Florida in August

So I headed down to Florida to visit my Mom and to have a little R&R with my friend Andy.
One of the things I love about Florida is the amazing juxtaposition of people and stores that don’t co-exist anywhere else that I know of. You have retirees from the North driving around in BMWs while the local workers that thrive on the retirees drive around in pick-up trucks till they retire and then they drive around in BMWs while the immigrant work force still bicycles to work, which in Florida is no small feat.
And then you have the juxtaposition of stores.
One of our favorite places to eat is Skorpios, a Greek restaurant
sandwiched in-between a Pet Grooming place and a Tanning Salon that sells Smoothies. Even that combination, first, expose yourself to intense un-healthy uv rays and then have a nice anti-oxidant drink to prevent cancer is so Floridian!

So this is me and my Mom tastefully photographed on the mural of the Greek Isles inside Skorpios. Yasoo!




This is another one of our favorite spots, Mom’s Kitchen. Food is great, prices are cheap, and with the Early Bird special you can eat as much as my friend Paul does on our Tuesday night dinners when he isn’t buying! And you can tell by the cop car that the food is really really good…or free.

Well after a few days with Mom I hooked up with Andy to take a ride down to South Beach.


Andy rented a red Mustang convertible. Oh yeh, you do get double takes from da ladies, (aka 16 year old Cuban girls), and yes, some of the guys in South Beach asked for a ride....

So our first stop was City Place in West Palm where we took a trolley ride to Clematis St. where there was restaurants and live music…Oooohh... High Octane….” Smoke on the Water…” Well both the street and the music had a VD like atmosphere so we actually told our waiter forger it after he brought our sodas and we left! The high point was the driver
and this great group of girls on the trolley!
We then cruised down to South Beach where I had to get my picture taken along with the other riff-raff in front of the Versace Mansion, now a hotel where you can pay $ 1000.00 a night for a room or $ 5000.00 a night for Gianni's old room, or they will pay you 10,000 lira a night if you will sleep with Donatella in her room.
Further along the beach there was this cool family of 3 generations of women from Costa Rica who sell necklaces made from dried Bananas and Coffee Beans.
And then as we walked down Ocean Drive we found all kinds of Disneyesque characters from the Cigar Girl
to the Mermaid
and of course, the Life Guard.
Don't ask me, she said she saves lives.
So all in all, a pretty fun trip. Now the flight back was a bit awkward. Let me just say that I sat next to someone who asked the flight attendant for the extender. It wouldn't have been so bad but she brought a meal on the plane, (go figure), and when we hit turbulence her tray and beverage went flying because the tray couldn't go all the way down because of the girth of her...well you get the idea. But I caught the soda mid-air, switched seats, and besides my attitude about flying these days: Arrive alive, the rest is details.
J