Back in August, Bay County Sheriff’s Office put together an exciting and successful rodeo held on Frank Brown Park’s festive grounds. In order to have this event, an agreement was reached with the city manager to till a large space of grass to create enough dirt to handle the show and after the rodeo the area would be sprigged for grass to grow back. For the event, the dirt worked beautifully, and everything ran smooth. But, over a month after the event, grass has not grown over that perfect patch of dirt and what remains is a big, muddy problem for future events.

As it stands, the large space that was tilled prior to the event to make way for dirt is still, well, dirt. As you can imagine, with Thunder Beach on the way the area will not do well with bikes and if it rains the mud could complicate the whole event. Because the Fall Bike Rally typically isn’t as large as the Spring Rally, what’s likely to happen is the city can get away with roping off the area for the short weekend. But, the muddy problem becomes everyone’s problem when the Seafood Wine and Music Festival, Panama City Beach’s most prized event, comes to town. There simply is not enough time for grass to grow over the area before the event hits PCB. If the area isn’t sodded, like yesterday, well, you can just imagine how mud splashing over wingtips and heels could infuriate those wine drinkers and music lovers sending them home with all sorts of bad impressions of PCB.

As Panama City Beach aims to change it’s image as a backwoods, party, dirty town, a muddy field for a wine festival will definitely set everyone back. If you’ve yet to see the field, here are a few images.