On our way back from Gainesville on Friday we stopped in West Palm Beach for Art After Dark at the Norton Museum, which included a concert of Chinese classical music played on a pipa, a zheng, and a qin. Moon cakes were served in a nearby room.
Saturday we drove to Miami for the Centennial Concert at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. The normally half-hour journey took us 90 minutes – you’d have thought Art Basel was in town – causing us to miss much of the Mozart. But the second half was more to my taste any way: Bach, Fauré, Vaughan Williams and Handel. The concert concluded with the Hallelujah Chorus.
I returned by myself to the cathedral last evening for the choral evensong, which featured only sacred music, including Vaughan Williams’ The Old One Hundredth Psalm Tune – fittingly, as yesterday was the composer’s birthday. There were almost as many people at evensong (my favorite word in the English language) as had attended the concert, and it was heartening to see the grand 100-year-old building in the heart of Miami bursting with music and voices and life.
I went to Bascom Palmer Eye Institute yesterday for my semi-annual checkup. I always make my appointments on Thursdays, so I can have lunch at the weekly farmers’ market that sets up on one of the campus walkways.
Yesterday, I took my bibimbap, and Hania carried her Argentinian kebab, to the courtyard, where we asked two young men in scrubs if we could join them. They were surgical residents, we quickly learned, and enjoyed the market as much as we did. I told them that my bibimbap was delicious, but that the stall had no chopsticks, only forks.
“I’ll get you some chopsticks,” the one resident said, and immediately got up from the table – he had finished his lunch – and went off into the crowd. He returned a couple minutes later with a pair of wooden chopsticks.
Heading to Bascom Palmer, we followed a shady sidewalk that I thought might lead to the outdoor terrace. A young man in a white coat exited the gate, which immediately locked shut. “Too bad we weren’t a little quicker,” I said to Hania, and, as soon as I finished the sentence, the man returned, swiped his badge, and unlocked the gate for us.
At Archibald’s in North Beach Village on Sunday we heard three people speaking an interesting sounding language.
“Excuse me,” I asked them, “are you speaking Greek?” I lived in Greece for four months and am pretty good at identifying languages.
“Basque,” they said.
I don’t think I’d ever heard Basque spoken in South Florida. I’m not a fan of jai alai.
They said they were from San Sebastian. “That’s a beautiful city,” I said. “And you moved from San Sebastian to Fort Lauderdale?” I asked, in a tone of astonishment.
“Have you been to San Sebastian in January?” the man asked.
We found a table in the shade, next to a Fort Lauderdale lifeguard on his lunch break. Hania has a fear of sharks, so we asked him if he sees many.
No, he said. The Gulf Stream is pretty far from the beach in Fort Lauderdale, and that’s where the food is. “There’s nothing for them to eat here,” the man said confidently. “A shark who wanders in close is probably lost.”
He said the animal to be concerned about is not the shark but the Portuguese man o’ war. Its sting is powerful, and can be deadly. But there’s a season for them: November to March.
I’m going to be swimming in the ocean before November.
Connie Francis died yesterday in Pompano Beach at the age of 87. She was the celebrity most associated with Fort Lauderdale; though she grew up in New Jersey, she made the city famous (long before Chris Evert) with the 1960 song, and movie, Where the Boys Are.
I saw her years ago at an event on the beach for one of the film’s anniversaries (the 50th perhaps?). I believe she sang the trademark song, but my most vivid memory is of the crowd that surrounded her as she somewhat shakily made her way back to her limo. She looked frail and overwhelmed. A man in the crowd shouted “We love you Connie!” and I remember being struck not just by the passion of his declaration but by his use of the first-person plural.
At 7:30 yesterday morning I drove down Las Olas and across the bridge, where police cars blocked access to A1A. I turned right, along with everyone else, and found a parking spot near the International Swimming Hall of Fame. Water and ice.
A good crowd was already gathered outside the Elbo Room, many of them in red Panthers jerseys. One woman wore a cap topped with a seated doll wearing a Panthers jersey and roller skates. One young man, with a flower tattoo in front of his ear, sported a black cap with the words “Vamos Gatos” printed on the side.
A little before nine a police car, siren wailing, came through the blockade, followed by a golf cart filled with large men in beards. Aleksander Barkov sat in the back, in a shirt with green palm trees and pink flamingos, the Stanley Cup between his legs. Immediately the cart was swarmed by people trying to touch the cup. Eventually, Barkov lifted it and carried it through the side entrance of the Elbo Room, where it soon appeared on the balcony, causing the crowd below to erupt. Various players took turns lifting it – to rapturous cheers – and then, after everyone had had a go, a couple of them filled it with beer that they poured onto the crowd. This also got cheers, and was repeated again and again. In the intervals, champagne was squirted out onto the adoring fans, while the famous bar’s logo, a platinum blonde in a red bikini, looked on in tumbling delight.
Chants rose and fell: “Back-to-back!” “MVP!” “Bob-by! Bob-by! Bob-by!” “We want beer!” One man started a “Thank you, Panthers!” cry that for some reason didn’t catch on. A few songs were sung, including the National Anthem and, oddly, “Country Roads.”
“Bobrovsky’s not here,” a young man next to me said. “He’s home with his family. He’s like that basketball player, Jokic. As soon as the game’s over, he’s gone.”
“It’s the young ones who are here,” his friend said. “They’ve probably been up all night partying.”
I walked across A1A and talked to a young father who moved here two years ago from Toronto. He had been rooting for the Maple Leafs, he said, but he admired the Panthers – enough to bring his son to see them at the Elbo Room. I asked how he found South Floridians compared to Canadians, and he said that people have been great, especially in the hockey league that his son plays in. As they headed off, I saw the name “Tkachuk” written across the back of the young boy’s jersey.
I found a shady seat on the seawall, next to a woman from Poland who now lives in Galt Ocean Mile. “I was watching on TV,” she said, “and I thought: Why don’t I drive down there?” We wanted to see them take the cup into the ocean, as they had last year, but by 11 there was no sign of them ever leaving the Elbo Room.
I drove to Archibald’s for a takeaway quiche and on the drive home, listening to an oldies station, heard Connie Francis sing “Where the Boys Are.” It was an almost scripted moment, though I wondered if any of the players would have been aware of the connection.
Yesterday the Miami Herald ran a front page story about the dining scene in Broward (“Not a culinary wasteland”). Its focus was on Michelin ratings, so upscale restaurants were discussed and small ethnic places ignored. In an essay on Florida for The American Scholar (Winter 2024), I wrote about the differences between Miami-Dade and Broward, and made the heretical claim that Broward is the more diverse county. One example I gave: “Miamians were famous for never crossing the county line, but foodies drove north for our Korean and Vietnamese restaurants.” https://theamericanscholar.org/florida-man/