John Bartus

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band are touring again, hitting the road for the first time post-COVID. When tickets for the American leg of the tour finally went on sale, there was quite a bit of negative publicity surrounding the cost of tickets. How could working class hero...

Here in the Keys, Christmas comes but twice a year. That’s right, festive fun-lovers: Christmas in July is Friday night, July 22, at the Brass Monkey, and New Year’s is the following Friday, July 29. Isn’t it funny that Christmas and New Year’s always happens around the same time...

I don’t know about you, but it sure seems that we are living in the Golden Age of Rudeness. People feel that they are entitled to behave badly in so many public situations, and it is really affecting everyday life. I’m not sure if it’s a symptom or a...

The passage of the July 4th holiday has always signified for me that we’re really officially into the summer season. (That, and the rising temperatures.) Given the tropical heat and humidity we experience here in the Keys, summers here aren’t nearly as brutal as they are elsewhere in Florida...

So far, we’ve checked out books by Don Felder, Eric Clapton, Paul Zollo (Tom Petty) and Joe Vitale. This week, we look at perhaps the best rock autobiography ever written. It figures that the Classic Rock Reads champion book would be written by one of the best songwriters of all...

Twenty years after the original was built, Marathon’s Rotary Children’s Park is getting a total rebuild from the ground up. And we need your help! I will always remember the good times we had, coming together as a community to create and build this park. Rotarians, City of Marathon officials...

A few weeks ago, we checked out books by Don Felder and Eric Clapton. This week’s Rock Reads are a conversation with a Rock and Roll Hall-of-Famer and the autobiography of someone who has played with a lot of them. “Conversations with Tom Petty” by Paul Zollo is a very...

It was a little over two decades ago, during my first term as mayor, that Marathon’s City Council purchased the parcel at the top of 75th Street in Marathon. The Rotary Club of Marathon had brought the idea of a children’s park, the Field of Dreams, to the council....

Thirty-two years ago, way back in the last millennium, my Keys writing career began with my review of the two (nearly identical) Paul McCartney shows I got to attend. At that time, Sir Paul hadn’t toured in years, and I was glad to have the opportunity to see an...

Forty-three years ago in 1979, I walked across the stage of the Greenville Memorial Auditorium in a hideously radiant orange cap and gown to pick up my diploma from Mauldin High School. Backstage, while other students were crying and mourning the end of “the best years of their lives,”...

David Crosby is a total jerk. At least that’s what many of his old bandmates say. A founding member of the Byrds as well as Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Crosby has known the heavenly heights of music stardom as well as the hellish lows of serving prison time...

While performing a certain bodily function within the confines of a men’s restroom, I couldn’t help but notice, right before my eyes, inscribed within a hastily-drawn heart on the wall above the urinal for all to see: “Dave & Dawn ’03.” I couldn’t help but wonder at how much love...