What this is and what it isn't

There are already a few websites about Perdido Key. They are fine. They are also, mostly, the same site with the corners filed off — the same eight restaurants in the same order, the same drone footage of the same condo tower, the same headlines about “sugar white sand” and “hidden gems” that nobody who lives here would ever say out loud.

This is not that site.

Perdido Key OG is a guide to Perdido Key and Orange Beach written for three people: the local who wants to know what the surf’s doing before coffee, the repeat visitor who treats the Key like a second house, and the person reading this from somewhere cold and missing the salt. We’re going to cover the eats and the bars and the fishing and the events and the conditions, the same way the other sites do. We’re just going to do it in a voice that sounds like the place actually sounds.

A few things you should know:

We treat Perdido Key and Orange Beach as one place. The state line through the Bama doesn’t change what kind of fish are biting or whose mom is at the Sandshaker. The site covers both sides, every section. When the regs differ — fishing licenses, alcohol on the beach, dog rules — we’ll say so. Otherwise, one stretch of sand, one community.

Beach Today is the killer feature. Flag colors both sides, surf, water temp, tide, sunset, rip current risk, red tide. Refreshed throughout the day. If you come back to the site once a day, this is why.

We don’t run reviews. No five-star system, no comments. The way a place gets on the site is we write about it because it’s worth writing about. The way a place stays off the site is we don’t.

The voice is on purpose. Dry, specific, local. If something we write makes you say “yeah, that’s right,” we did the job. If something makes you say “that’s a little much,” tell us and we’ll fix it.

The newsletter is the move. Sunday mornings. What’s open, what’s closed, what’s biting, what’s on. Sign up at the bottom of any page.

The site is mid-build, which means a lot of the sections currently say “coming soon” in voice. We will fill them in. In the meantime, the Areas are up, this Drift exists, and the Beach Today strip works. Everything else is on the list.

If you want to help — submit a tip, correct something we got wrong, tell us about a place we should write about — there’s a form. Use it. We read everything.

— Kathy