Stiltsville

This guide to Stiltsville in Biscayne Bay opens with Crawfish Eddie Walker, who built the first stilt house a mile offshore in the early 1930s, deliberately beyond the reach of Florida's gambling laws, selling bait, beer and a chowder he called chilau. It follows the wild bay community that grew up around him, from the Quarterdeck Club's Life magazine fame in the early 1940s to the free-drinks pitch at the Bikini Club two decades later. Several hurricanes tested these structures over the decades that followed.