Fort Lauderdale, I love you. Well, maybe not love…but I sure do like you a hell of a lot. But I think I’m beginning to lose some respect for you. Once you were the exciting, everything goes kind of town…like the happy-go-lucky kind of place everybody wanted to party in, be it spring breakers to sun-worshipping touristas, all with loads of cash and eager to tuck into your bikini bottom while you danced and pranced, all the while swaying and swinging your fun-loving little tush to and fro in the face of your uptight neighbors Miami, to the south, and Palm Beach, to the north. Then, years later, it all kind of went down hill. It wasn’t a seismic disaster of a change…no, it was more of a subtle change, a gradual downturn that most people didn’t see coming.
Fort Lauderdale: what happened to you?
You stripped off your façade and got a facelift. You built more and more condos and created a vast wasteland of over-priced buildings to attract more and more of the wrong type of people; you turned your back on your partying ways and suddenly decided to go chic and sophisticated on us. Nice try. Fort Lauderdale, for all your beauty, you’ve turned into a bloated, decrepit excuse for a sun-baked town. The party is over, for the most part. Sure, you enjoy fun in the sun and cocktails, but only in moderation. You tell everyone to keep the noise down at night; you build posh hotels to attract God-knows who to your shores and then complain when you can’t get a table at your favorite restaurant. You’re the tacky Hawaiian shirt, the black socks with white loafers, the early bird special lining up at the cheap diner with the rest of your survivors. I hope you see yourself for what you really are and do something to make a change…any change, for the better. But still, Fort Lauderdale, warts and all, I’m still a big fan…though not as much as I used to be.