Treasure Island Offers Cabana Rentals and Peace of Mind

Taylor is an expert on the subject. As the owner and operator of Taylor’s Beach Service, he is on the beach dusk ’til dawn, seven days a week.

Over time, he has become a philosopher of sorts: He knows a lot about this island community, what attracts its visitors, and what makes the beach tick.

For 41 years, the Taylor family has served the Treasure Island community by renting out concessions to its many visitors along Municipal Beach. Cabanas are the most popular rental item, but umbrellas, lounge chairs, paddle boats, kayaks, canoes and aqua bikes are also available to the public. A white Chevy S-10 pickup truck is Taylor’s mobile office.

What began as his father’s 72nd job in 1965 quickly became Clyde Andrew Taylor’s passion, later passing it on to his son, Greg.

“My dad started working at the city beach in August 1950,” said Taylor. “He worked as a lifeguard for five years, then kind of talked the guy who worked the umbrellas and chairs into switching jobs with him.”

When Taylor’s father started working at Municipal Beach, there was another operator. In 1965, he was awarded the city bid for the operation.

“We’ve had it ever since,” said Taylor. At one point, in the 1960s, Taylor’s Beach Service also had locations at Pass-A-Grille, Ft. DeSoto County Park, parts of Madeira Beach and Indian Rocks Beach, with 15 employees on the payroll.

“When I was 11, back in 1968, my dad said, ‘Come out to the beach and I’ll put you to work,'” said Taylor. It was the summertime, I was out of school and he let me run a row of umbrellas down on the city beach.”

That was his summer job. “I continued that after school and the next summer. That’s how I got rolled into it, working for my dad.”

Taylor said his father treated him like a partner for about five years – in the ’80s – and then gave him the reins.

“He’s in poor health right now, but if he was able to, he’d be out here right now,” Taylor said. “He was involved in the beach up until two years ago. He’d come out here and love to talk to the people. There’s not a day that goes by, somebody doesn’t come by and say, ‘What’s your dad doing? How’s your dad?’ I even get guys who used to work for my dad from way back, coming out to the beach. They’d say, ‘I remember working for your dad. Those were the best years of my life. Your dad really changed my life.'”

Working on a beach does have its perks, but the hours of operation can be draining.

“It’s a year-round job, seven days a week, unless I’m sick or there’s bad weather,” he said. “This is about a 10-month business, because you have about five days out of every month that you can’t open, because of the weather. If you add that up, it’s about two months of the year you can’t do business.

“Out of those 10 months, four are break-even months, where business expenses and profit balance out. So, that leaves six months that you can actually make a profit. That’s what makes the business – the six good months. A lot of people don’t realize that.”

Greg Taylor has perfected the art of catering to his customers, since 80 percent of his business comes from return customers.

“If you give people a good service, you treat them right, they’ll come back,” Taylor said. “That’s what most of my customers are. It seems like once people find Treasure Island, they do come back again. A lot of people find it by accident, looking for St. Pete Beach or Clearwater, but end up here. We get a lot of families here.”

Taylor said the beach is one of the safest in the area, with the local police department patrolling the beach.

“I’m out here every day, traveling back and forth along my stretch, always keeping my eyes open, watching the water. Just having a presence of somebody as an authority, out here, keeps a lot of problems down. You can walk the sidewalks and the beach at night and not worry about any kind of problem. It’s very safe out here. I think that’s a draw for a lot of tourists. They like to come to a place that’s safe.”

Starting in February, Taylor will tend to approximately 120 cabanas, 300 lounge chairs and 20 umbrellas, not to mention various watersports equipment. From April until about Labor Day is Taylor’s busiest time of the year.

“The season won’t really kick in until this time next month, when I notice the tourists will start coming to the beach,” he said.

March and April are usually his busiest two months, he said, with 2005 the worst year he ever had. A hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, then 3 1/2 months of red tide was enough to keep customers away.

With the construction projects in the area, the number of available rooms were reduced, and that, too, cut into business.

Thinking back, Taylor recalled rescuing a child the paramedics couldn’t get to in time; he remembers streakers running along the beach, the fatal repercussions of a lightning storm and the shark attack of 1969.

“It was the only shark attack we’ve ever had on the beach,” Taylor said. He knew the 14-year-old boy who was bit – he was just a little older than him at the time – and he asked him about it later.

“It was in the afternoon. He walked into the water, about waist-deep and dove into deeper water. As he came up, he felt something grab his leg. Once he got to the surface, he started yelling. His dad was maybe 20 feet away and they started hitting it on the nose. By that time, the lifeguard pulled him up on the beach and that was the time when I got there.”

Since taking over the family business, things haven’t changed too much for Taylor.

“I’m just carrying on the tradition,” he says. “A lot of times tourists would come out to the beach and my dad and I were the only people they’d meet. We’re like ambassadors of the city. A lot of times my dad would take them out to dinner, take them dancing. A lot of good stuff happens on the beach. Like my dad said at a recent city council meeting, ‘I am Treasure Island.'”