The golf cart culture
DUNEDIN, Fla. — Chris Kelly spent parts of his boyhood summers in the village of Put-in-Bay, Ohio, on Lake Erie’s verdant South Bass Island. Because the island was accessible only by boat or plane, it had few cars; most people there drove golf carts. To young Chris, this was undeniably awesome.
Decades later, Kelly had just become a dad and was looking for a new home. Dunedin matched the leisurely pace he wanted for his family. It also checked a crucial box on his wish list, one that roused his inner kid: it’s a “golf cart community,” where city codes make it easier for residents to drive carts on roads.
And these aren’t the carts of his Put-in-Bay days — “old, dusty, gas-guzzling, noisy, slow, squeaky things,” said Kelly, 45. “Now golf carts are cool.”
Long a staple in its namesake sport and in retirement communities, the golf cart is now at the center of a local boom driven by younger enthusiasts, insiders say.
Pinellas County contains the most registered street-legal golf carts in Florida, according to state data, and Hillsborough ranks 12th among counties.
With so many on the road, golf carts sometimes make the news, too: Tampa Police Chief Mary O’Connor resigned this month after she was caught on body camera video flashing her badge and talking her way out of a traffic stop over an unregistered cart near her Oldsmar home.
Nearby Dunedin might be the local epicenter of golf cart culture, a world of sound systems and on-board mini-fridges, of custom paint-jobs and tiki-bar-style roofs — a terminally chill echo of muscle-car shows or motorcycle rallies. Kelly credits the city’s golf-cart friendly environment to the lobbying of Dunedin Goes Carting, which began as a local blog and transformed into a loose organization behind events such as a popular Christmas golf-cart parade. A few years ago, its founder handed over the keys to a group of residents, including Kelly.
The year he moved here, he said, several dozen carts drove in the parade. When this year’s incarnation rolls out on Dec. 17, he expects more than 300.
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