of Cardio Tennis until my daughter-in-law suggested it would be a good subject for a fitness article. She’s a bit of a fitness freak, so I knew there had to be something to it. Turns out it’s a real global thing. So, I checked around to find out if there were any programs in the Scenic 98 Coastal area. There are!

So, it was with the trip billed as our “Last Hoorah,” the finale in a series of adventures that began 16 years ago with a trip to Florida and the Keys and included romps through the Northeast from Niagara Falls to Maine to the Statue of Liberty, a hair-raising climb through the Rockies including Glacier National Park, Yellowstone and fishing Henry’s Fork of the Snake River, a look at the Grand Canyon and Death Valley and a hot air balloon ride over Napa Valley with a trek up the West Coast into the great Northwest to a whale watching expedition in the San Juan Straits.

In 1966, my brother did his senior architectural thesis on the redevelopment of Dauphin Street in Mobile. Fast forward fifty years and the transformation is almost complete. We caught up with Charles Morgan, owner of Chuck’s Fish, Five Mobile, and El Papi Mexican on Dauphin Street to get his thoughts on Mobile’s future. First, a little bit about Charles.