An allegorical tale

Sporting News, The, July 10, 1995 by Pat Jordan

On Sunday mornings, my wife and I like to peddle our bicycles down to "The Strip," a misnomer today for Fort Lauderdale's public beach made famous in the 1960s as a spring break rendezvous for college students in the movie, "Where The Boys Are." For years, no self-respecting local ever went to "The Strip" between January and May, when it was packed with college students whose sport was screaming at passing cars and throwing up on the sidewalk after too many beers. Then, about 10 years ago, the city threw out the college students, harassing and arresting them for the slightest impropriety, and revitalized The Strip. It took five years to finish the job, but today The Strip is a beautiful, spotlessly clean stretch of white sand, palm trees, a low retaining wall that flickers colored neon lights at night, a brick promenade and, across the street, trendy new restaurants and outdoor cafes and refurbished hotels. The locals have flocked back to The Strip, and, in fact, nobody much calls it that anymore. We just call it "The Beach," and everyone in town knows what we mean.

The Beach is a great place to spend a Sunday afternoon. My wife likes to lie in the sand, close to the water, sunning herself. I prefer to sit on the low retaining wall, close to the sidewalk. I sit facing not the beach but the sidewalk and the street because I like to watch the passing action. I'll sit there, reading my newspaper, smoking my cigar, sipping from my beer and watching the action that, in a way, reminds me of some kind of everyman's Olympics.

In-line skaters pass by, singly and in pairs, gliding left-right in that speedskaters' way with their hands folded behind their backs. Some of them, young fathers and mothers, skate by pushing baby carriages and some of them, the more demonically possessed, insist on skating on the retaining wall at full speed. I see, to my left, some lunatic skating toward me. Just as I am about to get off the wall, he goes airborne, pulling his skates up to his behind, suspended in midair. He passes over my head with a whoosh, lands on the other side of the wall, skates up the wall's 6-foot-high curve and then leaps off again and lands at full speed on the sidewalk.

I wait, expectantly, for one of them to crash, but they never do.

Bodybuilders walk by, tanned and oiled, twitching their muscles for everyone to see. Old couples powerwalk past me, pumping their arms with tiny powder-blue weights in each hand. Joggers trot by, some of them with their dogs on leashes. Bicyclers. Well-to-do foreign tourists. It is a virtual promenade of people participating in their little sport. Even the passing cars fancy themselves race cars at the Indy 500. The hot Mustangs and Camaros lay strips of rubber from one stoplight to another, until inevitably, they are pulled over by a Fort Lauderdale cop, usually some big, muscled redneck with carrot-colored hair and freckles, an overgrown Huck Finn.

I love to sit there and watch the action just as I used to sit at the Mark 2100 and watch the action there, the same kind of minor, physical action as on the beach, only it was different. For years my wife and I would spend our Sundays at the Mark 2100, a beach hotel in a secluded, private section of the beach. The Mark was right on the beach, with its three outdoor bars, a restaurant and a wooden promenade alongside of sea grape and palm trees and the white sand. The bars and promenade and beach were crowded mostly with locals, because tourists had not discovered The Mark. As always, my wife would lie in the sand, close to the ocean, while I would sit at a table on the wooden walkway and watch the action on the beach.

Men in tiny bathing suits played furious games of paddle ball close to the water's edge. Men tossed Frisbees high into the water, and their dogs, Labs and other retrievers, swam through the surf to catch them. Joggers ran past in the wet sand. Strollers walked by. Young men, fresh out of the University of Florida, still Gators at 25, maybe stockbrokers now, tried to recapture their Gator days by tossing a football back and forth. Some of the action was inert but no less interesting. The strippers, male and female, in their G-strings, lay perfectly still on blankets, trying to get the perfect tan. Most of the people on the beach at The Mark worked nights, bartenders and barmaids, and this is where they would meet for social occasions during the afternoon. Some of those men who worked at night had jobs of dubious distinction. They sat in deck chairs, surrounded by beautiful young women, with their cellular phones to their ears and three beepers on the hip of their bathing suits.

There were young, single mothers there, too, and divorced fathers, with the kids for the weekend. I loved to watch it all, drinking my beer, smoking my cigar and reading the newspaper. Often, a friend would stop by, Freddy or Phil, and we'd have lunch at the outdoor restaurant overlooking the beach. My wife would join us and we'd spend hours there, drinking, eating, talking and laughing, and then at the end of the day we'd walk back to our car across the street in The Mark's parking lot.