LETTER FROM NEW YORK

LETTER FROM NEW YORK – 5

March 13, 2009

Technically, this is a letter from Miami Beach.  When the New York winter gets to us, we repair to an apartment on the beach, bought by my parents thirty years ago.  My father has passed on and my mother is beyond her travel days, but the apartment maintains its allure for the generations that follow.  Miami Beach has changed a lot since we started coming here.  In those days, South Beach was filled with decrepit hotels where elderly Jews rocked on porches staring at the swaying palm trees with not much interest or delight.  Today, of course, South Beach is a tourist destination, offering miles of beautifully restored Art Deco buildings, as well as brand new, brand-name luxury resorts complete with private art collections, fabulous pools for the fabulously hip and tented cabanas on the pristine beach.

When my family first started coming to Miami, I was just out of college and happy to go anywhere my parents were willing to pay for.  We stayed in one of the many kosher hotels that dotted the boardwalk interspersed with an occasional grand hotel long past its prime.  We kept on coming year after year, adding spouses, children, and eventually that apartment, as our families grew. Our evenings were spent at the Fountainebleau Hotel, which in the fifties had lodged the rich and famous, from movie stars to heads of state.  The lobby was shabby, the atmosphere dreary, but it had a dilapidated underground mall with tacky clothing stores and a games arcade that could keep the kids occupied for as many hours as they had quarters to put in the slots. Since then, the Fountainebleau has undergone a five-year, billion dollar renovation.  The games are gone, replaced by gourmet restaurants where a meal for two can cost the equivalent of a car payment. And while the clothing may still be tacky, the price tags attest to the fact that this is not the same Miami Beach. 

When my husband and I are in Miami Beach, we spend a part of each day walking along the boardwalk that stretches for several miles along the edge of the beach.  Usually, I’m mesmerized by the shifting colors of the ocean as the sun pops in and out of frothy clouds. But this time, I was pre-occupied, trying to think of a topic for my next letter from New York.  “Write about the death of the tomato,” my husband said.  I knew exactly what he meant.