Woke up early this morning intent on making up for a lot of the time I've wasted over the past few months awaiting my new-and-improved computer, to post some things that have heretofore gone un-commented upon the past few weeks.
Notable among these were some particularly bad examples of journalism in both the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, more of the usual suspect: what's written in the paper not being nearly as important as what's left out. And I'll do that.
But right now, before too much of the Hurricanes at Boston College game gets away from me, I wanted to bring to your attention an interesting photo that caused me to laugh when I first saw it on CriticalMiami.com recently.
(I told my nephew Mario before he left to go to the U-M finale at the Orange Bowl, that my intuition was VERY BAD about the 'Canes, and that they were likely looking at three weeks of being pummeled to increase UVA, VA Tech. and Boston College's bowl prospects.)
It's a reminder of the history and everyday life that's disappearing in North Dade, and North Miami Beach and Sunny Isles in particular, from the era when I was growing-up in NMB.
The South Florida that was, as always, equal parts kitsch, apathy and opportunity.
Back when real estate speculation was just a hobby or simple addiction, and NOT something that people bragged about, like they had suddenly become Columbus, and were the first person to ever realize that a nice place near the beach was a good idea.
CriticalMiami, http://criticalmiami.com/ posted a photo of the Sahara Hotel, at 183rd Street and Collins Avenue, in what is now the town of Sunny Isles, but which previously had been a part of NMB proper, prior to its formal incorporation a few years ago.
Somewhere, I think I might still have my cache of 1970's and early '80's hotel brochures and post cards which I gathered one day while home from IU on Christmas break.
I was at Haulover Beach, the beach I knew like the back of my hand, more intent on channeling some memories with some friends over drinks than actually getting into the water, but in those pre-cell phone days, when they didn't show, I got bored of waiting, and rather than leave, decided to walk my way north up the strip and gather whatever examples of kitschy hotel stuff I could get my hands on.
(Sadly, this was already after The Castaway's Wreck Bar, with their Tahitian motif had long since gone by the wayside, before my friends and I from North Miami Beach High School http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Miami_Beach_High_School could ever take full advantage of its favorable location, after watching the TV ads for years as we grew-up.
For photos of The Castaways as well as more of The Sahara Hotel, and several other local landmarks and curios, see Tiki Kiliki's flickr site, http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiki_kiliki/.
Which reminds me, one of these days, I need to do a photo search for the old Playboy Club near 79th Street, which always caught and held my attention whenever my family was heading downtown.)
My plan was to take this all back with me to Bloomington, and show my friends up there a snapshot of what life down here was REALLY like, such as it was, mixed-in with some particularly good photos I'd taken of some very cute female friends I'd run into at the beach days earlier.
Fortuitously, one of them had a 35mm camera with her, saving me from having to use one of those awful Kodak 110 cameras I was then using, back before one-time use cameras liberated everyone to always be camera-ready.
I intended the photos to serve as a sort of a morale-booster for us during Bloomington's cold and snowy winter, to get everyone in the mood for spring break a couple of months later.
I guess I hardly need to mention here that saying the words "North Miami Beach" to Midwestern kids in those pre-Miami Vice days, created fantastic ideas in their heads that bore little to no resemblance to the reality of life down here.
For instance, they had no idea what a "condo commander" was.
Much as you'd expect, my Hoosier pals from New York were all-too hip to the hum-drum reality of life down here, from their myriad trips down here over the years visiting family over holidays.
They'd turn to me and pepper me with:
1. "When is THAT bridge over the Intercoastal near Turnberry going up?" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_State_Road_856
2. "There's nowhere to shop."
3. "How can you stand it?"
4. "It takes forever to get anywhere, and there's nothing to do."
Right, as opposed to now.
CriticalMiami's flickr site is at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alesh/2045269189/
1:35 p.m.
I got too distracted by the U-M game and the VA Tech at UVA game, and now the 'Canes are trailing 14-0 at halftime. Same ol', same ol': Kyle Wright is All Wrong and "The human fumble machine". I wonder what that is in Latin?
Note to self: Old idea for new SouthBeachHoosier post needs to be finished- Is Randy Shannon the Black Dave Wannstedt?
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=Wannstedt&m=text
The football coordinator who knows his one area very well, but when given the opportunity to rise, then suffers "the slings and arrows" and reality of The Peter Principle? http://www.amazon.com/Peter-Principle-Laurence-J/dp/0848821564/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195929852&sr=8-2
I first read the book at JFK Junior High in 1974 at the suggestion of one of my favorite teachers ever, Lloyd Siegendorf, a smart and savvy FSU grad, and the man who let our social studies class watch the Watergate hearings live on TV, interspersed with lots of Q&A and clever banter. (He's the brother of the former Dade circuit court judge, Arden Siegendorf, http://www.acctm.org/asiegendorf/ )
As I recall it, Mr. Siegendorf was talking to us about important books, and how they can help shape our worldview for the better if we read them correctly, but mentioned that ideas NOT rooted in reality and common sense were just good intentions. Or something like that.
(I've tried to keep that in mind over the years, as well as here on the blog.)
Then he mentioned The Peter Principle, which I'd read about in magazines.
He stated that given my particular interests in politics and history, it was something that would come in very handy in the future. Naturally, he was right!
Every 13-year old ought to read it, in order to better prepare themself for life after school.
As this article in the Salt Lake Tribune makes clear, thirty-plus year later, Mr. Siegendorf STILL knows how to fire up kids:http://blogs.sltrib.com/prepsports/2007/10/girls-soccer-my-postseason-thoughts.htm
By the way, Flickr.com says:
"We couldn't find any photos tagged with "Randy Shannon". We give up!"
Why am I not surprised?
Millions of photos of everything under the sun on that site, but while there are hundreds of photos of U-M players, fans and ballgames, photos of him coaching are nowhere to be found on Flickr. Hmmm...
Sort of like how Shannon's coaching is invisible, as the team has regressed in EVERY phase of the game this season, and continues to be unable to make proper halftime adjustments.
Bad and boring never sells in South Florida.
Ever.
Especially when you've become conditioned to exciting excellence.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
SBH Time Machine: CriticalMiami's great photo of Sahara Hotel in NMB
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In the Heart of a Great Country, Beats the Soul of Hoosier Nation
The South Florida I Grew Up In
Excerpts from Joan Didion's Miami, 1987, Simon & Schuster:
In the continuing opera still called, even by Cubans who have now lived the largest part of their lives in this country, el exilo, the exile, meetings at private homes in Miami Beach are seen to have consequences. The actions of individuals are seen to affect events directly. Revolutions and counter-revolutions are framed in the private sector, and the state security apparatus exists exclusively to be enlisted by one or another private player. That this particular political style, indigenous to the Caribbean and to Central America, has now been naturalized in the United States is one reason why, on the flat coastal swamps of South Florida, where the palmettos once blew over the detritus of a dozen failed booms and the hotels were boarded up six months a year, there has evolved since the early New Year's morning in 1959 when Fulgencio Batista flew for the last time out of Havana a settlement of considerable interest, not exactly an American city as American cities have until recently been understood but a tropical capital: long on rumor, short on memory, overbuilt on the chimera of runaway money and referring not to New York or Boston or Los Angeles or Atlanta but to Caracas and Mexico, to Havana and to Bogota and to Paris and Madrid. Of American cities Miami has since 1959 connected only to Washington, which is the peculiarity of both places, and increasingly the warp...
"The general wildness, the eternal labyrinths of waters and marshes, interlocked and apparently neverending; the whole surrounded by interminable swamps... Here I am then in the Floridas, thought I," John James Audobon wrote to the editor of The Monthly American Journal of Geology and Natural Science during the course of an 1831 foray in the territory then still called the Floridas. The place came first, and to touch down there is to begin to understand why at least six administations now have found South Florida so fecund a colony. I never passed through security for a flight to Miami without experiencing a certain weightlessness, the heightened wariness of having left the developed world for a more fluid atmosphere, one in which the native distrust of extreme possibilities that tended to ground the temperate United States in an obeisance to democratic institutions seemed rooted, if at all, only shallowly.
At the gate for such flights the preferred language was already Spanish. Delays were explained by weather in Panama. The very names of the scheduled destinations suggested a world in which many evangelical inclinations had historically been accomodated, many yearnings toward empire indulged...
In this mood Miami seemed not a city at all but a tale, a romance of the tropics, a kind of waking dream in which any possibility could and would be accomodated...
Hallandale Beach Blog
http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
Hallandale Beach Blog is where I try to inject or otherwise superimpose a degree of accountability, transparency and much-needed insight onto local Broward County government and public policy issues, which I feel is sorely lacking in local media now, despite all the technological advances that have taken place since I grew-up in South Florida in the 1970's. On this blog, I concentrate my energy, enthusiasm, anger, disdain and laser-like attention primarily on the coastal cities of Aventura, Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.
IF you lived in this part of South Florida, you'd ALREADY be in stultifying traffic, be paying higher-than-necessary taxes, and be continually musing about the chronic lack of any real accountability or transparency among not only elected govt. officials, but also of City, County and State employees as well. Collectively, with a few rare exceptions, they couldn't be farther from the sort of strong results-oriented, work-ethic mentality that citizens here deserve and are paying for.
This is particularly true in the town I live in, the City of Hallandale Beach, just north of Aventura and south of Hollywood. There, the Perfect Storm of years of apathy, incompetency and cronyism are all too readily apparent.
It's a city with tremendous potential because of its terrific location and weather, yet its citizens have become numb to its outrages and screw-ups after years of the worst kind of chronic mismanagement and lack of foresight. On a daily basis, they wake up and see the same old problems again that have never being adequately resolved by the city in a logical and responsible fashion. Instead the city government either closes their eyes and hopes you'll forget the problem, or kicks them -once again- further down the road.
I used to ask myself, and not at all rhetorically, "Where are all the enterprising young reporters who want to show through their own hard work and enterprise, what REAL investigative reporting can produce?"
Hearing no response, I decided to start a blog that could do some of these things, taking the p.o.v. of a reasonable-but-skeptical person seeing the situation for the first time.
Someone who wanted questions answered in a honest and forthright fashion that citizens have the right to expect.
Hallandale Beach Blog intends to be a catalyst for positive change. http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
Hallandale Beach Blog is where I try to inject or otherwise superimpose a degree of accountability, transparency and much-needed insight onto local Broward County government and public policy issues, which I feel is sorely lacking in local media now, despite all the technological advances that have taken place since I grew-up in South Florida in the 1970's. On this blog, I concentrate my energy, enthusiasm, anger, disdain and laser-like attention primarily on the coastal cities of Aventura, Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.
IF you lived in this part of South Florida, you'd ALREADY be in stultifying traffic, be paying higher-than-necessary taxes, and be continually musing about the chronic lack of any real accountability or transparency among not only elected govt. officials, but also of City, County and State employees as well. Collectively, with a few rare exceptions, they couldn't be farther from the sort of strong results-oriented, work-ethic mentality that citizens here deserve and are paying for.
This is particularly true in the town I live in, the City of Hallandale Beach, just north of Aventura and south of Hollywood. There, the Perfect Storm of years of apathy, incompetency and cronyism are all too readily apparent.
Sadly for its residents, Hallandale Beach is where even the easily-solved or entirely predictable quality-of-life problems are left to fester for YEARS on end, because of myopia, lack of common sense and the unsatisfactory management and coordination of resources and personnel.
It's a city with tremendous potential because of its terrific location and weather, yet its citizens have become numb to its outrages and screw-ups after years of the worst kind of chronic mismanagement and lack of foresight. On a daily basis, they wake up and see the same old problems again that have never being adequately resolved by the city in a logical and responsible fashion. Instead the city government either closes their eyes and hopes you'll forget the problem, or kicks them -once again- further down the road.
I used to ask myself, and not at all rhetorically, "Where are all the enterprising young reporters who want to show through their own hard work and enterprise, what REAL investigative reporting can produce?"
Hearing no response, I decided to start a blog that could do some of these things, taking the p.o.v. of a reasonable-but-skeptical person seeing the situation for the first time.
Someone who wanted questions answered in a honest and forthright fashion that citizens have the right to expect.
Hallandale Beach Blog intends to be a catalyst for positive change. http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
Hollywood in Cartoons, The New Yorker
Hollywood in Cartoons, The New Yorker
Hollywood in cartoons, 10-21-06 Non-Sequitur by Wiley, www-NON-SEQUITUR.COM
Miami Dolphins
Sebastian the Ibis, the Spirited Mascot of the University of Miami Hurricanes
Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders, April 28, 2007
Of cheerleaders past and present
Given South Florida's unique version of the melting pot -con salsa- demographics and mindset, these women in the photo above are surely what most South Floridians would consider attractive women. But for this observer, who's spent hours & hours at IU cheerleader tryouts and who has known dozens of cheerleaders -and wannabes- in North Miami Beach, Bloomington, Evanston and Washington, D.C., the whole time I was watching these members of the Dolphins' squad perform, I couldn't help but compare them and their routines to those of some IU friends of mine who ALWAYS showed true Hoosier spirit & enthusiasm.
Sitting at my table right near the stage and still later, while watching the long lines of Dolphin fans of all ages waiting to snap photos of themselves with the cheerleaders, I couldn't help but think about those friends who always left me and other Hoosier fans feeling positive & optimistic.
Was there anyone I saw in Davie who possessed these valuable intangibles: the dancing precision of IU Red Stepper -and Captain- Gail Amster, my talented and spirited Phi Beta Kappa pal from Deerfield (IL), who always sat next to me in our Telecom. classes as we took turns entertaining the other; the ebullient spirit & energy of two Hoosier cheerleaders -and captains- from Bloomington, Wendy (Mulholland) Moyle & Sara Cox; the hypnotic, Midwestern, girl-next-door sexiness of Hoosier cheerleader Julie Bymaster, from Brownsburg; or, the adorable Southern girl-next-door appeal of former Hoosier Pom squader Jennifer Grimes, of Louisville, always such a clear distraction while sitting underneath the basket?
Nope, not that I could see. But then they were VERY tough acts to follow!!!
And that's not to mention my talented & spirited friends like Denise Andrews of Portage, Jody Kosanovich of Hammond & Linda Ahlbrand of Chesterton, all of whom were dynamic cheerleaders -and captains- at very large Hoosier high schools that were always in the championship mix, with Denise's team winning the Ind. football championship her senior year when she was captain -just like in a movie. That Denise, Jody & Linda all lived on the same dorm floor, just three stories above me at Briscoe Quad our freshman year, was one of the greatest coincidences -and strokes of luck for me!- that I could've ever hoped for.
You could hardly ask for better ambassadors of IU than THESE very smart, sweet and talented women. In a future SBH post, I'll tell the story of one of the greatest Hoosiers I ever met, the aforementioned Wendy Mulholland, the Bloomington-born captain and emotional heart of the great early '80's IU cheerleading squads, and the daughter of Jack Mulholland, IU's former longtime Treasurer. The acorn doesn't fall far from a tree built on a foundation of integrity & community service!
(After he retired, Mr. Mulholland was the first executive director of the Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County. I used to joke with Wendy that her dad's name was the one that was permanently affixed to the bottom of my work-study checks for years, while I worked at the Dept. of Political Science's Library, first, at the Student Building in the old part of campus, and then later, after it was refurbished, in magnificent Woodburn Hall, my favorite building on campus.)
In that future post, I'll share some reflections on Wendy's great strength of character and personality; my intentions of returning to Bloomington a few weeks before Fall '82 classes started, so I could help Wendy train and work-out to rehab her knee, so she'd feel confident in trying-out for the squad again, following a bad knee injury that'd left her physically-unable to try-out for the squad the previous spring, a big disappointment to those of us who cared about both Wendy and the team; my incredulity at, quite literally, running into Wendy while walking down a sidewalk one afternoon a few years later in Evanston, IL, when we were astonished to discover we were both living there, with me trying to hook on with a Windy City advertising agency, and Wendy then-attending Kellogg (KGSM) at Northwestern, right when the WSJ had named Kellogg the #1 Business School in the country.
I'll also share a story about Wendy performing a true act of kindness towards me in 1982, when I was having a real emergency, and she went above-and-beyond what I had any logical reason to expect. Yet, Wendy, along with her very helpful dad, Jack, came through for me when I was in a very bad time crunch. I've never forgotten Wendy's kindness towards me, and her true Hoosier spirit.
There's NOTHING I wouldn't do for Wendy Mulholland.
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