Good morning from The Seawall. The pelicans worked the weekend and expect no credit for it.
April arrived sometime between Saturday afternoon and Monday morning, and the Back Bay smelled like a warm crab trap by noon. The Biloxi Shuckers are home for six straight at Keesler Federal Park. A coffee-and-tea room opened on Groveland Road in Ocean Springs without a press release. Friday night, a minor league baseball team will walk onto a Biloxi field wearing the jerseys of the Biloxi Dodgers — the Southern Negro League team that played this Coast from 1936 to 1986.
It's that kind of week. Not loud. Good.
Here's the short read
photo by Craig Smith
Coast Forecast
Day 1 — Tue Apr 21 — Mostly sunny across the Coast
Jackson County (Pascagoula) — High 77 | Low 63 | Rain 0% | Wind E 5–10 mph
Harrison County (Gulfport) — High 77 | Low 66 | Rain 0% | Wind E 5–15 mph
Hancock County (Bay St. Louis) — High 76 | Low 69 | Rain 0% | Wind E 10–15 mph
Day 2 — Wed Apr 22 — Partly sunny, light SE winds
Jackson County — High 77 | Low 63 | Rain 0% | Wind SE 5–10 mph
Harrison County — High 77 | Low 66 | Rain 0% | Wind SE 5–15 mph
Hancock County — High 76 | Low 68 | Rain 0% | Wind SE 10–15 mph
Day 3 — Thu Apr 23 — Sunny and mild
Jackson County — High 77 | Low 65 | Rain 0% | Wind SE 5–10 mph
Harrison County — High 77 | Low 68 | Rain 0% | Wind SE 5–15 mph
Hancock County — High 76 | Low 70 | Rain 0% | Wind SE 10–15 mph
Bottom line: Three warm days in the mid-70s, light southeast winds, no rain to plan around.
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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.
Business Spotlight: Lisa Shackelford, Gulf Coast Jiu Jitsu
Lisa Shackelford didn't want to open a gym.
She says this plainly, without hedging. She was teaching kids classes at another gym in Biloxi — showing up, doing the work, going home. That was the deal. No vision board, no business plan, no interest in running her own place.
Then the gym that was paying her decided to close its kids program. She got the news on a Friday. The next kids class was Monday.
Some of the students had been preparing for tournaments. One was a kid on the autism spectrum who had built trust with her slowly. There wasn't another gym on the Coast that would give him the one-on-one he needed. She wasn't going to hand him off.
So over the weekend she called everyone she could think of. Anywhere with floor space and a willingness to listen. The last call on the list was to Doug Sellers, who owned Ironworks Gym out on Eisenhower Drive. She called him last because she figured a dedicated weightlifting gym would be the last place with room to spare.
Sellers said come over and let's work something out.
She laid puzzle mats on the floor upstairs. That was Gulf Coast Jiu Jitsu, day one.
She built the thing slowly, the way you have to. Stayed small, kept the kids training, added adult classes, grew the room. She'll tell you, honestly, that running a gym isn't a clean business. It's mats and parents and schedules and injuries and the regular work of keeping a room alive. She'll also tell you she wouldn't go back.
How she got on the mat in the first place is worth a minute of its own.
Shackelford is a Navy veteran. She and her husband — also a vet, now retired — ended up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast via Naval Station Pascagoula after years stationed in San Diego. The Coast was a landing, not a destination.
In May 2016 — she remembers the month because it was a week before her 44th birthday — she had an encounter at a gas station in broad daylight. A man trying to get her to come over to his vehicle to pump gas for him. Nothing happened. But it didn't matter. The thing planted.
"People will do things in broad daylight," she says. "Just because you're in a public place during the daytime doesn't make you safe."
She called around for self-defense and ended up at Professor Erick Raposo's gym.
"I loved it the first day. I was hooked."
Ten years later she wears a black belt she earned the way everyone earns one — by showing up on the days she didn't want to. She will tell you there were a lot of those. She will also tell you that once she understood what jiu-jitsu was actually doing to her, the math changed.
"The mats never lie," she says. This is one of her lines. It means jiu-jitsu shows you things about yourself you were trying not to notice.
The gym she built is not a competitor mill. She has competitors, and good ones. But that's not the pitch.
The pitch is that everyone gets the same treatment. The four-year-olds in the kids program. Randi, the 69-year-old woman training for the World Masters in Vegas next year. The Keesler airman who walks in for a month and leaves for a deployment. The Harrison County sheriff's deputy picking up defensive tactics. Same room, same floor, same attention.
Shackelford credits a lot of the room's vibe to Raposo.
"It's not, 'Oh, you're the new person, let's just beat you up,'" she says. "It's, 'You're the new person — we're going to help you get better, because the better you get, you're going to make us better.'"
She's also a female black belt running a combat-sports gym on the Coast, which puts her in rare company. She is careful with that framing. She says the men training with her are "absolutely phenomenal, respectful, supportive." She notices the things a woman running a room would notice, and she sets the tone for them. That's the whole thing.
Beyond the gym she's taught defensive tactics at the Harrison County police academy, run women's self-defense classes out at Keesler, and served as the Southeastern ambassador for We Defy, the nonprofit that sponsors combat veterans through jiu-jitsu.
She's also moving. The new standalone Gulf Coast Jiu Jitsu — same building as Edgewater Cleaners on Pass Road — opens the first or second week of May.
If you're reading this and thinking about trying jiu-jitsu but finding reasons not to — an old injury, too busy, too old, not in shape enough — Shackelford has one ask.
"Just six months."
Not a year. Not forever. Six.
"Because everybody's worth committing six months to improve their own lives."
Gulf Coast Jiu Jitsu
220 Eisenhower Dr, Suite C, Biloxi, MS (moving to Pass Road, early May 2026)
What's Happening on the Coast
This is the midweek look-ahead. Friday's issue handles the full weekend.
Jackson County
Sister Hazel — Fri Apr 24, 7 PM (doors 6), Mary C. O'Keefe Cultural Arts Center, Ocean Springs. Sister Hazel in a four-hundred-seat room is a strange and good thing. The Mary C. is not a theater. It's a former high school that became a civic art center. Produced by Grand Mag Music. Go for the math of the venue as much as the band.
Ocean Springs Fresh Market — Sat Apr 25 9 AM–1 PM, L&N Depot Plaza (every Saturday, MS-certified producer-only)
Harrison County
Bike Biloxi — Tue Apr 21, 6 PM, Biloxi Visitors Center (1050 Beach Blvd). Monthly 3rd-Tuesday social ride through downtown. Ends at a downtown restaurant at the cyclists' expense, which is the part of the pitch that made me smile.
Biloxi Shuckers home stand — Apr 21–26, Keesler Federal Park. Six nights vs. the Rocket City Trash Pandas (the Angels' Double-A affiliate). First pitch tonight 6:05. Biloxi Dodgers Night on Friday (Southern Negro League tribute, 1936–1986; game at 6:35). Biloxi Mudbugs alternate-identity debut Saturday with a Hawaiian-shirt giveaway for the first 1,000 fans, presented by Conecuh Sausage.
Chandyfest — Sat Apr 25, 11 AM–9 PM, Downtown Gulfport. 11th annual, hosted by Chandeleur Island Brewing Co. Crawfish cookoff, live music, Redfish Rodeo, new beer releases. The kind of daylong event where nobody's checking their watch.
Hancock County
Sunset Beach Yoga — Wed Apr 23, 5:30–7 PM, Washington Street Pier Beach, Bay St. Louis. Waterfront class, gentle stretching and mindful breathing. $10–20 donation.
Spring Into Stained Glass — Fri Apr 24, 11 AM–4 PM, The Arts Hancock County (405 Blaize Ave, BSL). One-day workshop, cutting through soldering, 18-inch garden stake at the end of it. $100 members / $110 non-members.
Hancock County Library Fan Fest — Sun Apr 26, 10 AM–5 PM, Bay St. Louis Community Hall (301 Blaize Ave). Free. Comics, cosplay, tabletop gaming, presentations. The kind of library programming most towns don't think to do.
This is the midweek look-ahead. Thursday’s issue handles the full weekend.
If you’ve got something happening in Jackson, Harrison, or Hancock that should be on the radar next week, send it over. The goal is to make this sharper every issue.
Bike Biloxi
PET ADOPTION OF THE WEEK
We’re keeping this section in the mix for a reason.
There are good dogs and cats sitting in shelters across the Coast right now that deserve more visibility than they usually get, and if this newsletter can help put even a little more attention on one of them every week, that’s worth doing.
This week’s pick:
Every Tuesday we'll feature a pet up for adoption on the Coast. This week's isn't ready to go home yet — she needs a foster first.
Fajita — 10 days old, female, grey domestic shorthair. Needs a foster before she's ready for a forever home. Humane Society of South Mississippi.
If you’ve been thinking about bringing home a dog or cat, this might be your sign.
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.
This week’s Low Tide Laughs goes right in that lane: The Gulf Coast has no shortage of establishments happy to serve you whatever was swimming around this morning. Frank is just now putting that together.
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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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That’s it for this one.
The Coast doesn’t need more noise. It needs better signal.
That’s the lane.
— Rob
The Seawall