ALVA Woodpeckers build home in Alva woman’s house You may have heard of squatters, but this woman is dealing with squawkers. Who needs a rooster to wake up when you have woodpeckers?
FORT MYERS Man claims he was trapped in a high-rise for 5 days A 77-year-old man wants justice after he claims he spent days trapped on the 24th floor of a high-rise apartment building.
PUNTA GORDA Charlotte Correctional prisoner arrested for death of another inmate State Attorney Amira Fox convened a grand jury, which decided to move forward with a case against a Charlotte Correctional inmate.
SANIBEL Construction near Dairy Queen eagle nest on Sanibel raises concerns While many eagle nests may be a bit difficult to see, one nest has always been a favorite for Sanibel residents and tourists.
The environmental effects of artificial sweeteners Experts are studying how the foods we eat affect the environment, especially after we flush our waste down the toilet.
Victim reacts to man exposing himself to her Ring camera You get a notification on your phone from your ring camera app that someone is at the door, only to find out it is someone exposing themselves. It’s the last thing victim Maria Kivi wanted or expected to see last week.
LEE COUNTY The art of capturing your eye and drawing you in How do you capture young, hip, trendy, fun, movers and shakers, all in a pose? We take you behind the scenes of a Gulfshore Life cover shoot.
FORT MYERS The lives of two SJC Boxers changed in the ring Two SJC Boxers, Mario Nunez and Arbon Kurtishi, help each other in the ring as each of them had their lives changed because of boxing.
FORT MYERS Chlamydia cases rising sharply in Lee County If you think about a crowded space- something with more than 250 people- if it’s in Lee county, statistically one person has chlamydia.
SANIBEL Sanibel resort day passes hope to get more business on the island A pass will allow vacationers to hang out at a Sanibel beach club for a day in hopes of drumming up some business.
Voting equipment tested ahead of Lee County elections Voting equipment is being tested in Lee County. This is to ensure all ballots are printed and counted correctly for the upcoming election.
Collier County teen assaulted after leaving party The teen has been charged and the sheriff’s office said they’re aware that many believe felony charges are in order, but under Florida law, there are very specific criteria that must be met for felony charges to be filed.
WINK weather team watching tropical wave over Atlantic Ocean The Weather Authority is watching a tropical disturbance over the Central Atlantic Ocean.
CAPE CORAL Cape Coral drug bust leads investigators to fake fentanyl, cash and guns Cape Coral man arrest on drug charges. Investigators said they found, guns, drugs, and more than $32,000 in Richard Riley’s home.
NAPLES Naples youth flag football team to compete in Ohio tournament This weekend, the Naples Lunatics Green will compete in the Superhero Sports tournament in Canton, Ohio.
ALVA Woodpeckers build home in Alva woman’s house You may have heard of squatters, but this woman is dealing with squawkers. Who needs a rooster to wake up when you have woodpeckers?
FORT MYERS Man claims he was trapped in a high-rise for 5 days A 77-year-old man wants justice after he claims he spent days trapped on the 24th floor of a high-rise apartment building.
PUNTA GORDA Charlotte Correctional prisoner arrested for death of another inmate State Attorney Amira Fox convened a grand jury, which decided to move forward with a case against a Charlotte Correctional inmate.
SANIBEL Construction near Dairy Queen eagle nest on Sanibel raises concerns While many eagle nests may be a bit difficult to see, one nest has always been a favorite for Sanibel residents and tourists.
The environmental effects of artificial sweeteners Experts are studying how the foods we eat affect the environment, especially after we flush our waste down the toilet.
Victim reacts to man exposing himself to her Ring camera You get a notification on your phone from your ring camera app that someone is at the door, only to find out it is someone exposing themselves. It’s the last thing victim Maria Kivi wanted or expected to see last week.
LEE COUNTY The art of capturing your eye and drawing you in How do you capture young, hip, trendy, fun, movers and shakers, all in a pose? We take you behind the scenes of a Gulfshore Life cover shoot.
FORT MYERS The lives of two SJC Boxers changed in the ring Two SJC Boxers, Mario Nunez and Arbon Kurtishi, help each other in the ring as each of them had their lives changed because of boxing.
FORT MYERS Chlamydia cases rising sharply in Lee County If you think about a crowded space- something with more than 250 people- if it’s in Lee county, statistically one person has chlamydia.
SANIBEL Sanibel resort day passes hope to get more business on the island A pass will allow vacationers to hang out at a Sanibel beach club for a day in hopes of drumming up some business.
Voting equipment tested ahead of Lee County elections Voting equipment is being tested in Lee County. This is to ensure all ballots are printed and counted correctly for the upcoming election.
Collier County teen assaulted after leaving party The teen has been charged and the sheriff’s office said they’re aware that many believe felony charges are in order, but under Florida law, there are very specific criteria that must be met for felony charges to be filed.
WINK weather team watching tropical wave over Atlantic Ocean The Weather Authority is watching a tropical disturbance over the Central Atlantic Ocean.
CAPE CORAL Cape Coral drug bust leads investigators to fake fentanyl, cash and guns Cape Coral man arrest on drug charges. Investigators said they found, guns, drugs, and more than $32,000 in Richard Riley’s home.
NAPLES Naples youth flag football team to compete in Ohio tournament This weekend, the Naples Lunatics Green will compete in the Superhero Sports tournament in Canton, Ohio.
FILE – In this Feb. 15, 2016 file photo, Marty Balin arrives at the 58th annual Grammy Awards at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Singer Balin of the Jefferson Airplane has died at age 76. Spokesman Ryan Romenesko said Balin died Thursday, Sept. 27, 2018, in Tampa, Fla., where he was on the way to the hospital. The cause of death was not immediately available. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File) Marty Balin, a patron of the 1960s “San Francisco Sound” both as founder and lead singer of the Jefferson Airplane and co-owner of the club where the Airplane and other Bay Area bands performed, has died. He was 76.Balin died Thursday in Tampa, Florida, on the way to the hospital, spokesman Ryan Romenesko said. The cause of death was not immediately available. The dark-eyed, baby-faced Balin was an ex-folk musician who formed the Airplane in 1965 and within two years was at the heart of a nationwide wave that briefly rivaled the Beatles’ influence and even helped inspire the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper” album. The Airplane was the breakout act among such San Francisco-based artists as the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin, many of whom played early shows at the Matrix, a ballroom Balin helped run and for which the Airplane served as house band. The San Francisco Sound was a psychedelic blend of blues, folk, rock and jazz, and the musical expression of the emerging hippie lifestyle. Balin himself was known for his yearning tenor on the ballads “Today” and “It’s No Secret,” and on the political anthem “Volunteers.” In the mid-1970s, when the Airplane regrouped as the more mainstream Jefferson Starship, Balin sang lead on such hits as “Miracles” (which he co-wrote), “With Your Love” and “Count On Me.” He later had solo success with “Hearts” and “Atlanta Lady.” The Airplane was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, but Balin would long have mixed feelings. Pride in the band’s achievements was shadowed by its eventual breakup and by Balin’s acknowledged jealousy of Grace Slick, the other lead vocalist. Slick joined the group in the fall of 1966, soon before the Airplane recorded its landmark second album, “Surrealistic Pillow.” One of rock’s most charismatic singers and performers, she displaced Balin as the perceived leader, on stage and on the Airplane’s best known songs, “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit.” “Every time I did something, it was always Grace Slick and the Airplane and Grace Slick and the Starship,” he told Relix magazine in 1993. “Even if it was my voice. I’ve even done songs of mine on my own and people come up to me and say, ‘I’m surprised you do that song. I always thought it was Grace’s.’ For a while that hurt my feelings, but there’s nothing I can do about it.” Balin was married twice, most recently to Susan Joy Finkelstein, and had three children. He had been in show business well before the Airplane. Born Martin Jerel Buchwald in Cincinnati, he ended up in the Bay Area as his father, a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe, struggled to find work. Marty was a brooding, artistic child who dropped out of San Francisco State University to pursue a career in music. He recorded a few singles with some of Phil Spector’s session musicians in the early ’60s before joining the folk group the Town Criers. He also changed his last name to Balin. Like many of his peers, Balin switched to electronic music after seeing the Beatles’ 1964 movie “A Hard Day’s Night.” Through the local club scene, he brought in songwriter-guitarist-vocalist Paul Kantner, singer Signe Anderson (whom Slick replaced), guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, bassist Jack Cassidy and drummer Skip Spence, a novice given the job by Balin because he supposedly looked like a rock star. (Spence would leave after the first album and was replaced by Spencer Dryden). The name Jefferson Airplane, suggested by Kaukonen, was based in part on bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson. Meanwhile, Balin and a handful of business partners converted a Fillmore Street pizza place into the Matrix, which opened in August 1965. A year later, the group signed with RCA Records and released the folk-rock album “The Jefferson Airplane Takes Off,” for which Balin wrote or co-wrote eight songs. The Airplane, attuned early on to the counterculture, turned out buttons and bumper stickers reading THE JEFFERSON AIRPLANE LOVES YOU. “I remember it was really pretty and beautiful for a year or two,” Balin told Relix magazine in 1993. “And then Time magazine came out and they were interviewing me. I told the guy, ‘It’s great that you’re publicizing this beautiful-feeling scene out here,’” and he looked me right in the eye and said, ‘Fastest way to kill it.’” Starting with “Surrealistic Pillow,” a soundtrack for many during the so-called Summer of Love of 1967, the group’s music became more experimental. By such albums as “Blows Against the Empire” and “After Bathing at Baxter’s,” Kantner was the principal songwriter (and eventually Slick’s boyfriend) and Balin found himself out of place with his own band and with the rock scene overall. He shunned hard drugs and preferred tight pop songs to long jams. The classic film “Gimme Shelter,” centered on the ill-fated Altamont concert from 1969, showed Balin getting knocked out on stage by the Hell’s Angels. By the early ’70s, he had left the Airplane. ’It was a period of cocaine then — everybody took cocaine. And people I would work with, they would yell at you and it got intense. The Airplane was on that kind of trip,” he told songwritersuniverse.com in 2018. In recent years, he released such albums as “The Greatest Love” and “Good Memories,” a retrospective of his Airplane/Starship songs. He also reunited on occasion with old bandmates, whether appearing in concert with Casady and Kaukoken and their group Hot Tuna, or bringing Signe Anderson on stage to perform the Airplane’s first single, “It’s No Secret.” And he liked returning to his folk roots, doing club performances as part of an acoustic trio. “The whole night is me — and if you dig it, cool,” he told Relix in 2016. “And I’m having fun. I move wherever I want, from one song I want to another. There aren’t any egos and (we are free from) people’s problems — waiting for somebody to light a cigarette, have a drink or change guitars and organize their music. Let’s get to the music, man. That’s what I’m doing — just flying along.