Photo courtesy of Arts and Cultura Alliance of Sarasota County.

Labor Day is upon us, and if you’re anything like me, you already feel the summer starting to loosen its grip. The days aren’t cooler yet. But something shifts this time of year. Fewer out-of-state plates. Shorter waits at the restaurants I like. And a kind of quiet that settles over this place before it all picks back up again.

Every year around this time, I catch myself doing the thing so many locals do: waiting. Waiting for season to start, for the calendars to fill up, for the “real” reason to go see something. But this is the time to check out music, art, dance, theater – from experiences and performances to exhibitions or even take a class. A place to see the work from our friends and neighbors at The Players, Venice Theatre, Art Center Sarasota, Venice Art Center, and Fogartyville, to name a few. And let’s not forget larger stages are coming alive as ensembles like the Sarasota Orchestra are tuning up again.

Don’t wait.

September might seem like the slowest month of the year, but it’s not a slow month for the arts. That’s the part people miss. The spotlights still turn on and the galleries keep installing art. Florida’s Culture Coast doesn’t go quiet because the traffic does. If anything, this the best-kept secret of the year, our own community, wide open, easy to get into, with none of the crowds we’ll be talking about again come February.

So, this month, I’d love for you to be a tourist in your own town.

I mean that literally. Do the thing you’d do if you were visiting Sarasota for the first time. Look up what’s playing. Walk into a gallery you’ve driven past a hundred times but never actually entered. Catch a set with the Jazz Club of Sarasota on a Monday night. Treat this place the way someone from Ohio would treat it in February: on purpose, without occasion.

Because that’s the truth about living here that’s easy to forget when you’re in it every day. The things that make people pack up and fly a thousand miles to visit us are still here in September. They don’t go anywhere. We stop noticing them, the way you stop noticing your own view.

This is also, selfishly, the moment when a little bit of attention goes the furthest. Arts organizations count on a strong close to summer to carry them into the bigger months ahead. A ticket bought in September isn’t just a ticket. It’s a vote of confidence, right when it’s needed. It tells an organization, a musician, a curator; you don’t have to wait for the crowds to matter. We already think you matter.

Sarasota earned the name of Florida’s Culture Coast, but a name like that isn’t something you claim once and move on from. It’s something you have to keep choosing to live inside of month after month, including the quiet ones. Especially the quiet ones. That’s when you find out whether it was ever really true.

So, consider this your nudge. Before the calendars fill up, before the season conversation starts all over again, take an evening this month and go be curious about your own town. See what just opened. You might be surprised what you find waiting for you, quietly, in the place you already call home.

Visit sarasotaarts.org to explore all the ways you can engage with Sarasota’s vibrant cultural scene this September.

Brian Hersh is the CEO of the Arts and Culture Alliance of Sarasota County.

Photo courtesy of Arts and Cultura Alliance of Sarasota County.