Friday evening Hania and I went down to South Beach to attend a cocktail party as part of the meeting of the AIA (Association of Idle Architects).
"I am a hard-working guy," one architect told us. "But right now I have no work. I never expected this to happen. I'm thinking about going back to school. I've always been interested in law."
When I have no assignments, I write things anyway. (You're reading one of them.) William F. Buckley Jr. said that one of the beauties of writing is that you create something that never existed before. But I guess if you're an architect you don't design a building for the hell of it. It's not like you can then send the results out and hope to get someone's interest. (Though that's becoming rarer in my profession too.)
We left the party and took a stroll. Ocean Drive was packed with people, a few out-of-place (out-of-work) architects sprinkled in among the young, expectant crowd. Tables along the sidewalk were filled; waitresses forced trays through the constant flow of foot traffic. You could not tell there was a recession in the country. People may not be building, but they're still going out. At least in South Beach.
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