Tovin Lapan

Forget the skunk ape, coastalbeat.com embarks on a quest to find the mysterious rump monkey.

Jessica didn’t expect to meet someone. In December she had separated from her husband of ten years and was still finalizing her divorce. The last thing on her mind was starting a new relationship.

DJ Anthony Martin has been in the music business for over 25 years. He provides the beats at a variety of Southwest Florida night spots and is a regular at Nooshi Lounge and Sanibel Steakhouse club nights. coastalbeat.com got a ...

I woke up on Monday morning in a lethargic, grease induced funk. My body was waging a war against me as I tried to summon the energy to start a new week of work. The night before I had seen ...

Mohsim Rizvi is at the mic. Take note. He’s got something to say, and it’s not canned or pre-sanitized for your safety. It’s raw, real, his own.

If the real life version of Aunt Alice was anything like the Muppet version, then she must have been one cool cat. Alice the Muppet sits on a wooden swing in sexy black and red lingerie, pearls dangling from her ...

The legend tells that years ago every casino in Las Vegas had a three-piece chicken dinner with a potato and a veggie for $1.79. A standard bet back then was $2, hence when you won a bet you had enough ...

Sitting in the window of Ryan Chastain’s South Fort Myers apartment, right next to the Christmas tree, is a sparkling, lit-up baseball. Just down the street from the Fort Myers Miracle stadium, Chastain’s home is a shrine to his love ...

His first song of the night ends and no one gathered at the Sunset Beach Bar in the Naples Beach resort pays any attention. They are all enthralled with the maize and parsimmon streaks running across the aquarium blue sky ...

It is 11:30 a.m. and I’m ready to go to sleep. It is the end of morning yoga class at the Wellness Center in Naples, and we are meditating to soothing ambient sounds coming from the boom box. After stretching ...

When Bob Erlenmeyer was in his early 30s he wouldn’t take his shirt off anywhere in public. He returned from the Vietnam War to his home in Ohio with a long, wide scar running down the length of his stomach. ...

Jessica Rabbit was there, so were Strawberry Shortcake and the Devil. Along with other costumed partiers, they were there to groove to the blues and rock sounds of the Raiford Starke Band. It was the band’s first performance to the ...

Antimo Onzo is more than he appears. During performances he wears a dark blue collared shirt, weathered blue jeans, and a broad-brimmed black cowboy hat. While he talks about his influences from country music like Tim McGraw and Rascal Flatts, ...

Some people try to dodge strip malls at all costs, scared off by the cookie cutter designs and endless chain stores offering the same old thing. Yet, in Southwest Florida strip malls are all but unavoidable, and at some point ...

Ed Gifford moved to Naples a little over a year ago, but he has already learned how to identify the signs of the yearly invasion. In front of him in line at Walgreens recently were three couples no younger than ...

Every day 1,000 new people move to Florida. Now some of them are obviously not single, but many of them are. So how are all these new arrivals meeting people? And, more importantly, how are they meeting potential mates?

Johan Cruz’s hands are cut and bloody from running the filament through his palms. He jabs a hook, attached to his reel-less fishing rod, through the flesh of a small fish. He swings the line above his head like a ...

On a Monday night, I found myself driving down the streets of Fort Myers Beach with a friend looking for a reasonable dinner. It was the night of the first New Orleans Saints game back in the Superdome since Hurricane ...

Now this is an indie movie: director, cameraman, assistant and two actors, nobody else. Writer/Director/Producer Christopher Bright, his bare feet caked in sand, is directing the action just north of the Fort Myers Beach pier.

Castaway’s Backwater Café doesn’t put on a front. It is what it says it is. If this bar/restaurant were on Third Street or had a waterfront view, perhaps it would be known throughout Southwest Florida. Instead, it is shipwrecked, hidden ...

All eyes are on you. Palms sweating, you’re trying to focus, as adrenaline is released and your heart beats faster. It’s about competition, bragging rights, the thrill.

Barranquilla, Colombia – Rene Marañon is standing on the rocky Caribbean shore outside his hometown, 1,180 miles away from Southwest Florida, watching ships stacked with huge metal containers creep down the mouth of the Magdalena river toward the port. “That’s ...

Sometimes you know what you want, and what you want is some barbecued ribs and beer. In such instances, Don Haney’s Smokehouse just might call out to you with its flowing taps and slow-cooked, homemade-sauce drenched ribs.

What’s better than ditching work at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday to go fishing on a beautiful sunny Florida afternoon? Well ... I didn’t know because I’ve never gone fishing in Florida, nor fished at all in the last 10 ...

When I left San Francisco in January to come here, I thought I was leaving behind my beloved, authentic Mexican restaurants that were scattered throughout my neighborhood, the Mission District. In the traditionally Hispanic area, the taco meat is succulent ...