Travel Blog

Last week I gave an old friend a tour of Fort Lauderdale. Dan has a sentimental attachment to the city, having started a family here (in Wilton Manors) and taught English for years at Fort Lauderdale High School.

After lunch at Coconuts – where he had drunk but never eaten – we drove down Las Olas and into the canyon of office and residential towers. (Fort Lauderdale’s much-vaunted urban connectivity.) We darted through the disaster that is Himmarshee Village and headed north to Sistrunk, where we stopped at Kimchi Mart, the sparkling new Korean supermarket. I bought some kimchi (the delicious, house-made one) and red bean mochi.

Next, I showed Don the IcePlex in Holiday Park, which was relatively quiet – just a few skaters, including a young woman practicing figures with a coach.

From there it was a short drive to the recently renovated Jimmy Evert Tennis Center. It looked fresh and clean – with all new fencing – but something seemed off. I thought at first it was the absence of benches around the clubhouse, which I assumed had not yet been replaced. Then I noticed that the fences, with tarp in the middle, enclose the courts and destroy the air of openness. You used to be able to stand in front of the clubhouse and look down the whole row of courts. There had been fencing behind the baselines of course, but nothing between the courts save for small pavilions with benches. Now, all you see are what look like cages, connected to other cages. The courts are now giant chain-link cubicles, hiding the players hitting inside. I assume the changes were instituted to make the facility more professional, in an attempt to bag more tournaments, but the old neighborly feeling of the place has been lost.

I wonder what Jimmy Evert would think. Chris apparently will be there on Dec. 8, so perhaps she’ll tell us then.