Byron Andrews remembers his childhood days in Gulf Shores, fishing away the summer days on the pier in front of a wooden shack.

Mike Miceli, a Gulf Shores city councilman, remembers his summers there as well, where he'd hang out hoping to meet girls and, when no one was looking, sneak the occasional beer.

"It's always been a great little hangout," Miceli said.  "It's one of the few real landmarks left in this area."

What started out as a 30-by-30 café/bar/bait shop at the foot of a fishing pier run by the Calloway family has become a true landmark in Gulf Shores.

The Pink Pony Pub has survived the waves of change on the Alabama Gulf Coast, even as it changed owners.

Upscale condos have sprouted up around it, but the pub has kept its heart, right down to the sourdough cheeseburger that flied in the face of trendy "healthy heart" menus.  And of course, its Spartan trappings and shock-pink facade.

"People had asked us to paint it blue, and we just laughed," said Bert Sanders, a co-owner with wife Susan and Chopper Schaffer.  It'll be pink forever.

Hurricane Frederic was indiscriminate when it leveled much of the Gulf Coast in 1979, washing away the Pink Pony and its wooden pier.  The building was rebuilt out of solid concrete on concrete bridge pilings - complete with a fresh coat of shock-pink.

"If you ever drive down here after a hurricane and don't see the Pink Pony, you won't see anything else here," Sanders said.

It was pink as long as Bruce Mernik can remember.  The building first stood in 1950.  During the fifties and sixties, the pink wooden building was part of Seahorse Cottages, serving handfuls of anglers and beachgoers who frequented the area during quiet summers on the Gulf Coast.  His father bought Seahorse Cottages in 1968 and asked him to join them.

"I asked them, 'What's there for me?" said Mernik, 52, an Orange Beach resident who still carries his trade as a carpenter.  "They told me there was a little beach bar I could run."

Mernik remodeled the tiny shack and was ready to open it in February 1969.  The only thing it needed was a name.  His mother, Marybelle, who now resides in Spanish Fort, called it the Pink Pony as a tiny offspring of the pink Seahorse Cottages behind it.  "It was a little neighborhood type bar," Mernik said.