The TikTok table just opened a door in downtown Gulfport.

Good morning from The Seawall.

Two weeks ago we put a coming-soon list at the bottom of this issue. Today, two items on it walked off it.

Neighbors Tap & Table opened its doors on 25th Avenue in downtown Gulfport on Friday, May 16 — the brick-and-mortar version of "Your Barefoot Neighbor," the table that Matthew Bounds has been setting on TikTok for 2.4 million followers, now serving small plates and cocktails in the old Downtown Bistro space.

Chicago 6ix Street Food quietly moved out of Crave Food Hall this month and opened the door of its own building at 1224 Bienville Boulevard in Ocean Springs — the old Kenny Ward's space, two blocks east of the Burger Bar we spotlighted last issue. Same Crave-graduate playbook. Two blocks down the same street.

And three weeks from today — June 6 — the Biloxi Saenger Theatre turns its lights on for the first time since 2018. A homecoming concert is on the schedule. A volunteer crew was inside the building Saturday with brooms and polishing cloths getting her ready.

We have a forecast worth being outside for, a mortgage market that finally took a breath, and a historic Biloxi beachfront house that quietly went on the market two summers ago and is still waiting for the right buyer. Let's go.

Tuesday: High around 83, mostly cloudy giving way to sunny. Southeast wind around 10 mph. Low near 74.

Wednesday: High around 83, mostly sunny. South wind 5–10 mph. Low near 73.

Thursday: High around 83, mostly sunny. 20% chance of showers and thunderstorms after 1 PM. Light east wind becoming south 5–10 mph. Low near 75.

No marine or rip-current advisories. Three days of low-80s Coast sun with a Thursday-afternoon storm chance to keep you honest. The humidity climbs by Thursday — that 75° low tells you a lot.

SPONSOR

SudsyCo Rentals makes washer and dryer rentals easy on the Coast — simple monthly pricing, quick delivery, and no giant upfront appliance bill. If you need a washer, a dryer, or both, this is the easiest way to get set up without the usual hassle.

Mississippi is dead last in the country for craft breweries. Tyler Kidd looked at that number, looked at an empty storefront on Scenic Drive with the harbor stretching out past the window, and decided the Pass might be the place to start moving up the list.

He pulled in Jimmy Sumpter — a master brewer with fifteen-plus years on the rig and a "brew of the year" award from his last stint at a Birmingham brewery — and convinced him to relocate to the Mississippi coast. They opened the doors of 9 Toes Brewing Company at 110 West Scenic Drive on April 3, the night before a Friday-morning ribbon cutting. Six house pours, an 18-barrel system humming in the back, twenty-plus beers in the rotation by late summer — hazy IPAs, fruit sours, pilsners, seltzers — plus cocktails and zero-proof options for the designated driver.

But the beer is only half the pitch.

The room is the other half. Two golf simulator bays (named the Caddy Shack and the Happy Gilmore, because of course). Old-school arcade games. Pretzels and nachos at the bar. A fenced front yard with a playground for the kids. A back patio where the dogs can romp. It's the kind of place you can drop in after church, after a charter, after Little League — your toddler is working a slide while you're working through a flight.

"Pass Christian needed a brewery," bar lead Christina Cuevas told WLOX at the ribbon. "This is the one thing this town has been missing."

Even the competition's rooting for them. Jack Bourgeois at Key City Brewing told the Gazebo Gazette he's eager to collaborate. That's the Mississippi craft scene in a sentence: small, scrappy, and very much pulling for each other.

Where: 110 West Scenic Drive, Pass Christian.

Why we picked them: A clean Gulf Coast bet on a category Mississippi is underweight. Family-friendly, dog-friendly, brewer-friendly. Worth driving for.

Jackson — Citizens for Space Exploration D.C. Fly-in briefing. Tue 5/19, 5–7 PM. AC Hotel, Ocean Springs. Free to attend the briefing. Ocean Springs is one of the few Mississippi communities that sends a delegation to D.C. each year to lobby Congress on NASA and Stennis. If you've ever wondered how a couple thousand jobs at Stennis stay funded, this room is part of the answer.

Harrison — Biloxi Shuckers vs. Birmingham Barons. Tue 5/19 + Wed 5/20, first pitch 6:35 PM. Keesler Federal Park, 105 Caillavet St., Biloxi. Tickets from ~$10. Mid-week home stand against a divisional rival, two nights to pick from. Tuesday is typically a promo night — check biloxishuckers.com for what's running this week.

Hancock — Nir Eyal virtual author talk: "Beyond Belief." Tue 5/19, 1–2 PM. Virtual, hosted by the Hancock County Library System. Free. Eyal — author of Hooked and Indistractable — is a serious name in the productivity / attention-economy world, and he's giving an hour of his time to anyone with an HCLS library card. Quietly the best free thing happening on the Coast Tuesday afternoon.

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.

The Biloxi Saenger Theatre opened on Reynoir Street in 1929 — billed as the Gem of the Gulf Coast, built to show off the new miracle of talking pictures. For nearly a century she hosted operas, magicians, rock acts, and most every Biloxi kid who ever begged a parent for a movie night downtown. Then in 2018 the city shut her down. Cracked fly tower. Moisture in the bricks. The roof was done.

She reopens June 6.

On Saturday — yesterday morning — a crew of volunteers from Encore Saenger, the local nonprofit that won the management contract back in February, spent the day inside the building with brooms, vacuums, and polishing cloths, getting the old girl camera-ready. "This place holds so much significance for so many people," Encore Saenger's Boyce Deaton told WLOX. "The passion they have for this place — they want to raise it up."

Opening night is a show called Homecoming, which sounds about right. If you've got memories tied to that lobby — a first date, a first concert, a grandparent who took you to see Disney on Ice — the Saenger wants you back through her doors.

Tickets and event calendar at biloxisaenger.com.

Know someone making a difference on the Coast? Send them our way.

Freddie Mac PMMS — week ending May 14:

After two weeks of drift higher, the 30-year tipped down a single basis point. Not a swing — barely a breath. But it's the first weekly print that didn't go up since late April, and a year-over-year still 45 basis points cheaper than this time last spring. With hurricane season starting June 1, the more interesting number on the Coast is still your wind/hail binding window — most coastal carriers stop binding new policies 5 to 10 days before a named storm enters the Gulf. If you're closing in May or early June, this is the week to confirm your carrier is bound before the season ramps.

$1,135,000 · 4 bed / 3 bath · 2,582 sq ft · circa 1875 · 0.85 acres across 3 parcels

There aren't a lot of pre-1900 houses left on Beach Boulevard. Camille got most of them. Katrina got most of the rest — including the great Tullis-Toledano Manor a few blocks east, which the storm took off its piers in August 2005 and never gave back.

1096 Beach Boulevard never took water.

It is, in a literal sense, a survivor — a tall-columned Neoclassical raised cottage built in 1875 that sits on the high side of Beach Boulevard, backed directly onto Biloxi Lighthouse Park with the Lighthouse itself rising beyond. Elevation and luck, in that order, are why it's still standing.

Inside, the bones are intact in a way you almost never find on a coast that has been hit, rebuilt, hit, and rebuilt again. The original wooden staircase rises through period moldings. Stained glass throws color onto plaster walls. A hand-painted mural in one of the bedrooms reads as the kind of work a Gilded Age family commissioned and modern owners chose to preserve rather than paint over. Four bedrooms, three baths, 2,582 square feet — modest for the lot, but the lot is the story too: 0.85 acres across three parcels, deeded back when this stretch of Beach Boulevard was a row of summer homes for New Orleans cotton merchants.

And the zoning is the kicker. The parcel sits in Community Business today — meaning the next steward can keep it as a single-family residence (Gulf views, walk to the Lighthouse, golf-cart distance to the Beau Rivage), or convert it into a boutique hotel, B&B, restaurant, wedding venue, or museum without a re-zone.

It's been on the market about twenty-two months. Long days-on-market on a property like this isn't a problem statement — it's an invitation. The right buyer hasn't walked in yet.

Why we picked it: A Coast house that argues with the past tense. Listed with Lynn O'Keefe, MLS 4085554.

Reader-submitted, lightly edited:

Short answer: buy it now if you don't have it. The federal National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) has a 30-day waiting period between purchase and the policy taking effect. That means a policy bought on June 1 won't actually cover a storm that lands before July 1. There are narrow exceptions — flood insurance bought in connection with a mortgage closing, and certain policy renewals — but for an existing homeowner deciding to add a standalone flood policy, that 30-day clock is unforgiving. The fix is unfun and simple: don't wait. Call your insurance agent this week.

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

Meet Kevin — a five-year-old standard poodle at the Humane Society of South Mississippi who is, by Coast shelter standards, an unusual sight. Standard poodles are smart, loyal, and almost never end up at municipal shelters. Kevin did, and now he's waiting on a person who knows what a five-year-old poodle is actually worth.

Past the puppy stage, past the chew-everything stage, smart enough to learn what you ask and loyal enough to ask it twice. The kind of dog you bring to the porch and watch settle in like he's been there all along.

Humane Society of South Mississippi

2615 25th Ave, Gulfport · (228) 863-3354 · hssm.org

Tue–Fri 10–5, Sat 10–4

Full adoptable list: hssm.org/adoptable-pets

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.

The 1875 Beach Boulevard ghost walk is back this season. This week's Low Tide Laughs visits one of the houses on the tour, where, as it happens, something unexpected has also arrived.

SPONSOR

MapPulse Agency helps local businesses get found where it counts — Google, maps, search, reviews, and websites that actually help bring in customers. If your business needs stronger local visibility, they know the terrain.

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.

SPONSOR

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.

That's two openings, three weeks until the Saenger lights, and the cleanest forecast we've had since April. See you Thursday with the weekend slate.

— Rob
The Seawall