Aerial acrobatics over the Gulf of Mexico! The Blue Angels thunder across the sky while BP workers pile up trash bags of tar balls and girls lay out topless. It’s a whole lot of look at the Pensacola Beach Air Show. While jets circles overhead people talk about the famous sand, once “sugar white” and now stained yellow. A tan lady stares at the trash bags. “Why are they going so slow with toy shovels? It all makes me want to puke.” Another woman complains they’re only allowed to work fifteen minutes each hour. The workers show me what they’re scooping – soft dark pellets the size of cockroaches to coasters. He circles a tar ball in the sand and says they collected ones the size of plates earlier this morning. Then he looks around. “I’m not supposed to be talking to anyone.”

It’s hard to tell where vacation ends and hazard begins. 125 miles east, in Mexico Beach, the Gulf is full of kids. 125 miles west, in Biloxi, families are splashing in the waves. One mile west, an official sign from the county health department says the beach has been affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and avoid the water. Here on this beach, a handwritten chalk sign says stay out of the water, but only because of the high surf and currents. No one wants to cut the local tourism short if they don’t have to. People still walk along the shore and let the waves hit their feet. Six out of forty beach chairs are used. Men in neon vests walk slowly with shovels while girls in bright bikinis adjust their straps and waves leave brown outlines in the sand. “Is it safe to go in the water?” one lady asks me. “I let my grandson go in yesterday… Is that wrong?”