Apalachicola readies for SI swimsuit edition

On Tuesday, Sports Illustrated Swimsuit, an issue that was read last year by an estimated 70 million adults, will be on the newsstands, and with it the exquisite curves of three models who took part in a secretive photo shoot last October.

Monday night, on The Late Show with David Letterman, the cover of the issue will be unveiled on a billboard in Times Square, which very well could light up with an image from the Oct. 9-17 photography assignment in Franklin County.

“One of the things we wanted to do is to show the world that the Gulf is alive, well and beautiful. Don’t be afraid to go to the Gulf,” said Diane Smith, the senior editor who oversaw the project.

With eye-popping numbers that will likely eclipse last year’s 2.6 billion media impressions, including Facebook videos and an interactive website, Franklin County’s luster as a tourist destination is likely to get shinier beginning this week.

“It’s certainly going to put Apalachicola on the map,” said Smith. “It’s the largest selling magazine in the world; one out of four Americans reads it. It’s become sort of an American tradition.”

Bringing that tradition to the Gulf Coast was the goal of Sports Illustrated when they first contacted Anita Grove, director of the Apalachicola Bay Chamber of Commerce, in May.

“We Googled interesting gulf towns and there’s Apalachicola,” said Smith. “We saw the pictures, we saw the variety your town has to offer, and the lively places to stay, which is always nice when you’re working. They were so receptive so it all kind of fell into place.”

Grove sent hundreds of photographs for Sports Illustrated editors to peruse. “I had to prove it to them that we could pull it off and that we had the right locations,” she said. “I showed them what we had, how they could rent a beach house.”

But a modern island home was not what the editors had in mind; they preferred to put up everyone in the Coombs House Inn, a 1905 Victorian mansion restored 20 years ago by Miami interior designer Lynn Wilson, and her husband, Bill Spohrer, former owner of Miami’s Challenge Air Cargo.

“They were looking for a little more Americana. They loved the rustic nature of the town, said Apalachicola businessman Mark Friedman, president of the chamber board.

Grove brought the idea to the Tourist Development Council, which was at first hesitant, until the county commissioners settled the matter by opting to spend $30,000 to underwrite the cost of food, lodging and staffing during the nine-day visit.

The task for Grove and Friedman was to accommodate the models’ entourage in the fashion they were accustomed to at the typical foreign resorts, where concierges have the resources to cater easily to their every request.

Chamber officials rented four vehicles, two 15-passenger vans, a cargo van and an automobile, and lined up drivers to ferry the staffers to and from the Tallahassee airport.

Seventeen rooms at the Coombs House were set aside, including one devoted entirely for hair and makeup, and the inn’s Camellia Hall became the costume room for more than 300 of the latest swimsuit fashion designs. Café Con Leche was brought in to cater pre-sunrise breakfasts each day at 5 a.m., and Tamara’s Café Florida handled the lunches.

Smith, assistant editor Janine Berey, and New York City fashion photographer Stewart Shining arrived first, and began a collaborative process with locals to find the best places to feature in the photos.

‘We offer two things - beautiful girls and swimsuits. To make a picture interesting, we have to find a place that offers those diversities of locations, wharfs and marinas and beaches and a town, down to the golf carts. There was so much more there to work with," said Smith.

 “It’s an evolution which places are really working, a creative process, and sometimes it’s things that you would never expect to work, someone’s backyard or someone’s creaky porch.”

The magazine chose models with Gulf coast ties, including a brunette from Louisiana, Ariel Meredith, who has been featured in teaser photos beginning today.

“We were very careful to select girls that were going to feel that was close to home,” said Smith.

Friedman said the only site written in sand, so to speak, was the eastern end of Dr. Julian G. Bruce St. George Island State Park, which figured into a sunrise shoot for each of the models.

Apalachicola’s Riverfront Park, the Tin Shed, a store featuring nautical memorabilia, the storefront of the former Wefing’s Marine Supplies, Boss Oyster restaurant, Scipio Creek marina, the Coombs House and the Gardens Inc. plant nursery in the Bowery, where one of the models shucked 13 Mile oysters, were all used as locations, as were two of Ward and Sons’ shrimp boats, the Lady Louise and the Donna J.

The project also used several historic Apalachicola homes - the Steamboat House, also known as the “Porches” for its distinctive wraparound porch, and the homes of Gene Smith and Franklin County Sherriff Skip Shiver.

“They really wanted to get it right, they wanted to do us justice and portray us directly, and they were very careful about that,” said Friedman.

The shoot even included a pair of golden retrievers, “Abbey” and “Laverne” belonging to Kay and Russ Boyd, that the photographers spotted going by on a golf cart. Sports Illustrated has confirmed this photo is among those that will appear in the issue.

As the week-long photo shoot drew to a close, Apalachicola Mayor Van Johnson presented everyone with a proclamation in their honor, still keeping the details a tight-lipped secret.

“They made the trip so great for us,” said Smith. “It was just a dream, really it was. We felt like part of the family, they were just so warm. It was beyond any kind of expectations that we had.”

Grove said the feeling was mutual. “They weren’t prima donnas at all,” she said. “That was my biggest fear, that we couldn’t answer what they wanted. But as long as they had food and what they needed, they were fine.”