Discover Anna Maria, the land that time forgot

By Paul Daugherty  TheCincinnati Enquirer

ANNA MARIA, Fla. —On the perfect day, it is early March or October and the tourists have gone away. It has rained hard the night before, with a high wind that has scrubbed the sky to a cerulean blue this afternoon. The sun has worked on the virgin white sand until it feels like lying on an electric blanket It is 72 degrees.

 Maybe I will go for a walk, down the beach to Bean Paint, where nobody is, because there is no obvious place to park. Where Tampa Bay meets the Gulf of Mexico in a froth, yet the waves are gentle enough to pet.   Maybe I'll do this. Maybe not

See-through water
Maybe I will walk out to the restaurant at the end of the Anna Maria city pier. The pier juts like a dorsal fin into Tampa Bay. You can see the bottom here through 10 feet of water. Manta rays glide through the clear, green sheen. Sunshine dapples the waves in gold. 

Maybe I'll drink a beer and watch the fishermen cast for grouper. The pier sways with the waves, a soft  rhumba. Maybe I'll stay the whole day there. Maybe not 

of sand, home to 8,200 year-round, is what the Caribbean used to be, before the islands got fat with cruise liners. 'The land that time forgot," Steve Barnes calls it. "I think we're up to about 1966 now."

Mr. Barnes owns the Water-front restaurant on Bay Boulevard, which is a whole lot more fun than what he used to do. Until 1996, the 46-year-old ran Pace Micro Tech­nology, a British-based company of 3,600 employees that makes cable boxes for televisions. Mr. Barnes' business took him to 93 countries.

three weeks of every month.

After one especially draining trip to Australia, he called his wife to tell her he was done. He came here in '96, took over the restau­rant in '99. The rest is discarded suits and ties.

Mr. Barnes had 41 suits when he left Britain. He has six now. None has escaped the closet He has worn a tie exactly once, long pants all of eight times.

He comes to work when he needs to, but his presence isn't usually required. It is, Mr. Barnes figures, the best place he has found to do all the nothing he wants.