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22 years of scenes, sand and bikini-clad women

By LEONORA LaPETER
Published January 11, 2007

CLEARWATER BEACH

Bob Gardeski estimates he's filmed 400 swimsuit competitions over a span of 22 years.

He's got about 15 years of footage from the Shephard's Beach Resort swimsuit contest, held every Sunday between March and September on Clearwater Beach. And he's filmed the Venus Swimwear Model Search more than a dozen years.

But Gulf Boulevard -- one of Pinellas County's longest-running public access programs - is more than just girls in skimpy bikinis. They're the punctuation between inner-tube relays, slime wrestling, Iron Man competitions, pie-eating contests and fishing tournaments.

The footage blends together in a massive pile of tiny cassettes spilling out of a grocery store bag in Gardeski's Clearwater home, where he creates his half-hour show.

His target audience: the 18- to 108-year-old male.

Gardeski, 59, earns no money from his efforts and little glory (the show's viewer area was considered too small for ratings). He does it, he says, because he enjoys it.

Still, he dreams of fame.

"If I could make money at it, I'd be in heaven, but I do it because it's just fun."

Anyone can create a show on public access TV. All you have to do is take a 10-week class.

There are more than 100 public access producers in Pinellas County, with shows about everything from archaeology and animals to vintage clothes and Jewish heritage.

Cable operators such as Bright House and Knology provide the channel space, while Pinellas County runs the programming. Hillsborough also has a community access station.

Many shows on Pinellas County's public access channel have come and gone, but Gardeski has persisted for more than two decades.

He took his course to become a producer more than two decades ago.

Gardeski, who has a degree in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, also owns a moving business between Pinellas County and Chicago. He launched it with a tiny ad in the Chicago Tribune that has run continuously for the past 22 years.

His first public access show was a sort of ripped-from-the-headlines tabloid newscast. He had a midget that turned into a 6-foot giant with the help of aliens. He filmed a bunch of kids camping in his back yard and billed them as a pack of travelling nomads.

It took months to put it together. Too long. He gave up after one show.

Fun pastime

But he'd always liked looking at pretty girls. If he got himself a camera, he thought, he could shoot at the beach. He was going to call it Girls of Tampa Bay, but the cable station's operators rejected the name. He changed it to Gulf Boulevard.

The show is fast-paced, each scene lasting no longer than 20 seconds. It takes him multiple days of shooting and about eight hours to put together.

Typically, he has two regulars who try to sell something for $19.95, such as "shark repellent" (really Windex) or a tennis racquet for swatting bugs.

In between the Pier 60 sunsets and the waiter and waitress races, you'll see a quirky plot line that holds the show together.

His latest involves his girlfriend, Nancy Auck, who lives on the beach in a wardrobe box fashioned like a house. Auck, 55, pokes her head out of a window, between a pair of colorful boxer shorts split to make curtains.

And though the show is sprinkled with bikini-clad girls, Gardeski says he does not depict nudity. Still, the girls have caught the attention of government officials.

In 1995, Clearwater agreed to provide Gardeski $2,400 in entry fees to a National Association of Television Program Executives' convention in Las Vegas so he could market the show for national syndication. They withdrew the entry fees after learning he had a girl in a T-back on his show.

He's also tried but been unsuccessful in getting Clearwater tourism officials to use his show to promote the beaches.

Lisa Inserra, Public Access cable manager, acknowledged Gardeski's show needs to run after 10 p.m. But she said Gardeski is a talented shooter and has been a constant supporter of public access TV beyond Gulf Boulevard.

The other show

He shoots another monthly show, Seniors Having Fun, that features older people flying down a giant water slide, playing balloon volleyball and doing tai chi from their wheelchairs, among other things. He's helped the Clearwater Audubon Society film birds for another public access show. He's done voice-overs to promote the public access channel.

"Even if he's never recognized and he never gets a penny for what he does, it doesn't matter because he gets a lot of satisfaction," said Auck.

Gardeski said that producing one show a month more or less for 22 years has spawned a passion to get it noticed. He even leaves time in his shows for commercials - just in case.

Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this report.

If you watch

Station: Access Pinellas

Channel: Bright House Channel 96 or Knology Channel 21 (Some St. Petersburg Bright House users will not get the station.)

Time: 10 p.m. Wednesday, 11 p.m. Thursday and 10 p.m. Monday

Gulf Boulevard is available 24 hours a day at www.accesspinellas.org.

[Last modified January 11, 2007, 00:48:19]