The Right Places (7 page)

The
Southern Trail
is one of the Castros' newest playthings, and is very much a part of the new Fort Lauderdale. Mrs. Castro loves to show it off to visitors, freezer and all. The staterooms, it goes without saying, are all furnished with Castro Convertibles. There is a big Castro Convertible in the grand saloon, upholstered in ranch mink. “If you've got it, flaunt it!” says Mrs. Castro with a big, happy smile. One end of this Convertible opens to reveal a bar, where the champagne is kept, and the other end converts into a stereophonic sound setup. The most ambitious Convertible in the saloon is a chair, a perfectly ordinary-looking overstuffed chair. At the press of a button, though, its back flings open and out comes an ironing board and, at the same time from under the seat an electric hair-dryer emerges. If she owns one of these chairs (“one of our newies,” Mrs. Castro explains) the housewife can do her ironing and dry her hair at the same time. Mrs. Castro passes out handfuls of brochures to her guests describing other kinds of Castro Convertibles. “After all,” she explains, “we make this boat tax-deductible.” As soon as it is warm again up North, where the Castros have a big house on the North Shore of Long Island, Mrs. Castro and her friends cruise up the Intracoastal Waterway aboard the
Southern Trail
, drinking champagne, eating pasta, and playing gin rummy all the way.

Everybody agrees that Fort Lauderdale isn't what it used to be. But then what Fort Lauderdale
is
is something of a problem. It certainly isn't another Palm Beach, and it certainly isn't Miami. Socially speaking, it is somewhere about halfway between the two, which is just about where it is geographically. That is, people who admire Miami regard Fort Lauderdale as hopelessly stuffy, Early Goldwater Conservative, smugly snobby. Palm Beach, meanwhile, still clinging valiantly to the glitter of another era, refusing to admit that its chin is sagging, dismissed Fort Lauderdale long ago as garish, nouveau, tacky, and, as Palm Beach people have called it, “Kansas-City-by-the-sea.” But for those who live there, and wouldn't live anywhere else, Fort Lauderdale has a style and a charm that are all its own.

For one thing, the place is booming. Its population has had a habit of doubling every five years, and Fort Lauderdale, barely fifty years old, is already a city of over 150,000 permanent residents. Physically and economically, its boosters say, it is the fastest-growing town in the United States, which may mean in the world. Land development is the
name of the game if you are here to make a fortune (as most people frankly are and as it is in the California Valley), and the high-rise is what it's played with. Higher and higher rise the high-rises until they rake the heavens. They march along the oceanfront like so many gleaming white filing cabinets, and the sound of cement mixers is everywhere. The apartments and condominiums that these buildings contain sell so well that, in many cases, buildings have been completely sold before their foundations were even dug. It is said that this is the smart-money way to buy a condominium because, what with skyrocketing building costs, the same apartment you can buy from a builder's floor plan for fifty thousand dollars may wind up costing you seventy-five thousand dollars when the building is finished. Not long ago a man from Rye, New York, and his wife looked at a fulsomely decorated “model apartment” in a new Lauderdale high-rise, and offered to buy it just as it was—complete with everything it contained, right down to the ashtrays on the tables, pictures on the walls, books in the bookcases, and the plastic-flower centerpiece on the dining room table. When the builder demurred (he was, after all, using the model apartment as a selling tool, and to replace it would be costly and time-consuming), the Rye man offered twenty-five thousand dollars more, cash on the barrelhead, take it or leave it. The builder took it. The early-1970s business recession, spongy stock market, and tight money are said to have had “only a slight effect” on the Great Fort Lauderdale Boom.

With all this agitated growth, there have been, not surprisingly, growing pains. Developers, in the tradition of their breed, have tended to want to get their buildings up as rapidly as possible, the hell with what they look like. Some strange structural concoctions have resulted. Along one strip, the Gault Ocean Mile—which is beginning to resemble a mini-Miami Beach—the hotels and apartment houses have gone up Miami-fashion, cheek by jowl, with barely space to breathe between the buildings, and so crowded together that the tall buildings cast long afternoon shadows over what, perhaps, were intended to be sunny terraces and pools and beaches. Since Fort Lauderdale is on Florida's east coast, sun-worshippers must now get to the beach before midday; after that, the sun has set behind a mountain range of construction. From inland, what once were ocean views are now views of
other buildings. Further south, in a section called Point of Americas, the developers have been somewhat more considerate in their use of the land and have left more space between their buildings. Still, when the last building in the Point of Americas complex was completed, it managed to block the southeasterly view of the Atlantic that many apartment owners bought in their original package.

One of the unusual things about Fort Lauderdale has always been its seven-mile stretch of public beach, skirted gracefully by Highway A-1A. Neither Miami nor Palm Beach has anything like this beach, which is permanently protected from the developer's hand. It is this beach that periodically attracts throngs of college kids—particularly during Easter vacation. (They still come in droves, though a strong contingent has defected to Delray Beach, farther north.) But recently a grim ecological note has been sounded. From the highest of the high-rises, it is appallingly visible: a wide and spreading tongue of livid water that flows out of the Inland Waterway and from New River, through Port Everglades (itself a sewage dump for cruise ships) and out into the Atlantic Ocean at the southernmost tip of the city. Each year, the swathe of red-black water seems to grow wider, stretch out its feathery fingers farther. Increased development has meant increased pollution, and it has been estimated that if nothing is done, Fort Lauderdale's famous beach will be unfit for swimming in less than five years' time.

Socially, Fort Lauderdale is changing, too. Fort Lauderdale has been called “the Venice of America,” and for years it has been Florida's yachting capital. Within an area of thirty-five square miles of what was once a swamp, some two hundred and twenty miles of navigable canals and waterways have been carved, so that wherever you are in Fort Lauderdale you are never more than a few steps away from water (rather dirty water, to be sure), and you can tie up your boat in your backyard, as nearly everybody does. The yachting crowd that originally came to Fort Lauderdale was composed largely of Middle Westerners—retired executives of companies in Ohio, Michigan, Missouri, and Illinois, who may not have known much about yachting when they first arrived, but who had the cash and the time to learn. One-Upmanship in terms of yachts quickly became Fort Lauderdale's favorite parlor game, with “How big is your boat?” the commonest opening gambit.
It is said that a typical cocktail party conversation in Fort Lauderdale starts like this:

“Nice to meet you. How big is your boat?”

“Forty-seven feet. How big is yours?”

“Bigger.”

These relatively old-time residents might be said to form the social backbone of such institutions as the Coral Ridge Yacht Club and, more particularly, the Fort Lauderdale Yacht Club, headquarters of what has been called “the Geritol Set.” There is still a distinctly Middle Western flavor to life here. At the Parker Playhouse, the rule is “What goes over in Dayton will go over here,” and such Broadway hits as
The Boys in the Band
, about a group of homosexuals, are deemed unfit for Fort Lauderdale audiences (though Lauderdale is not without its “gay” bars). Even the much tamer
You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running
was ruled out as “too racy.”

There has, however, long been evidence that Fort Lauderdale is wearying of its reputation as an enclave of Middle Western retirees who have taken to boating for lack of anything better to do, whose most flourishing enterprise was the local chapter of the John Birch Society, and who were, quite incongruously, joined once a year by thousands of long-haired and half-naked youngsters from Eastern campuses who lived it up on the beach with drink, drugs, and sex, much of it free. Fort Lauderdale wanted to be taken seriously as a
city
, and a place where at least some aspects of the good life could be discovered. The biggest boost in this direction which Fort Lauderdale has received has been the recent development of Le Club International with its infusion of new and frankly flashy money like—well, like the Bernard Castros'.

Le Club and its beamish young host, Paul Holm, have proved several things about Fort Lauderdale all at once. They proved that there was, after all, a sleekly handsome Younger Set in Fort Lauderdale—they had been there all along, with no place to go, very much like the thin person who is supposed to be inside every fat person, trying to get out.

Now they are at Le Club night after night, dancing to hard, loud, fast music, and they include some of the prettiest girls Fort Lauderdale has seen in decades. “I don't know where Paul finds them,” confesses a friend. “I think they must come from a rental agency—a
kind of Hertz Rent-a-Tart.” When queried, Paul Holm merely smiles mysteriously. Le Club also contains a discreet number of guest rooms, accessible without the guest having to pass through the lobby, which many guests consider an advantage. Paul Holm has also proven that traditionally conservative Fort Lauderdale could make room for a club that has no religious or racial restrictions, and yet charges a fat one-thousand-dollar initiation fee for those who wish to join. The secret of Le Club's success, according to Holm, is simple. “People like to see celebrities,” he says, and so he has kept the flow of celebrities coming in a steady and persistent stream, in what has been called the “Hey, there” system. (“Hey, there's Hugh O'Brian … Hey, there's Dinah Shore playing tennis with Elke Sommer … Hey, there comes Joe Namath out of his houseboat,” and so on.) The formula certainly seems to be working.

Celebrities attract other celebrities as well as those who merely want to rub elbows with celebrities. Ann Miller, Groucho Marx, Danny Thomas, and dozens of others have been making their way to Fort Lauderdale, with so much partying going on that some people nickname it Fort Liquordale. Nancy Dickerson has taken an apartment there, and so, for a while at least, did Johnny Carson. Carson has a reputation for being a somewhat casual businessman. Not long ago his parents, Mr. and Mrs. “Kit” Carson, showed up at Ocean Manor, expecting to spend a few pleasant weeks in their son's apartment. An embarrassed management had to explain that the Carson lease had been allowed to expire several months before.

Fort Lauderdale has, in other words, become almost as glittery and glamorous as Palm Beach, without the latter's strained pomp and formality and endless emphasis on clothes-changing and gossip. And Fort Lauderdale has become as show-offy as Miami Beach, without the latter's strident vulgarity. There is, after all, a difference between wearing a mink stole on the beach and owning a mink-covered sofa bed—a subtle difference, perhaps, but still a difference. At the same time, Fort Lauderdale tries to keep one foot in its not-too-distant past, as can be seen from the crowds that turn up at the dog track, and in the intent faces of the purple-haired ladies who, night after night, fill up the Atlantic City-style auction rooms, feverishly bidding on secondhand diamond bracelets and “genuine antique” Chinese vases.

By day, Fort Lauderdale remains thoroughly dedicated to boats and boating, and Fort Lauderdale boating has developed its own breezy style. Where else but in Fort Lauderdale would you find a yacht with not one but two wood-burning fireplaces? Life for the yachtsman is comfortably upholstered wherever he turns, which has turned the Lauderdale marina business into an industry that takes in about a hundred million dollars a year. The Bahia Mar marina has dock space for three hundred private yachts and fifty sports-fishing boats. A yachting party can tie up here and, within minutes, be lolling on the wide Fort Lauderdale beach. Bahia Mar has its own shopping center with a self-service laundry, and a flossily got-out Patricia Murphy restaurant for indoor-outdoor dining. As insurance against a remote day when no yachts might show up, Bahia Mar also operates a 115-room motel.

If Bahia Mar seems too much like roughing it (with that self-service laundry, for example) there is always Pier 66, just up the canal. Pier 66 is the brainchild of Mr. Kenneth S. (“Boots”) Adams, retired board chairman of the Phillips Petroleum Company, a yachtsman who needed a place to park his boat. The result is a kind of high-rise gas station that rises a full seventeen stories above the pumps, designed in a moonstruck style. This tower contains 156 deluxe guest suites, each with a balcony, and a rooftop revolving cocktail lounge. When your yacht steams into the Pier 66 marina, you are met by a uniformed dockman who registers you as you would be registered at a hotel. Immediately, a telephone is plugged in, and your boat has full hotel services, including room service and laundry, which if sent out by eight, will be delivered back to your stateroom by 5
P.M.
(These details are outlined to you in honeyed tones by your super-dockman when you tie up.) Pier 66 facilities also include shops, a liquor store, ice cubes, two heated swimming pools, three more non-revolving cocktail lounges—and a great many other things. Sixty-six is the magic number for the Phillips Petroleum Company. (It seems that when testing their gasoline back in 1927, a car got up to 66 miles an hour.) The 66 theme is everywhere. The hotel-marina complex had its first full season in 1966. The diameter of the revolving cocktail lounge is 66 feet. It takes 66 minutes for the room to make a complete revolution. The glass-enclosed outside elevator that slithers up and down the building takes
66 seconds to complete a one-way trip. And so on. Even the telephone number of Pier 66 is composed of double sixes.