We spent a long weekend in Sarasota, and while the city had grown in the five years since I was last there, with a number of high-rise residences downtown, Main Street still contains two bookstores - one selling new books, the other second-hand - and a few inexpensive Asian restaurants (try finding pho on Las Olas). And every Saturday morning a blocks-long farmers' market - with stands of fruits and vegetables, bread vendors, and at least one butcher's van - stretches across it.
Sunday’s New York Times contained the Book Review’s Summer Reading issue and among the dozen roundups – of everything from thrillers to sports books – there was none for travel books, a perennial in the annual holiday and summer reading issues. You can see them being dropped perhaps from the first one, at the start of winter, but to ignore books of travel at the beginning of summer – especially the summer after a pandemic – defies logic. I know publishers have been down on travel books, so perhaps the editors didn’t think there were enough good new ones to warrant a roundup. Whatever the reason, it’s a development that doesn’t bode well for travel writers, or our increasingly self-involved country.
On our way home Saturday, to balance our visit to a historic downtown, we stopped in a modern, planned one: Abacoa in Jupiter. After finally finding a parking space – we’d passed a festival on our way in – we walked down leafy streets lined with three-story apartment houses, some of the residents sitting on their balconies. “Three stories is a good height for Florida,” Hania said, as we turned into a street that, one block in, turned pedestrian. Families and young people sat outside restaurants and breweries in a perfect New Urbanism tableau.
The crowds increased as we reached the park, which was hosting a Cajun Festival ($55 for entry). Across the street stood Roger Dean Stadium, and as we walked over to check it out I had the sensation I was in an idealized version of a big city, one that had taken the main attractions – main street, park, festival, ballpark – and put them all in close proximity. Adding to my delight was the sight of people in the concourse.
“What’s going on?” I shouted to a man walking with his son. “There’s a game,” he said. I had forgotten that Palm Beach County has minor league baseball. We purchased tickets – $10 for seniors – and walked into a sweetheart of a stadium. Rather than find our seats, we took two about eight rows behind the home team’s dugout, halfway between home and first. The Palm Beach Cardinals, I quickly discovered, were playing the St. Lucie Mets, and the Cards pitcher had an early no-hitter.
It had been a long time since I’d been to a ballgame (almost two years), and even longer since I’d been to one outside. A soft breeze made the temperature almost cool. And because of the small crowd, all the sounds were beautifully amplified: the ball landing in the catcher’s mitt, the chatter in Spanish from one of the Cards’ benchwarmers, the gentle razzing, from the two women behind us, of the Mets pitcher.
It didn’t matter that the division was Low-A, the lowest in the minors. It was an idyllic evening, made even more so by being unplanned. On the way out I bought a Jupiter Hammerheads cap and vowed to return this summer and see them play (they’re the Marlins affiliate), ideally against the Ft. Meyers Mighty Mussels.
Saturday, thinking it might be one of our last unmuggy weekends for a while, we headed north to Jupiter Island, where we stopped at Blowing Rocks Preserve – the sun-dappled forest of sea grape trees as impressive as the rocks – and then drove the length of the island. It had echoes of Palm Beach – the multi-million-dollar mansions, most of them invisible behind grandiose entranceways – but there was the occasional modest cottage, a couple with a bright Caribbean look. And the flora, while still very manicured, seemed more a mix of the wild with the decorative.
Back on the mainland we continued north into Stuart. We found the Historic Downtown – most towns north of Jupiter have “historic” downtowns – and took a stroll. The main street was built parallel to the wide St. Lucie River, a long block of restaurants and shops and cafes, locals sitting with their dogs on the outdoor terraces. The Lyric Theater, in the middle of block, was draped with scaffolding, but a schedule noted future appearances of Steven Wright and Rosanne Cash. The Riverwalk Café and Oyster Bar was my ideal of a restaurant, with a bar on one side and white-clothed tables on the other. Though the artwork on the exposed brick walls made me think of the Peter De Vries line: “The murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums.” My gumbo wasn’t great, but it was a step up from most museum fare.
Yesterday I took Lyft to my doctor’s office and on the way there I reminisced with my Turkish driver about my trip to his country in 1997 and on the way home I heard from my Syrian driver about his forced exile from his homeland. As we entered River Reach, I pointed out the boat-lined canals that make it an island.
“Do you have a boat?” he asked me.
“No,” I said. “I’m a writer. I don’t have the money.”
He asked me if I’d read Noam Chomsky.
Later it occurred to me that if I can’t travel abroad this summer I could just ride Lyft around town.
CBS's morning shows were all over the travel beat this past weekend. On Saturday viewers learned that Paul Theroux lives in a kind of Hawaiian Hemingway house, with geese instead of cats, and on Sunday they were shown a homebound Rick Steves playing taps at sunset from the deck of his house in Edmunds, WA, a ritual he performs every evening to the appreciative applause of his neighbors.