It wasn’t the nine stories that were imploded in six seconds while a man who was previously handcuffed to the sixth floor balcony staged his escaped. That’s all too obvious.

Think about it, what is the typical scene at Clearwater Beach on a hot and steamy July day? You say, “Uh I don’t know, I don’t go down to the beach in July. It’s too hot.”

I consider that many people missed the “obvious” magic in the whole caper. For the City of Clearwater to pull off an event that brought some 25,000 people down to Clearwater Beach who stood huddled together from early afternoon till the scheduled implosion at 11pm; during one of the hottest seasons of the month is quite magical indeed.

Additionally, the Spyglass Hotel implosion was featured on Criss Angel’s nationally televised show “Mindfreak” which was broadcast live on A&E and watched by several million. Clearwater Beach was shown and mentioned continually throughout. That kind of PR is more powerful than the 450 sticks of dynamite it took to implode the building. 
If you still doubt the national impact that this event made on our little town of Clearwater, Google “Criss Angel Clearwater Beach Building Implosion” and check out how many YouTube views it has received just since last week (69,495 at this writing) as well as all the other YouTube videos on the subject.

The internet and media exposure, coupled with the traffic to the newly transformed beachfront called Beach Walk, is a PR stunt that would make Houdini proud.

As some of Clearwater’s primary sources of commerce are Tourism and Real Estate—I needn’t state what’s happened with the latter—I think driving people to Clearwater by trick or by treat is brilliant and gets my 5-star vote.