Owner of beach dive must do major spring cleaning
Mahuffer's is the stuff of excess, and that's now a problem that even the pack rat owner admits to.
By AMY WIMMER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 6, 2003
INDIAN SHORES -- John Susor's memories are underneath the toilet seat out back, in the wet suit on the ceiling, in the old airplane propeller he keeps behind the spare tire at the entrance to Mahuffer's, his beach bar.
One look at an object, and its story is on his lips.
Take that hollow iron buoy, nearly as tall as Susor, positioned out front.
"I thought, 'Oh, gee, I'd love to have that,' " Susor said, recalling a day years ago when his buddy spotted it washed up on the beach. "We rolled it all the way down the beach ... and across the street."
Those were the days when the beach wasn't so crowded, when two buddies could roll an oversized buoy across Gulf Boulevard without attracting much attention. But Susor and his beach artifacts are getting plenty of attention now.
The Pinellas Suncoast Fire & Rescue District says Susor's collection has turned Mahuffer's into a fire hazard. The district has cited the 83-year-old beach bar owner for several life safety code violations, including what Fire Marshal Wayne Butler calls "combustibles," the layers of flammable items that Susor and his customers have hung on the walls in the bar's 30-plus years. Butler ordered Susor not to conduct business inside his bar until the violations are corrected, limiting patrons to the outdoor deck.
Susor is no stranger to authorities' taking issue with how he runs his business. The health department objects to the handful of dogs and cats that roam the bar at will. Budweiser didn't like the T-shirts he used to print that read "Buttweiser: King of Rears." His run-ins with the Indian Shores Police Department are the stuff of local legend.
But this time, Susor has to agree with the fire department. "They're right," he said. "It got out of hand."
Susor says cleaning up the place will help him expose some of his most treasured finds: The keel of a sailboat. World War II bombs filled with sand and dropped off the shore of Belleair Beach during air raid practice. The beams from the original Kingfish Restaurant that stood on John's Pass before there was a bridge connecting Madeira Beach and Treasure Island.
"Nobody even knows these are here," Susor said of the Kingfish timbers, buried beneath layers of business cards and customers' discarded undergarments. (It's all here -- bras, thongs, briefs, boxers.)
"This place has lost what I wanted to show."
To customers, the charm of Mahuffer's is in the mishmash -- part junk den, part maritime museum, part tawdry beach bar. But the fire department says that's where the danger lies, too.
According to the notice of violation, tables and chairs are in the way of the exit; some exit signs are not visible; furnishings and decorations used in the decor are flammable; some ceilings are too low or have objects hanging from them that make the ceilings too low; and an indoor fireplace is too close to what the district calls "a combustible couch."
The blue vinyl "couch" is actually the back seat of an old Dodge van.
"Times have changed, and we're in the process of getting it cleaned out," said Butler, the fire marshal. "He's realized it got out of hand."
As times changed on Indian Shores, Susor, a crass-mouthed, white-bearded beach legend who looks so much like Ernest Hemingway he once won a look-alike contest, has stayed his old self.
He drives a doorless 1977 Cadillac Eldorado with a sign on the back that reads: "Follow me to the worst place on the beech." He doesn't have many places to drive, though, because his house is attached to the bar. The home was once featured on Home & Garden Television's Extreme Homes.
Susor banters with his customers by insulting them. He married his ninth and current wife, June, on his 80th birthday. No. 4, he recalls, looked just like Ava Gardner.
"Cats have nine lives," Susor says. "I have nine wives."
Some restaurateurs hang newspaper clippings of favorable reviews of their food; Susor hangs his clippings from battles with the local police force. "Bistro owner, police accuse each other of harassment" reads one. "Jury clears bar owner in scraps with cops," reads another.
And this favorite: "Hitting officer with paper ball shouldn't merit arrest, jury says."
Susor was cleared of criminal charges stemming from a scuffle he got into with two Indian Shores police officers after throwing a paper wad at them. But one headline that isn't featured prominently in the bar tells how Susor later lost a civil case against the town, in which he charged that the officers violated his civil rights.
Anything an industrial-sized staple can secure to a wall can be found at the bar. Dollar bills and business cards, Polaroids and Gasparilla beads.
For years, Mahuffer's was famous as home of a $100 bill someone had stapled to the wall. Susor said it came from one of those tourists with too much money to burn, but eventually it was stolen, just like Susor's prized shark's teeth that used to hang over the bar.
Susor says he will clear out most of the bar within the next two weeks.
Then, he says, he might have a yard sale and give the proceeds to charity, inviting everyone on the beach to buy a piece of the old Mahuffer's.
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