Category: hometown
Sorry for the silence. I was away for a couple of days in Bimini, celebrating Hemingway's 111th birthday with John Hemingway (and about thirty other media folks and assorted others who had come for the reopening of the Bimini Big Game Club). And Monday I'm off to Trinidad & Tobago for a week.
But between trips I wanted to mention that I just got back from Marando Farms (on a tip from Risa whom I met in Bimini). It is a farmers' market on SW 1st Avenue (a little south of Davie Blvd.) that makes you feel as if you're in Lancaster County - or at least the Redlands. (It's been open nearly a year, 10 blocks from my condo, and I had to go to the Bahamas to hear about it. The benefits of travel.)
There are farm fresh eggs from Homestead and mangoes off of neighborhood trees. There are ruby red grapefruits, organic arugula, not-quite-Beefsteak tomatoes, fat leeks, goat cheese, okra, homemade soups in a fridge. Everybody is friendly - what is it about farmers' markets and a neighborly spirit? - as is the Golden Retriever Gucci who greets every customer.
Inside, there are jams and honeys and baked goods, including organic pizza - I got a delicious slice for lunch - and vegan and gluten-free cookies. There are also two lovely rabbits, one with ears going in different directions who doesn't object to people scratching his nose. Outside are two Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs who have a definite fondness for peaches.
I'm glad I went to Bimini.
I had lunch the other day with a woman who works for one of the local Convention and Visitor Bureaus. She said she's been especially busy this summer because of the oil spill.
I expressed surprise, noting that the oil hasn't come close to us. But she said that people hear it's in Florida and they stay away. They don't realize that South Florida is 500 miles from Pensacola, and that it faces the ocean instead of the gulf.
Geography: Not just a subject in school, but a tool for vacation.
Leaving the post office yesterday, I stopped into the old newsstand. The new owner had gotten rid of many of the out-of-town and foreign newspapers - the things that you can read online and that give a newsstand class. But he'd added books, including a section devoted to local authors.
Neither of my two books was there. True, I don't write very often about South Florida, and when I do, I do so critically. But not as critically as people who litter the landscape with corpses. I guess portraying South Florida as a playground for killers is acceptable because it's fiction, while my digs at the place as a cultural wasteland are not (fiction or acceptable). Or perhaps, because they're nonfiction, they're simply unread.
I asked the owner how business was. He said there was a problem because many of his customers saw the store as a place to buy their lottery tickets. He had tried to get them interested in books, but without success.
No, what I write is definitely not fiction.
I'm a little disappointed at the lack of enthusiasm with which South Florida has greeted the news of LeBron James' decision to play for the Heat.
Sure, the evening of the announcement it was news, but if you stayed tuned for sports you still heard the Marlins score. The Marlins! Today is the second straight day that LeBron's name does not appear on the front page of the Herald. Yesterday, the cover was devoted to a soccer team!! From Spain!!!!
People, we're not talking about just anybody here; we're talking about a BASKETBALL PLAYER! A man who can put a ball into a basket - from many different locations!! If close enough to the basket, he can actually stuff it in!! Not only that, with his long arms he can keep other people from putting it in!
I hope this helps South Floridians grasp the magnitude of this moment. We should cover the Bank of America building with his image. We should give him Vizcaya as his new home. We should pay proper homage to the king with a little renaming: The LeBron Expressway. LeBron International Airport. LeBronglades National Park. Or, at least nearby, a little fruit stand called "LeBron is Here."
The premiere of the new A&E drama The Glades was held at Pier 66 yesterday evening. I arrived early and talked to a film director who divides his time between Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood (the other one), a woman from Romania who works in the art department of the new series (who, during the filming, is staying in this Hollywood, and had not yet discovered the Transylvania restaurant) and the sister of the main actor's stand in.
After a delicious buffet (the best breadsticks I've had outside Italy), we headed into a banquet room to watch the show. It's about a flip Chicago cop who gets sent down to a small town near the Everglades. The first shot of the Everglades contained the first inaccuracy: when the camera pulled up from the water it showed the Miami skyline as it looks from about, say, Dominoes Park.
The young man who discovers a headless body in the Everglades works, oddly, at the Don CeSar in St. Petersburg Beach. There is no mention that this is the Don CeSar, but it is. (You can't fool a travel writer.) If they'd wanted a pink hotel, why didn't they go to the Boca Resort and Club? Otherwise, the Biltmore would have worked nicely.
The Everglades is referred to as a swamp, which it isn't (the water's not stagnant but flowing) but that's a mistake many locals make. And it isn't, as far as I know, a home to caimans - though in this age of pet-dumping, who can say for sure. The presence of the animal does however provide for the opening episode's best, if politically incorrect, line. Shooting the caiman which he thinks swallowed the victim's head, the cop is told that it is one of the Everglades' most protected species.
"Then why," he asks smartly, "did I have such a clear shot?"
The Old Heidelberg oozed gemutlich yesterday afternoon, with blue and white paper garlands hammocking the ceilings and a German flag tucked around the base of the wide-screen TV.
John had not only reserved me a seat, he had deposited a plate of wurst and sauerkraut at my place. The long tables filled with people drinking beer reminded me of Oktoberfest.
By the second half, the German team looked spent, having trouble getting the ball past midfield. Forget about an attacking strategy, they seemed to have lost their wanderlust.
The manager's little boy began rolling his toy cars across the floor in front of the TV, as if he were at kindergarten. Then Spain scored, and I imagined Maradona, sitting at home in Buenos Aires and experiencing a feeling of schadenfreude.