Christmas lights in Atlantic Beach, FL

Atlantic Beach is the northernmost of the three beach cities, between Neptune Beach and the Mayport end of the island: about 4,200 detached homes in the Census count, a median build year of 1985, 72 percent owner-occupied and a median value near $566,000. The housing changes every few blocks. Close to the ocean and around Beaches Town Center you find small older cottages and the newer two- and three-story houses that replaced some of them; around Selva Marina the lots are bigger, the houses are lower and longer, and there are mature oaks and tall sabal palms in the yards; further west, neighborhoods like Royal Palms are mostly single-story homes with a simple front roofline. That means there is no single Atlantic Beach design. On a cottage we usually light the porch, the front gable and the palm by the walk; on a Selva Marina lot the long roofline and the trees carry the display. The ocean wind is the constant: every run is clipped at short intervals and we use sealed commercial LED, because cheap strands do not last a season in salt air. In December the decorated lifeguard chairs of Deck the Chairs, a short drive south on the Jacksonville Beach oceanfront, put the whole area in the mood.