If I were still a newspaper travel editor, that would be the headline of my column this week. And, for sure, I would be the only journalist to mourn the disappearance of Fort Lauderdale's most beautiful bar. Bars are not an endangered species, and aesthetics are not a high priority, as the end of the Via Luna Bar in the Ritz-Carlton clearly demonstrates.
We stopped by for a drink on Sunday, as we sometimes did on holiday weekends. Approaching from the lobby, we could see that the restaurant had been redesigned since our last visit, obviously in imitation of S3 up the street. Looking to the left, I saw that the bar, and its enormous mural of the ocean, were gone. The painting always made me think of Maxfield Parrish's mural of Old King Cole in Manhattan's St. Regis Hotel. (If you looked closely, you could make out Neptune riding a chariot through the foam.) I loved how you could stand at the bar and gaze at a painting of frothy waves and then turn your head 45 degrees and see real waves out the window. You didn't usually meet the kind of people you would at the St. Regis, but you had a feeling of being in a world of elegance and beauty, on a strip not known for either.
Anyone in search of that feeling now will have to head north to Palm Beach or south to Miami.
