Here’s a big gallery of photos, mostly before, during, and after Saturday’s parade. It’s a very Tybee event, as you can imagine.

We had a blast.

The Christy Alan band is there at the beginning, and that’s Missionary Blues at Tybee Island Social Club at the end.

Today, the Tybee Island city council voted unanimously to overturn that earlier vote.

From the Associated Press, Tybee Island scraps plan to track license plates:

Mayor Jason Buelterman (BELL-tuhr-man) said city officials had learned the machines wouldn’t automatically tally how many cars were visiting the island. He said the decision was also influenced by backlash from residents and visitors who felt the scanners would violate their privacy.

It was clear from earlier discussions that at least one council member wanted to advertise the presence of the scanners to discourage criminals from coming onto the island at all.

I’m glad to see that Tybee backed off on this plan.

The Tybee City Councilâ€s vote Thursday night to purchase two license plate reading cameras means in the near future every vehicle that drives on and off the island city will be scanned.

Council voted 5-1 late Thursday to approve the purchase suggested by Police Chief Bob Bryson of the scanners to be installed in both directions of U.S. 80 on the Lazaretto Creek Bridge. Barry Brown opposed the vote to purchase the system that will run license plate tags against criminal information databases like the National Crime Information Center and the Georgia Crime Information Center.

The purchase was approved even though there is no policy statement about how the information will be handled. Tybee officials are promising that a policy will be in place soon, however, and that it will do such things as mandate that all information not part of a criminal investigation be destroyed after 72 hours.

But who’s to say exactly what is part of a criminal investigation?

There’s only one way on and off Tybee Island, of course. So imagine there’s a burglary some night and the police have few clues except a witness’ vague description of a car that left the scene. That investigation could go on for days or weeks or maybe even months. So would the Tybee police, an organization that has seen its fair share of controversy over the years, just sit on all that data, much of which could be used to identify movements of law-abiding citizens who guard their privacy?

And what about subpoenas and civil actions — contentious divorces and the like?

On an island as small as Tybee, can we even be sure that those with access to the plate numbers won’t have personal contacts in other contexts with the folks who are legally coming and going?

Are these paranoid questions? I don’t know, because there is no policy in place for how the information will be used.

The article notes a clear upside in using the data for economic studies — we can literally get hard counts of the number of cars and even know states and counties from which they come. That information could be beneficial in myriad ways.

But we can get pretty good tourism data via other means.

I don’t know quite what to make of statements in the article about the ways in which a policy like this, if well-publicized, might deter criminals from coming on to the island. I suppose that’s possible, but how exactly will the policy be publicized? And do we really want some draconian warning to be part of Tybee’s reputation?

For many, Tybee has been a place where one can get away from some of the demands of modern life — and it has been to some extent a haven for libertarians who like to live and let live.

It would be hard — maybe impossible — to see Tybee like that if law enforcement starts running checks on every car that comes on or off the island.

I hadn’t been out to Tybee in a while by myself, and I hadn’t taken any photos out there for well over a year.

I just wandered around, got briefly in the water, walked along the pier, had an excellent dinner at the bar at the Tybee Island Social Club (loved the lobster tail taco), and then headed over to the lighthouse when I knew there should be some beautiful (if corny) sunset light.

The traffic and parking can be hellish on Tybee visits on the weekends and holidays, but, even at high summer, weekday evenings are pretty quiet as you can see.

So a few shots; click for larger versions:

And here are a couple of shots that I posted to my Instagram account:

I know it’s kind of trite, but I love the way the Instagram app will allow selective focus blurring like on the one taken from the pier.

The segment “Where to find America’s best beaches” featured Peter Greenberg, CBS News travel editor, talking about a variety of beaches around the country. Tybee is the second one mentioned.

“What’s cool about it is it’s only 20 miles from Savannah, very natural, very wild and very family friendly,” says Greenberg in the clip below.

“It’s a real beach town with a beach town flavor.”

In other good news for Tybee, rankings from National Resources Defense Council give both Tybee’s north and south ends four stars, based on several factors, including no water samples in 2012 exceeding national standards.

The NRDC awarded Hilton Head just one star.

Here’s the clip from CBS This Morning: