New Issue

Best of the Coast 2026: 13,000+ Votes, 84 Pages and a Whole Lot of Thank You

Plus: the Port lands another $9 million, a library board chair goes public with his frustrations, and Rick traces his great-grandfather’s escape from an empire that erased his flag.

You voted. We counted. And in a few really close races, we recounted, because something as serious as Best Brunch deserves nothing less.

This year’s Best of the Coast pulled in more than 13,000 votes, and the print edition landed at 84 pages—our biggest yet. We can only afford a print bill that size because local businesses stepped up as advertisers, so to every one of you who said yes: thank you.

And because a special issue celebrating small businesses run by hardworking humans deserves art made by hardworking humans, keep an eye out for custom embroidery pieces throughout these issues, created in collaboration with local portrait photographer, seamstress and all-around craftswoman Natalie Allgyer.

Even 84 pages isn’t enough. Tune in next week for Rest of the Best, where we celebrate the runners-up.

Dig into the full results:

• Complete Winners + Runners-Up List
• Featured Winners — Community, Media + Culture
• Featured Winners — Health + Wellness
• Featured Winners — Services
• Featured Winners — Weddings
• Featured Winners — Retail
• Featured Winners — Bars, Drinks + Nightlife
• Featured Winners — Restaurants + Food

Winners & Losers

On the winning side: Pensacola Little Theatre’s new Executive Director Sandy Cox, arriving with 30-plus years running nonprofits and a stint as Mayor of Lakeway, Texas; architect Patrick Ballasch, honored for 37 years shaping Northwest Florida’s built environment; and Escambia County’s Robert Carlin, the cybersecurity officer who kept the county running through the 2024 CrowdStrike outage.

You can find the Losers in the issue.

Buzz

The Port of Pensacola picked up another $9 million from Gov. DeSantis on Aug. 12, this time to help build a 400,000-square-foot facility where Birdon America will produce Navy ship modules—a project Mayor Reeves says could become the port’s largest employer.

• That same press conference fueled speculation that Florida Secretary of Commerce Alex Kelly could be a contender for the Pensacola State College presidency, now that applications have closed.

And West Florida Public Libraries Board Chair Dr. K. Blaine Wall sent a pointed letter to County Administrator Wes Moreno, laying out a pattern of unanswered requests and canceled meetings ahead of the search for the county’s next library director.

Outtakes: My Great-Grandfather’s Escape

A message from a stranger in Denmark sent me digging into family history  I never knew—how my great-grandfather Andreas Outzen fled conscription in a Germany that had erased his Danish flag, language and identity, and sailed for America at 16 with nothing but a ship ticket. Read the column.

“We are all still immigrants. Some of us never learned or simply forgot our people’s history.”

A&E Happenings

This week’s calendar is packed: Gallery Night downtown Friday, Vince Gill at the Saenger Saturday, Island Fights 57 at the Bay Center, and dozens more shows, markets and trivia nights across the coast.