St. Pete Beach has been an important part of mine and Jannah’s relationship since we first started dating ten years ago. It’s where we were married six years ago and where have spent some of the most magical times of our lives — with the most beautiful sunsets, the greatest live music and some of the most delicious meals we’ve ever enjoyed together.
But, as pretty much everyone knows, all of the Gulf beaches from Clearwater south to St. Pete were devastated by last year’s trio of major hurricanes, especially Hurricane Helene, which made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in the Big Bend region of Florida on Sept. 26 of last year. That was only six weeks after Hurricane Debby brought record flooding, also to the Big Bend area, despite “only” hitting as a Cat 1, because the storm stalled along the Gulf coast of our state. Helene was followed less than two weeks later by Cat 3 Hurricane Milton, which did as much damage to inland areas as it did to the coast.
But, Helene — which hit roughly 35 weeks before the 2025 Memorial Day weekend, when Jannah and I finally returned to St. Pete Beach — did the most damage of the three storms to Pinellas County’s beloved beaches.
That means its been eight eight+ long, difficult months for the hotels, restaurants and merchants in those Gulf Coast communities, so even though we’d seen and read news reports about how difficult it’s been for those areas to fully recover, we (wrongfully) assumed things had to have gotten back almost to normal by now. Um, no. A thousand times no.
During our visit, we drove from Pass-A-Grille Beach, at the southern tip of the strip, almost to the Sand Key Bridge just south of Clearwater and, even though the weather was beautiful and there were still plenty of great places open for business, what we found saddened us to our cores.
Pass-A-Grille seemed mostly intact, but the fabled Don Cesar Hotel had only recently reopened and still was not fully restored to its former glory.
Still closed were many of our local favorite St. Pete Beach haunts like the Bellwether Beach (formerly the Plaza Grand) Hotel, home to the popular rotating Level 11 rooftop bar and Spinners restaurant. Even the Beachcomber Resort, home to our favorite live music spot Jimmy B’s, was still shuttered. Popular restaurants like The Frog Pond and further south to Caddys on the Beach (photos) also were still shut down, although the owners of Caddys at least had a tented bar, food trucks and picnic tables on-site so those enjoying the live music at Ka’Tiki across the street could come out to take in the still-breathtaking sunsets.
We continued north through Treasure Island, where the fabled Thunderbird Beach Resort, which opened in 1957 and had survived many hurricanes and tropical storms, had never reopened since Helene and was getting ready to be demolished.
We then headed to John’s Pass, which was mostly reopened, although our bartender at the Pirates Pub & Grub told us that all of the first-floor businesses on the boardwalk had 5-7 ft. of water inside them and had to be completely renovated for weeks and even months, while the second floor restaurants and shops were pretty much still OK.
Continuing north of John’s Pass, through Madeira Beach, the Redingtons, Indian Shores, Indian Rocks and Bellaire, where it has always been less crowded, also was chilling. Those areas seemed even emptier than usual. And yes, I realize that Sand Key, Clearwater Beach and Dunedin, forming the more northern, but equally touristy, part of the Pinellas strip, are all also still suffering, even though we didn’t drive that far during this visit.
And again, our stay was the better part of a year after all of this devastation, so it was hard not to have a queasy feeling about what might be in store for our favorite beach communities this year, as the 2025 Hurricane Season began the day (June 1) that I wrote this story.
All I can say is that until we get word that our amazing beaches are again in the projected track of a storm, Jannah and I plan to return to — and pray for — St. Pete Beach as often as we can.
