Sunday’s Sun-Sentinel carried a front-page story about condo owners along the New River complaining about the noise from the outside bar of the restaurant Salt7. This would not have been a problem with Swick Plaza – the Mexican-style plaza I recommended (though not with that name) for that space when I was the travel editor of the paper. My vision, instead of a high-rise condo, was for a park on that site with chess tables, food stalls, fountains, and a bandstand, where every evening and lunchtime ethnic bands would perform, giving the tourists to the east and the residents to the west a daily taste of world music. The performances would not run late into the night, and the music – cumbia, klezmer, bossa nova – would be pleasant to the ears of even accidental listeners.
That didn’t happen of course. The city got yet another condo, the Icon, with an outdoor bar blasting characterless music. The bar has a lovely setting on the river, and I suspect it would be popular if it played no music. But then it would run the risk of patrons discovering, in the rare quiet, that they have nothing really interesting to say to one another.
