Hello Florida. Goodbye Rudy!

Jan 31, 2008

Stacey and I took a little vacation trip to the Sunshine state to visit our friends, Rachel and Oliver, who've rented a house in Naples for the winter. Ollie, who hails from Dominica in the Caribbean's Lesser Antilles, hates the cold of Maine where they live in summer. They usually return to Dominica for the winter but this year decided on Florida. "Come on down. We have plenty of room," they said and so we did and so we're here. We awoke at 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday, had our usual driver, Thomas, take us to the airport and left JFK at 8am. Just a few easy hours later and we were in Ft. Myers on Florida's Gulf coast. We hopped into a rental car and drove the half an hour to Naples and our friends.

Stacey in shorts in January - it's 78 degrees in Naples today ... nice.

We had lunch at a nice upscale restaurant overlooking an inlet just a few blocks from their house. This, after a little ride around the neighborhood. Naples seems to be very wealthy and very white. Very different from east coast Florida which, it seems, is more cosmopolitan and more diverse.

The night of our arrival the four of us went to a club for some live music and dancing. Chalua and Cream (a Black woman singer and her white keyboard-playing and vocalist husband) made fabulous music together. In a great contrast to New York, where we are more often than not among the older members of the clientele in restaurants that we frequent, we were the youngest at this club. Its customers were mostly in their 70's and 80's. Still, these older foks were up and dancing their tooshes off. One woman, 88 years old, and her 92 year old husband, snowbirds from Kentucky, were bringing the house down with their incredible moves on the dance floor. The evening turned out to be memorable. It was fun, amusing, sweet and bittersweet all at the same time.

I snapped this with my phone: an 88-year old youngster out on the dance floor . And she was shaking her booty like no one's business!

It had been a long day and we were tired. Home we went for a good night's sleep. The next morning, Stacey and I were up and out for a long walk to Starbucks. What's amazing about Naples though (and all of Flordia) is that it's really not made for walking. When we were last here some 20 years ago, there was nothing here. Development was just beginning to take off. So there was vast amounts of empty land. What they do in Florida is just carve it up into a huge grid with massive roads running at right angles to each other. You drive a mile or so and come to an intersection of this grid. That's where they typically plop down 1 or 2 or 3 malls. Just for good measure there can be a couple of extra malls in between these giant intersections. And they're not small affairs either. Many of them are humongous places, the better to outdo the mall next door or around the corner. And so it goes, for mile after mile after mile. Needless to say, this type of construction does not favor walking (or even biking). Sure, there are sidewalks but nary a soul is to be seen walking on them. And if you happen to see a person or two walking, they look so out of place as to look downright weird. One wonders, why is that person walking along this road. Everyone else is in their car, speeding down the road, hurrying from one mall to another I suppose. Not really my cup of tea.

If it's true, as the experts say, that to turn back global warming we're going to have to get a grip on our addiction to oil and thus reorganize our car-crazed transportation system, it's hard to imagine how we're ever going to do that when you take a look at states like Florida where they've constructed a society that is so utterly and totally dependent on car use. Can they or will they ever be able to undo what they've created here?


Stacey walks down an empty sidewalk on U.S. 41 (also known as the Tamiami Trail). Sidewalks there are, but they are virtually unused. If you don't own a car in Florida, you're out of luck.

If you're looking for old architecture in Naples, you're gonna be hard pressed to find it. Everything is brand, spanking new. At least what we've seen so far.

I love the palm trees and the lush vegetation that fills Florida's air with a lovely, warm aroma.

We head back to Rachel's. Stacey is waiting for the endless traffic to stop while crossing the Tamiami Trail. We took a back street back home and it was lovely and quiet compared to this main road. But, once again, almost nobody was to be seen out and about on foot or even just sitting around outside their houses. There is no sense of community or neighborhood -- the only place people are out are at the malls which have replaced Main Streets throughout the country. Sad.

The day after the Florida primary. She didn't mean no disrespect (not much) but, truthfully, we weren't saddened a bit by the arrogant Rudy's precipitous downfall.

Tomorrow.....who knows? Stay tuned for more news and views from sunny Florida. Forecast? Sunny and 80. Sigh.