With Halloween landing on a Saturday this year, the costumes come out Friday night and stay on through Saturday afternoon. Here's where to go. Main Street Vero Beach brings Downtown Friday back for the season on October 30 with Monster Mash on Main, a free Halloween street party on 14th Avenue from 6 to 9 p.m. with live music, food trucks, and local vendors. The street closes for setup at 4 p.m., so plan your parking accordingly. Across town that same evening, Indian River Co

Sometime around 2 a.m. this Sunday, November 1, the country gets an hour back, and by breakfast half of us will be standing in the kitchen trying to remember how to reset the clock on the microwave. Before you go digging for the manual, you should know who to thank for all this, because it isn’t who you’ve been told. Despite what you may have picked up in grade school, it wasn’t the farmers. When Congress first put the country on clock-shifting in 1918, the agricultural lobby

Over the years the Vero Beach Book Center has hosted a president, an astronaut and Emeril Lagasse, who once kept signing books past 1 a.m. This Sunday it welcomes Brian Kilmeade back, and anyone who starts their day with Fox & Friends can meet him in person, right on 21st Street. Kilmeade last visited the Book Center in 2019 with his book on the Alamo. He returns this Sunday, Oct. 25 at 11 a.m. with Uniting the States, published just last week. Vero is his only stop on the Tr

Remember back in July, when Vero landed at #2 on Travel + Leisure’s list of beach towns to buy a home in before prices climb? Well this time, also according to Travel + Leisure, we took the top spot on Skyscanner’s list of the top trending travel destinations for Americans in 2027! Searches for round-trip flights to Vero tripled over the past year, more than any other place on the list. That put us ahead of everywhere from Bimini to Da Nang, Stockholm to Glasgow, with Olbia i

Beginning this Saturday, the region's dead rise, dress for the occasion, and start talking. They've had a hundred years to get their stories straight. And what a guest list! Main Street Fort Pierce has rounded up the region's most storied dead, cast them with volunteers in period dress, and posted them around the old downtown to tell all in the first person. Zora Neale Hurston, the Harlem Renaissance star who spent her last years there. Edwin Binney, the Crayola tycoon. A tri

That insatiable urge to look up to the stars is the oldest one we humans have, and you can indulge it right down the street at Indian River State College's Hallstrom Planetarium, where the cosmos come to life across a 40-foot dome, along with thousands of stars we never see due to light pollution. Just $7 buys an experience serene enough for an hour alone with your thoughts, yet awe-inspiring enough for a family outing or an incredible date night. The stars told the first far

Alma Lee Loy won it, the red-haired Vero girl who sold war bonds as a child and grew up to greet the whole town with a “hello darlin’.” Bud Adams won it, with a St. Lucie County ranch his father bought for $1.50 an acre and a breed of cattle he invented himself. Bob and Marygrace Sexton won it for Natalie’s juice, a century after the Sextons started building Vero. Bob’s grandfather Waldo Sexton arrived before Vero was even a town, planted citrus, put up the Driftwood Inn and

Forty-plus years is a long tour of duty, and the Veterans Council of Indian River County just signed up for another one. The Council has joined forces with United Way of Indian River County and has a new name to go with it: Mission United. It took more than a year to put together, and the programs, staff and services are all coming along for this next chapter. If you've never seen the Veterans Council at work, picture an army of passionate volunteers who get up in the morning

This Thursday, Oct. 8 at 4PM, Meet Me on Main takes you inside the $14 million downtown campus Shannon McGuire Bowman spent years willing into existence, just about five weeks before the first child walks in. The mayor will be there. You should be too! Main Street Vero Beach's monthly social features Mayor John Cotugno, and the host is Childcare Resources, whose new home opens Nov. 12. Shannon McGuire Bowman Bowman took over Childcare Resources in 2012, when it reached about

Five tropical storms. Zero hurricanes. As of mid-September, the traditional peak of hurricane season, that's where the Atlantic stood this year, the slowest start since satellites began watching the tropics in 1966. The ocean hasn't cooled and the tropics haven't gone dormant. A strong El Niño has stacked up wind shear across the Atlantic, and that shear keeps tearing storms apart before they can organize. It's a pattern with precedent. El Niño years have produced some of the

Somebody left a baked potato at South Beach Park. Wrapped in foil, just sitting there, until the Dyer Subaru crew found it on September 19. It won them a trophy. It's no brick of drugs, which is what turned up last year, but we'll take a slower year on the contraband front. The potato was also the least worrying thing pulled off of our coastline that morning. Coastal Connections, Inc. just released the final numbers from this year's International Coastal Cleanup, and almost a

The Humane Society shelter on 77th is back at it for Empty the Shelters. Third round this year with the Bissell Pet Foundation, which either means the formula works or the shelter just doesn't stay empty for long. CEO Nichola Redmond's take, from the shelter's own press release: "Unfortunately, our shelter never is actually empty, as we receive animals almost daily." Pricing remains unchanged from July. Puppies 6 months to a year, $70. Dogs 1 to 8 years, $50. Kittens under 6

If the Lagoon Greenway has been on your radar for years, it's time to give it another look. Just last year, IRLT added a 1.5-mile loop to the north, stretching the whole trail system past four miles. Tucked on the northeast corner of 8th Street and Indian River Boulevard, Lagoon Greenway has long been one of the Indian River Land Trust's flagship trail systems, a joint effort between IRLT, Indian River County, the Mosquito Control District, and the Florida Inland Navigation D

Riverside Theatre's Loop Kitchen and Bar has been experimenting with its menu. I had their wings last week, crispy, well-sauced, solid. You can get them naked too. Either way, they're perfection. This weekend, add a Budweiser for just a dollar, while supplies last. Live music on the outdoor stage all this weekend: Dave & the Wave Thursday, Vince Love and Soul Cats Friday, Dottie Kelly & Rock The House Band Saturday with soul, blues, Motown and R&B. 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. More info

You know that tiny coffin with the glass window that looks straight out of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, sitting a few feet from the entrance at Waldo's? Only five of these exist in the world. Four are in Smithsonian storage. The fifth is here, at Waldo's. The coffin is just one part of a much larger story: Sexton's menagerie of monstrosities, built into the Driftwood Resort itself out of ship's wheels, cannons, cathedral bells, salvaged Palm Beach mansion doors, and roughly

If planting a tiny forest has never made it onto your weekend plans, it should. I recently sat down with Missy Weiss, the new executive director of Pelican Island Audubon Society, and was fascinated to learn they give away native trees three times a week at its location on Oslo Road...for free! Here are just a couple reasons these native trees are so important, aside from providing habitat for our many native bird, butterfly and insect species: a shade tree can cut your cooli

Everyone assumes the Youth Sailing Foundation is just for kids. It isn't, and the new building going up on the lagoon is about to make that very clear. Yes, junior sailing is still the heart of it. Put a kid out there and the phone stays on shore. There's no scrolling your way out of a capsize. Stu Keiller But the latest is the grown-ups who've gotten involved. YSF has spent the last five years building an adult sailing program, complete with a fleet of 19-foot Flying Scots y

John and Heather Chianis It was movie night at Hogan Yards, complete with camp chairs sprawled across the turf lawn as eager spectators counted down to the eight o'clock screening of Twilight, when I sat down with John and Heather Chianis to get the origin story behind the hottest new establishment in town. They are couple behind Pepper & Salt BBQ. In addition to being the resident pitmasters, they're overseeing events and programming for all of Hogan Yards. So, first off, wh

Meredith Egan of United Way and Jeff Pickering of Indian River Community Foundation Ask most people in Indian River County what actually drives the local economy, and you'll get the same three guesses nearly every time: tourism, real estate (and, once upon a time, Citrus). Maybe the hospital, if they're being thorough. Almost nobody says "nonprofits," which is a little surprising, because nonprofits are one of the biggest employers in the county, and now there's a report with

Three years ago on 13th Avenue, Marine veteran Jeff Palleschi opened 21st Amendment Distillery. Today, it's the ultimate neighborhood sanctuary, a joint with good bourbon, serious soul, and an unwritten rule that local veterans never walk alone. And if Bourbon isn't your thing, they now serve beer and wine. The Wall of Honor, the cigars shipped to Marines overseas, the "21 Salute" bourbon bankrolling the WWII Tribute on Veterans Memorial Island, Jeff hands over the keys to wh