Twenty-Five Years, and a Coast That Shows Up

Good Thursday morning from The Seawall.

Tomorrow is September 11. It is the twenty-fifth one.

Twenty-five years is a strange distance. It is long enough that a whole generation of people on this coast have no memory of it at all — they know it the way we know Pearl Harbor, as something that happened to their parents. And it is short enough that plenty of others don't need a calendar to remember exactly where they were standing and what the light looked like.

This coast answers it the way this coast answers things. Not with a speech. On Saturday afternoon, several hundred people will run three miles through Biloxi and then climb a casino tower — the Tunnel to Towers 5K, named for a firefighter who ran through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel with sixty pounds of gear on his back because the traffic was stopped and the towers were burning. And on Saturday morning, volunteers will stand in Biloxi National Cemetery with brushes and buckets and clean headstones. Anybody can do either one. Neither costs anything but a morning.

Friday night there's a gathering in Gulfport for first responders and their families, with a blessing at 5:30 and music at 7.

The rest of the weekend is quieter than last week's, and that's fine. The ballpark is dark — though not for the reason you'd think, and we'll get to that. There's a free concert on the river in Moss Point, a Louisiana fiddler in the blues room in Biloxi, Old Town Bay St. Louis doing its Second Saturday, and a beach in Ocean Springs filling up with catamarans from eleven countries, because an international championship is about to start on the Mississippi Sound.

One planning note, and it's a real one: it rains all three days. Friday and Saturday both run seventy percent, Sunday fifty. There is no dry day to schedule around this weekend — only a wetter one and a less wet one.

Plus a Long Beach house that nearly doubled in five years and just came down forty-nine thousand dollars, and a two-year-old dog with two different-colored eyes who has been waiting since January.

A word on the ballpark before the guide, because it's good news dressed as bad. Keesler Federal Park is dark this weekend — but the Shuckers made the playoffs. Southern League Division Series, and they're home Thursday the 17th. The season isn't over. It just took a week off.

Friday: Mostly sunny, with showers and a possible thunderstorm. High near 87. 70% chance of rain. Southwest wind 5 to 10. Low around 77.

Saturday: Showers likely, possibly a thunderstorm, mostly sunny in between. High near 87. 70%. Southwest wind 5 to 10. Low around 77.

Sunday: The hottest of the three, high near 88 — and the driest. A 50% chance of showers and storms, spread evenly across the day rather than stacked into the afternoon. Low around 77.

There is no dry day in this weekend, but there is a best one. Friday and Saturday both sit at seventy percent, and Friday matters most because it's the night of the first-responder gathering in Gulfport. Sunday is the driest of the three at fifty, and the only day that doesn't bunch its rain into one part of the afternoon. Rain here in September isn't a washout — it's a forty-minute wall of water that arrives and leaves. But it is persistent enough this weekend that every outdoor plan wants a roof nearby.

Heat index runs above 100 most afternoons. That's not dangerous by Mississippi-in-September standards, but the Tunnel to Towers climb starts at three in the afternoon, which is the hottest hour of the day, and anybody doing it should be drinking water at nine that morning, not at 2:55.

In the tropics: nothing. No active systems anywhere in the Atlantic and the Hurricane Center expects nothing to form for seven days. In the second week of September, in peak season, that is close to a gift.

🏃 Tunnel to Towers 5K Run · Walk · Climb · Margaritaville Resort, 165 Beach Blvd, Biloxi · Sat Sept 12, 3 PM
Three miles, then the tower. The foundation is named for Stephen Siller, a Brooklyn firefighter who had finished his shift and was on his way to play golf with his brothers when the first plane hit. He drove back, found the tunnel closed, strapped on his gear and ran through it on foot. He did not come back out. Registration is through the foundation — they don't publish a price on the event page, so start there rather than guessing.

🕯 Honoring Our Heroes · St. Joseph Hospice, 1210 Broad Ave, Gulfport · Fri Sept 11 · blessing 5:30 PM, speakers 6, music 7
For first responders and their families, and for anybody who wants to stand with them.

🧼 Gravestone Cleaning Day · Biloxi National Cemetery · Sat Sept 12, 10 AM–1 PM (arrive about 9:30)
Part of Carry The Load's national cleaning day, running at more than 140 veterans' cemeteries the same morning. Volunteers of all ages, brushes provided, no experience needed. Bring water — see the forecast.

There are also observances at the Seabee Base in Gulfport, a stair climb and a ceremony, but they are base access only and not open to the public. We're mentioning them so you know they're happening, not so you drive out there.

We looked for a public ceremony in Jackson or Hancock County and could not find one on the calendar. That doesn't mean nothing is happening — it means nobody posted it. If your town has something Friday, send it to us and we'll run it.

⚾ Keesler Federal Park is dark — and the Shuckers are in the playoffs.
The regular season ended Sunday the 6th. Biloxi is into the Southern League Division Series, with home games starting Thursday Sept 17, Friday the 18th if necessary, and a championship game Sunday the 20th if they get that far. Nothing this weekend. Tickets are on sale now.

🥬 The Pass Market · War Memorial Park, Fleitas Ave, Pass Christian · Sat 9 AM–1 PM
Twenty years old as of last Saturday — it started the year after Katrina and hasn't missed many since.

⛴ Ship Island · Gulfport Small Craft Harbor at Jones Park · $48 adult
Saturday and Sunday, boats out at 9 and noon, back at 2:30 and 5. There is nowhere to hide out there, so check the radar before you commit — Saturday runs seventy percent, Sunday fifty. Sunday is the better bet of the two.

🐠 Mississippi Aquarium · 2100 E Beach Blvd, Gulfport
Indoors, which this weekend matters more than usual.

🎨 Second Saturday · Old Town & the Depot District, Bay St. Louis · Sat Sept 12
Worth knowing the format changed: this is no longer one centralized art walk running a fixed four-to-seven. Each shop and gallery now sets its own hours and its own specials for the day. A good Saturday to wander Old Town — just don't show up at 6:45 expecting one coordinated event.

🥕 Hancock County Farmers Market · 3068 Longfellow Rd, Bay St. Louis · Sat 8 AM–noon, or until the vendors sell out

📖 The Writing Room · 100 Men Hall, 303 Union St, Bay St. Louis · Sat 10 AM–1 PM · free
A recurring second-Saturday session at the Hall. Otherwise the Hall is quiet this weekend; Booker Fest was last weekend.

⛵ Hobie 16 International Championship · Ocean Springs Yacht Club, 100 Front Beach Dr, Ocean Springs · opens Sat Sept 12, runs through Sept 25

The biggest thing to happen on this water in a long time, and it starts this weekend. This championship has been sailed in Spain, China, Australia, Fiji, Tahiti, the UAE and St. Croix. This year it is Ocean Springs. Sailors from at least eleven countries — Greece, South Africa, Mexico, Peru, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Guatemala, Denmark, Canada and the United States — are bringing their own boats to the Mississippi Sound.

Be clear on the schedule before you drive over: this weekend is arrival, measurement and rigging, not racing. The Masters, Women and Youth series starts Monday the 14th and runs through the 17th. The Horn Island Raid is Friday the 18th. The Open finals are the 23rd through the 25th. But a beach full of rigged catamarans on Front Beach Drive is its own thing to go look at, and that is what Saturday and Sunday are. Here is the ninety-second preview.

⭐ Levitt AMP Moss Point: Nik Parr & The Selfless Lovers · Riverfront Park, 5200 Main St, Moss Point · Sat Sept 12, 5–9 PM · free, all ages
The free Saturday series on the Escatawpa, and this is the one we told you about two weeks ago. Bring a chair. Four hours, no ticket, and the River City Guitar sculpture is right there.

🥬 Ocean Springs Fresh Market · L&N Depot Plaza · Sat 9 AM–1 PM, rain or shine

Amanda Shaw & The Cute Guys · Ground Zero Blues Club, 814 Howard Ave, Biloxi · Sat Sept 12, 7 PM (doors 5) · from $22.35
The best ticket on the Coast this weekend and it's under twenty-five dollars. Shaw is a Louisiana fiddler who has been doing this since she was a child and plays like the roof is optional.

Tyron Benoit Band · Ground Zero · Fri Sept 11, 7 PM (doors 5) · from $22.35
South Louisiana swamp-blues.

Zach Bellas · Government Street Grocery, 1210 Government St, Ocean Springs · Sat Sept 12
The one independent room on the Coast with a confirmed act this weekend.

Thursday, tonight: Live Band Karaoke with The Four D'Oeuvres, 7–10, no cover. · Friday: Tyron Benoit Band, 7 PM, then Fuego Latin Night — bachata class 10, social 10:45 to 1, $5 before 10 / $10 after 11. · Saturday: brunch with Chris Nash, 11–2, then Amanda Shaw, 7 PM. · Sunday: brunch with Drew Fulton, 11–2. Bottomless mimosas $14 with an entrée.

A reader wrote in last week asking why we never run Shaggy's or Nine Toes in Pass Christian. Fair question, and here's the honest answer: we went looking. Shaggy's own site says live music every day and then lists nothing — its September calendar reads "No Events." Nine Toes has no events page at all. Neither publishes a lineup anybody can check. So if you're reading this from either of those rooms: send us your dates and we will run them, free, every week. That goes for any venue between Waveland and Pascagoula. [email protected], Tuesday noon.

Silver Slipper, Bay St. Louis — Stacy Weaver Band Friday, Black Velvet Saturday, both 7–11 in the Stage Bar · and Christopher Anderson, Sunday 1–3 at the Beach Bar, the only afternoon music on the board.
Boomtown, Biloxi — Hip Pocket, Friday and Saturday, 7–11.
Island View, Gulfport — Lisa Lee Albritton, Friday and Saturday, 7–10.
Beach View, Gulfport — New Direction, Friday and Saturday, 8–11.
Hard Rock, Biloxi — DJ Doc Roc Friday 9 · DJ Boom and Sugar Cube Saturday 9 · karaoke with MC Angie in Roadhouse 777 Saturday 9 to 1, no cover.

Beau Rivage Theatre (Melissa Etheridge, Sept 19). Hard Rock Live (Jeff Foxworthy, Sept 18). The Biloxi Saenger (Zach Rushing, Oct 23–24). The Coast Coliseum. The Sound in Gautier (Jamey Johnson, Oct 2). iMPAC (Morgan Freeman, Oct 17). IP Studio A, Golden Nugget and Treasure Bay are all quiet.

Nik Parr & The Selfless Lovers, Riverfront Park, Moss Point, Saturday 5 to 9, free.

The easy pick is Amanda Shaw and it's a good one. But four hours of live music on a riverfront in Jackson County, for nothing — that's still the best value on this coast. Bring a chair, get there before the light goes, and keep an eye on the radar; it's a seventy-percent day and the stage is outdoors.

First, two corrections, and they're both ours.

Last week's lead said 100 Men Hall in Bay St. Louis was "forty-five miles west" of Keesler Federal Park. That's wrong. Bay St. Louis is about twenty-nine miles from Biloxi — it's roughly forty-five minutes, not forty-five miles, and we printed the wrong unit. Frank Schmidt caught it and wrote in the morning it landed. Thank you, and keep doing that.

And in the same issue we put the new Sunshine Sips coffee cart at the Mississippi Antique Galleria "in D'Iberville." The Galleria is at 1909 E. Pass Road in Gulfport. Also ours.

While we're on Sunshine Sips — there's real news there. The nonprofit behind it, A Latte Opportunities, started training its first ten interns on Monday, and the brick-and-mortar inside the Galleria opens October 1. The mobile cart runs community events until then. This is the outfit whose D'Iberville coffee shop closed this summer and who decided to rebuild rather than fold. (WLOX, Sept 1)

Still not open, still coming: The Book Porter and Ashiro at The Collective, 401 Porter Ave, Ocean Springs — both now listed as "opening fall 2026," no firm date. Claw Daddy's at the Bayou in the old Blow Fly Inn on Bayou Bernard has been quiet since June. And the old Red Lobster in D'Iberville went before the planning commission on August 25 and the outcome still has not been publicly reported, two weeks on. We'll tell you when any of them opens a door.

Freddie Mac PMMS, week ending Sept 3: 30-year fixed 6.71% · 15-year fixed 6.04%

Second straight week up — 6.65, then 6.66, now 6.71. A year ago it was 6.50. So after twelve months of headlines about rate cuts, the thirty-year is higher than it was last September.

Which is worth sitting with if you've been waiting. The waiting hasn't paid. What has changed on this coast is the other side of the ledger: there are more houses on the market than there were in spring, and sellers are cutting. This week's House of the Week came down forty-nine thousand dollars in June and is still sitting. That's not a distressed market — it's a market where the buyer finally has a little room to talk.

🏠 If you're thinking about selling. The number in your head for your house is probably from 2022. Let me build you a home value report on your actual address — not an automated guess off a website, but a real comparative market analysis out of the MLS: what's active near you, what's pending, and what has actually closed in the last five months, which is the only window that tells you anything. Free, no obligation.

🔑 If you're thinking about buying. I can represent you on any home on this coast, including this week's House of the Week, which is not my listing. And before we go looking, we run your numbers — I'm a Ramsey-trained financial coach and I've led Financial Peace University classes at my church in Ocean Springs, so I'd rather tell you honestly what you can carry than help you buy a payment that eats you alive for thirty years.

Either way you're talking to me, not a call center. Reply to this email or call or text 228-325-1502.

— Rob

Robert Recio · Licensed Real Estate Salesperson, MS #S-62221 · REAL Broker, LLC · Serving Hancock, Harrison & Jackson counties. House of the Week is a market feature, not our own listing unless noted. Equal Housing Opportunity.

It's actually better, and it's the most under-used good deal in American housing.

The headline is no down payment — a VA loan will finance the whole purchase price, which on a $300,000 house is $60,000 you don't have to have saved to put twenty percent down. That alone is why a young enlisted family can buy here and their civilian neighbor can't yet.

But the part almost nobody mentions is the second one: no monthly mortgage insurance. On a conventional loan with a small down payment you pay PMI every month — often a couple hundred dollars — until you've built enough equity to drop it. VA loans don't have it at all. Ever. Over the years you'd own that house, that difference is not small.

There is a funding fee, and it's real — a one-time percentage of the loan, which can be rolled into the balance, and which is waived entirely if you have a service-connected disability rating. VA rates also tend to run a little under conventional. And the VA appraisal has minimum property condition standards, which occasionally kills a deal on a fixer — that's the one genuine downside, and on a coast with a lot of older housing stock it's worth knowing going in.

The Gulf Coast is thick with people who qualify and never use it. Keesler, the Seabee base, the shipyard, Stennis, and every veteran who came here after. If that's your household, talk to a VA-experienced lender before you talk to anybody else — and I'm happy to point you at one. I don't get paid for the referral, and you should be suspicious of anyone who does.

432 W Beach Blvd, Long Beach

Here is a five-year story told in four numbers.

In 2020 this house was listed at $499,000. In 2021 it was listed again at $499,900 — a thousand dollars of movement in eighteen months, which is what this stretch of Beach Boulevard used to do. Then in April of this year it came back on the market at $1,045,000. In June it was cut to $996,000, and there it has sat through the summer.

Somewhere in those five years the house was substantially redone and the Coast decided beachfront was worth double. Both of those things are true, and the listing history sitting in the public record is the clearest picture of this market anybody could draw.

What you get for the number: 2,100 square feet on a quarter acre directly across from the water, built in 2008, three bedrooms and two and a half baths, an outdoor kitchen with a gas grill, and covered patios on two levels aimed at the Gulf. No HOA. The 2025 tax bill was $5,455. Flood insurance is required — as it is on nearly everything on that road — and the listing does not name the zone, so pull the determination yourself before you fall for the porch.

The numbers: $996,000 · 3 bed / 2.5 bath · 2,100 sq ft · 0.24 acres · built 2008 · reduced from $1,045,000 on June 16 · MLS 4146203

Listed by Stephanie Mankiewicz · O'Dwyer Realty-PSC

Laine

In early January somebody in Long Beach found two dogs wandering in the cold and did not drive past. They were a brother and a sister. The brother is named Layton. The sister is named Laine, and eight months later she is still at the shelter on 25th Avenue.

She's about two, medium-sized, spayed, and she has two different-colored eyes, which is the first thing anybody notices and the least interesting thing about her. The staff write-up is unusually specific for a shelter blurb: a constantly wagging tail, a weakness for giving kisses, and a face so expressive it reads as "a constantly judging" look — which is a very funny thing for a shelter to say about a dog they are trying to place. She knows how to sit. She is, they note, picky about treats, which on a dog who has spent eight months in a kennel is either very annoying or a sign of real self-respect.

Here's the part that matters. Laine is heartworm positive, and her treatment is already fully paid for — sponsored by a local business that stepped up so a heartworm diagnosis wouldn't be the thing that kept her in a cage. Heartworm-positive dogs sit longer than any other category in a shelter, because people hear it and assume expense. In this case it's already handled. She just needs the couch.

Humane Society of South Mississippi · 2615 25th Ave, Gulfport · (228) 863-3354
Tue–Fri 10–5, Sat 10–4, closed Sunday and Monday. Adoptions stop about thirty minutes before closing, earlier if it's busy, so a Saturday visit means getting there by 3:30. Dogs ten months to five years start at $20, which includes spay/neuter, vaccinations, microchip, tag, and a free vet exam.

And in Gautier, nothing has changed. Leo, the thirteen-year-old Black Mouth Cur, is still at the Jackson County shelter. So is Virginia. So is Floral, who we ran last week. That's a sixth ask on Leo. We said we weren't going to stop.

"He's been carrying them around all week. Turns out one of them was right."

Forward this to somebody who'd use it. New readers can subscribe at theseawallms.com. Venue owners, shelter folks, and anybody with something happening: [email protected], by Tuesday noon — and that includes any town with a September 11 observance we missed.

And if you know somebody thinking about moving here — a kid coming home, a coworker transferring in to Keesler or the shipyard — forward them the Ocean Springs video instead. Seven minutes on what the town is actually like, tradeoffs included.

Twenty-five years, a stair climb, a cemetery full of volunteers with brushes, a fiddler in a blues room, and four hours of free music on a river. It rains all weekend. Go anyway.

Pick something. Take someone with you.

— The Seawall