It's Memorial Day weekend. The Coast has three different ways to spend it.

Good morning from The Seawall. It's Memorial Day weekend on the Coast — and there are three different ways to spend it.

One has fried shrimp. The St. Clare Seafood Festival rolls into its 70-something-th year on the lawn at the St. Clare Catholic Church in Waveland — three days of boiled crab, the 12th Annual Car Show Saturday morning, a Jeepin' by the Beach Bash on Sunday, and a music slate that closes with Foret Tradition Sunday night. Free to walk in. Bring cash and a folding chair.

One has an artist on his way out. "Surreal South of Ke Francis" — the Tupelo-born printmaker's southern-gothic fever dream of hand-bound books, engravings, and painted screens — closes Sunday at the Walter Anderson Museum in Ocean Springs. Final reasonable weekend. Pair it with Saturday's Fresh Market three blocks away.

One has a 1,350-seat room with the lights on for the first time in years. The Happy Together Tour 2026 opens Saturday night at IP Casino's Studio A — The Association headlining, with The Troggs, Gary Puckett, Ron Dante, The Vogues, The Cowsills, and Jason Scheff (ex-Chicago) splitting the night. The 17-year tour is kicking itself off in a Biloxi venue that's been dark for years. Studio A is back.

The forecast wants in on the party too — partly sunny but wet, with real afternoon storm chances all three days (Friday's the soggiest). Memorial Day weekend on the Gulf Coast doesn't usually come dry. Pack the poncho, aim the outdoor stuff at Saturday's window, and drive between scenes. Here's everything happening.

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If last week was about introducing ourselves, this week is more about getting into rhythm.

And the rhythm right now looks pretty Coast-like: a little activity, a little local color, and a few reasons to leave the house before the weekend gets away from you.

On the lawn at St. Clare Catholic Church, 236 S. Beach Blvd. Free entry. Three nights:

IP Studio A has the Saturday Happy Together marquee (above). Otherwise Casino Row mostly does free lounge stages this weekend:

Friday 5/22

Saturday 5/23

Sunday 5/24

Editorial pick — Saturday night in Ocean Springs. Three name acts within walking distance on/near Government Street: Cary Hudson at Murky Waters · Funkhouse Fever Trio at Government Street Grocery · Kody Harrell at The Shed. If you're picking one zip code this weekend, that's it.

Most Coast small venues post to Facebook only — call or check FB the day-of for: 200 North Beach BSL Lounge (Thu+Fri standing) · Cuz's Old Town Oyster Bar (BSL) · The Blind Tiger (BSL) · Dan B. Murphy's (BSL) — Mon 5/25 Memorial Day teaser: Shane Mendel & Zac Slade 2–5 PM · Knock Knock Tavern (Waveland) karaoke Wed/Fri/Sat · Mosaic Tapas (Ocean Springs) live music 7 nights · The Juke Joint (Ocean Springs) Sunday open jam · Lost Spring Brewing (Ocean Springs) · Bozo's 2.5 + Celtic Irish Pub (Pascagoula) · The Tiki Bar & Grill + The Lagoon (Gautier) · Shaggy's Biloxi Beach + Pass Harbor · The Reef Sky Bar (Biloxi) — call 228-206-7075.

Know a show we missed? Reply and tell us — we'll add it next week.

Venue owners: Email your weekly lineup to [email protected] by Wednesday noon for Thursday's issue. No charge.

Friday 5/22 — Showers and thunderstorms, turning partly sunny. High 83°F · South wind 5–15 mph. Wettest (~90%).

Saturday 5/23 — Showers and thunderstorms likely, partly sunny. High 84°F · South wind 5–10 mph.

Sunday 5/24 — Rain likely, mostly cloudy. High 83°F · Southeast wind 5–15 mph.

Bottom line: Memorial Day weekend on the Gulf Coast is doing what it does — low-to-mid 80s, light south wind, and storms that come fast and leave fast. It's a wet one across the board, with Friday the soggiest. If you're picking one outdoor day, Saturday is your best window — warmest, partly sunny, lowest rain chance. Pack the poncho regardless.

This week's rates (Freddie Mac PMMS, week ending May 14, 2026):

The 30-year ticked down a single basis point last week — first weekly print that didn't go up since late April. With hurricane season starting June 1, the more interesting number on the Coast is still your wind/hail binding window (more below).

$650,000 · 2 BR / 2 BA · ~1,660 sqft · c. 1930 · Old Town historic district

There's a block of Keller Street in Old Town Bay St. Louis that does the quiet thing better than almost anywhere on the Coast — a block and a half off the seawall, a short walk to the Depot District, far enough off the main drag that you hear the porch fan before you hear the traffic.

211 Keller is the restored cottage on it. Wrap-around porch, cypress French doors, thirteen-foot ceilings, original hardwood floors, and the big pocket doors that tell you the place was built before air conditioning decided how rooms should connect. The galley kitchen runs to butcher block and reclaimed wood under a vaulted ceiling; both bedrooms are true en-suites. New wiring and plumbing under a genuinely old shell — the part that usually scares buyers off a historic home, already handled.

The street itself is on the National Register — Keller is part of the Old Town district mapped in 1977 — so the house comes with a paper trail and a neighborhood legally committed to staying the way it looks. One story, gable roof, a polygonal bay on the side, paired porch columns on rusticated piers. The kind of place that photographs like a postcard and lives like a Sunday.

Listed at $650,000 by Estus Kea, John McDonald Realty (228-467-5500). MLS 4139626.

Listing

Reader-submitted, lightly edited:

Short answer: probably missing the wind coverage. Three Mississippi coastal counties — Hancock, Harrison, and Jackson — sit in the state's designated wind pool, and on most standard homeowners policies written for properties in those counties, wind and hail damage is excluded. That's why a separate wind/hail policy exists, written either through your carrier as an endorsement or — for properties carriers won't bind — through the Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association (MWUA), the state's wind-pool of last resort.

So if a named storm peels half your roof off this fall, you'd file three potentially separate claims: wind (the roof), flood (the water that came inside through the now-roofless attic), and homeowners (anything else). Most Coast carriers stop binding new wind policies 5 to 10 days before a named storm enters the Gulf — so the practical move this week, ahead of June 1, is to pull your declarations page, find the "Wind/Hail" line, and confirm it says you have coverage (not "Excluded" or "Form HO-3 only"). If it's excluded and unbound, call your agent today, not next week.

Got a Coast real-estate question? Reply to this email — we'll answer one a week.

For more than two decades, the Ocean Springs Art Association ran a working artist cooperative on Cash Alley downtown. The Art House was a low-key Ocean Springs ritual — members rotated as volunteer sales clerks, the work was original, and the gallery felt like the front porch of the local art scene. Rising rent priced them out in late 2025. The doors closed in December.

Then St. John's Episcopal Church walked across the street with a key.

On May 7, OSAA announced it will reopen The Art House inside the church's Ruddiman Building, next door to the sanctuary, with a target of early fall 2026. "We're so excited that St. John's has offered us this place," Art House Co-Chair Kathy Tosch told WLOX. "It's going to be a great collaboration between the church and the city and the community."

The bench is deep. OSAA President Barbi Beatty says 42 volunteer artists are already signed up to staff the new gallery. The next hurdles — exterior paint and an ADA-compliant ramp — go before Ocean Springs' Historic Preservation Committee.

Want in? Membership and volunteer signup at oceanspringsartassociation.org/join-today. Donations are tax-deductible (501c3, EIN 23-7410478).

Tibbs · 3yo male purebred German Shepherd · neutered, shots current · JCAS Pet ID S2026297 · $50 adoption fee.

A three-year-old purebred German Shepherd at a county shelter is the kind of thing you read twice. They don't tend to end up here — German Shepherds rotate through breed-specific rescues, working-line trainers, suburban families that planned for them. They do not, as a rule, sit in kennels on Audubon Lane.

Tibbs is here. Past the puppy stage, past the gangly-adolescent stage, fully grown into the dog he's going to be — the kind that knows the sound of his name, knows where his food bowl lives, and is one car ride away from a porch. The staff has him as not great with cats — a sensible-honest disclosure that should narrow the right home, not eliminate it.

If you've ever told yourself you'd take a Shepherd if one ever showed up — one showed up.

🐾 Meet Tibbs at JCAS, 4400 Audubon Lane, Gautier · (228) 497-6350 · Mon–Fri 11–5, Sat 11–3 · ask for S2026297

LOW TIDE LAUGHS

A Coast newsletter should probably make room for at least one thing that doesn’t ask anything from you except a smirk.

So we are.

Jeeps. Fried shrimp. A 1960s band. A casino. Sometimes the weekend just comes to you. This week's Low Tide Laughs finds the one local who had this figured out.

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A FEW LOCAL LINKS WORTH KEEPING HANDY

If you want to go deeper by county, keep these local sites handy:

Jackson County MS
https://www.jacksoncountyms.com

Harrison County MS
https://www.harrisoncountyms.com

Hancock County MS
https://www.hancockcountyms.com

That’s part of the larger idea here too. The Seawall shouldn’t just point at itself. It should help connect people to the broader local web that already exists across the Coast.

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Cornerstone Numismatics works with collectors and buyers looking for coins, currency, bullion, and real numismatic expertise. If you want trusted guidance in the coin world, this is a name worth knowing.

See you Tuesday morning. Happy Memorial Day from The Seawall.

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Rob
The Seawall