We went to Fort Lauderdale’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Saturday, for the first time in years, and something about it was different. Not the spectator in the inflated green suit, nor the police horse with the dyed green tail, but the passage of the parade through canyons of office buildings. They gave the celebration a big city feel.
I’ve been reading over the journal I kept my last year at the Sun-Sentinel, a year that, because of what was happening to newspapers in general, and to mine specifically, was one of the worst of my life. Yet reading through it I’ve been struck by how rich the year was, especially compared to the last two, in events and drama.
Last week we drove five minutes to Savor Cinema to see the Iranian film A Hero. It was the same theater where, a few months ago, we saw the Polish film Wesele. This made Polish friends in Boston and New York jealous because there had been no showings of the film in their hometowns. Time to move to Fort Lauderdale, I told them.
The demolition of our balcony got too much for us yesterday so we spent the afternoon at a cafe, specifically Ann's Florist & Coffee Bar, where we read while listening to music that ranged from bossa nova to chansons, including a French rendition of "Dancing Cheek to Cheek."
My late afternoon bike ride carries me from Tarpon River under the Avenue of the Arts bridge, across the FEC tracks, and onto the Riverwalk (south bank), which takes me past the Downtowner (always populated by T-shirted locals) and the county jail before delivering me into Rio Vista. There I turn around, cross the 3rd Avenue bridge (downtown’s prettiest), and cruise down Las Olas (the sidewalk’s wide enough to accommodate cyclists) before taking a right at the Stranahan House and getting back on the Riverwalk (north bank), which is usually so crowded that I stay on the street until the River House. Saturday it was especially busy because of the Las Olas Art Fair at one end and the Stone Crab Festival at the other. And riding past the people strolling along the river – friends greeting each other by the bar of SALT7, people walking their dogs, young women in short shorts heading to The Wharf – I was struck by how Fort Lauderdale has become a quietly alluring city.