Over a lengthy Holiday Season holiday, I found myself relaxing under a pleasant warm sun, in sight of the very pool where John, Paul, George and Ringo splashed for the cameras back when Kennedy had just been shot but the world was going to be all right anyway mostly because of those very moptops.
The hotel is a large, old ratpack haunt where the likes of Ed Sullivan and Jackie Gleason gave shows in the vast ballroom; where The Voice and The Drinker stayed; and that now has been rediscovered by Europeans (and me) as a somewhat offbeat, fairly-well restored three-star that drips Moderne on a relatively unfashionable stretch of Collins Avenue well to the north of the iniquity and madness of Ocean Drive. At the entrance, shiny new cars are lined up for valet parking; across the street are some rather humble but satisfying Brazilian-themed restaurants and markets. Within blocks are a bagel place with a straight-outta-Flatbush owner, an American bar and grille, a Chinese place that seems to have been ported in from somewhere along Queens Boulevard and a full-blown Sikh-owned headshop/newsstand/notary public that rivals anything in the East Village. Add winter warmth and you can see why I flat loved this neighborhood.
However, as is generally known, South Florida is also one of the two epicenters of egregious overbuilding of condos and houses (the other being Las Vegas). Noticeable even at the vaunted Beach are towers that stand seemingly rather empty and swanky-looking developments that seem in no hurry to be completed. The prices have been keenly pared on all of them and I have it on good authority that the bottom has not yet been reached.
According to my knowledgeable source, whose interaction with HUD and the effort to keep wayward homes from completely going to pot makes him privy to a wealth of information about the market, there are over a hundred thousand units in Dade County alone that are under stress and heading for foreclosure within the next eighteen months. Word is, there is no way that amount of property can be absorbed into the market--meaning that continuing price slippage is inevitable.
The tourist areas are still crowded--and in much better shape now than, say ten or fifteen years ago when Miami Beach was only a ghost of its past and a dream of its future--but there is no shortage of soaped-over storefront windows and bare patches here and there along the beachy highways.
Eventually a home in the oceanside land of perpetual warmth may be in order--but apparently more bargains are on the way. And let's all offer our kind considerations to those who irrationally believed that water plus yearlong sun plus four walls and a roof equaled ever-escalating home-value; then, after we kindly consider their real-estate foolishness, wait until their properties drop to the lowest point we can believe in and then buy them.
Showing posts with label florida. Show all posts
Showing posts with label florida. Show all posts
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Monday, September 21, 2009
Dear Abby: I'm Upset at my Ailing Old Father
Dear Abby:
I'm upset at my ailing old father.
Stop yelling. Let me explain.
First, the facts: he's in his eighties, is married, lives thousands of miles away from me, is legally blind, until recently did work (at a supermarket), and most recently fell at home and broke his hip. He is out of the hospital with a replacement joint and is convalescing at a rehabilitation center. I have two siblings. One of them is going to visit with him and my mother very shortly. On a recent call, my father, from his sickbed, informed me that he would be needing several hundred dollars a month from me and my siblings (combined)--for me, an affordable sum--because he could no longer work. My mother has not worked in many years though I believe she'd have been able to for most of that time.
Second, my immediate dilemma: should I go visit him? I have pressing business matters right now--no, really, I do. I'm not making that up.
Now, the background--and the reason I am upset. Or the reason I have been upset.
Without belaboring too much my distant past, let's just say that my parents provided a home in the suburbs that was unwelcoming enough for me, who by any stretch of the imagination should have been college-bound at the time, to leave first when I was seventeen and then, after having failed at leaving and a brief Harry-Potteresque residence in an unfinished space under a stairwell in their new home, to leave for good and forever when I had just turned eighteen with less than a thousand dollars to may name for some place I and my girlfriend at the time referred to as "out West".
That all worked out for me I guess. I have a business, a decent income, I am happily married with two wonderful children, one of them is in college, and my paintings are occasionally shown at galleries. My Dad says he is proud of me.
So here is the rub. My parents did little and nothing for me as a teenager. Of course I was difficult. I did things I would never want my teens to do (as who has not?). But they--I feel (and others who know the story agree)--had pretty much abandoned me, except for providing a crash pad and a chance to eat, by the time I was fourteen. (Example: I had a run-in with the cops when I was that age, during which I was victimized by same, and by the next day my parents had not only done nothing at all to address the event, they allowed me to go back out hitch-hiking).
As for the notion of college, there was virtually no conversation about it and certainly no offer of support from them (even at state schools which, as everyone knows, were, in the 1970s, cheap like penny candy).
Much, much more recently, through the twin wonders of social networking and email, I became embroiled in a very ugly exchange of "thoughts and feelings" between my brother, who initiated the episode with a spate of birther-worthy hate-speech, and my parents, whom my brother for no discernable good purpose cc'd during a heated email exchange in which he and I were both quite upset at one another mainly due to political differences. I had referenced some negative things about the family--and I suppose he wanted to wound me and them, and that began the emails between me and my mother and father.
In these emails I was, for the first time in perhaps thirty-five or forty years, very frank with them about my opinion of both their parenting skills and their--for lack of a better phrase I suppose--"belief system", which I hold to have been supported by a quite unwarranted self-satisfaction at how they have operated towards me for several decades. The emails were by turns bitter and defensive on their parts, and unusually frank and unsparing on mine.
We had left it as such until I got a call from my sister (a born-again Christian to whom I never speak) telling me that our father had fallen and was in the hospital.
I have spoken to him a few times. I now have a dilemma. I cannot say I especially want to go see him. But I cannot seem to avoid the very strong notion that, unless I do, I will deeply regret it.
Abby, what should I do?
Stop shouting. I know you're exhorting me to buy tickets. I may. I may, but I'm not sure I shall.
Signed,
Upset
I'm upset at my ailing old father.
Stop yelling. Let me explain.
First, the facts: he's in his eighties, is married, lives thousands of miles away from me, is legally blind, until recently did work (at a supermarket), and most recently fell at home and broke his hip. He is out of the hospital with a replacement joint and is convalescing at a rehabilitation center. I have two siblings. One of them is going to visit with him and my mother very shortly. On a recent call, my father, from his sickbed, informed me that he would be needing several hundred dollars a month from me and my siblings (combined)--for me, an affordable sum--because he could no longer work. My mother has not worked in many years though I believe she'd have been able to for most of that time.
Second, my immediate dilemma: should I go visit him? I have pressing business matters right now--no, really, I do. I'm not making that up.
Now, the background--and the reason I am upset. Or the reason I have been upset.
Without belaboring too much my distant past, let's just say that my parents provided a home in the suburbs that was unwelcoming enough for me, who by any stretch of the imagination should have been college-bound at the time, to leave first when I was seventeen and then, after having failed at leaving and a brief Harry-Potteresque residence in an unfinished space under a stairwell in their new home, to leave for good and forever when I had just turned eighteen with less than a thousand dollars to may name for some place I and my girlfriend at the time referred to as "out West".
That all worked out for me I guess. I have a business, a decent income, I am happily married with two wonderful children, one of them is in college, and my paintings are occasionally shown at galleries. My Dad says he is proud of me.
So here is the rub. My parents did little and nothing for me as a teenager. Of course I was difficult. I did things I would never want my teens to do (as who has not?). But they--I feel (and others who know the story agree)--had pretty much abandoned me, except for providing a crash pad and a chance to eat, by the time I was fourteen. (Example: I had a run-in with the cops when I was that age, during which I was victimized by same, and by the next day my parents had not only done nothing at all to address the event, they allowed me to go back out hitch-hiking).
As for the notion of college, there was virtually no conversation about it and certainly no offer of support from them (even at state schools which, as everyone knows, were, in the 1970s, cheap like penny candy).
Much, much more recently, through the twin wonders of social networking and email, I became embroiled in a very ugly exchange of "thoughts and feelings" between my brother, who initiated the episode with a spate of birther-worthy hate-speech, and my parents, whom my brother for no discernable good purpose cc'd during a heated email exchange in which he and I were both quite upset at one another mainly due to political differences. I had referenced some negative things about the family--and I suppose he wanted to wound me and them, and that began the emails between me and my mother and father.
In these emails I was, for the first time in perhaps thirty-five or forty years, very frank with them about my opinion of both their parenting skills and their--for lack of a better phrase I suppose--"belief system", which I hold to have been supported by a quite unwarranted self-satisfaction at how they have operated towards me for several decades. The emails were by turns bitter and defensive on their parts, and unusually frank and unsparing on mine.
We had left it as such until I got a call from my sister (a born-again Christian to whom I never speak) telling me that our father had fallen and was in the hospital.
I have spoken to him a few times. I now have a dilemma. I cannot say I especially want to go see him. But I cannot seem to avoid the very strong notion that, unless I do, I will deeply regret it.
Abby, what should I do?
Stop shouting. I know you're exhorting me to buy tickets. I may. I may, but I'm not sure I shall.
Signed,
Upset
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