You can't go home again

I believe the point of that old saying is that, while you can physically return, it's never quite the same. Situations, people, and locales change, and though you might return home, it's rarely the same. This of course is true everywhere, not just at home.

I lived in Fort Lauderdale for a year in 1999 and 2000, and as I'm setting a book there I recently returned to do some site research. I felt all important and stuff, too, going back on business. But I was indeed surprised at how much things had changed.

The old home place is still there, but the trees are bigger and they've added speed bumps in the parking lot. I moved out just in time to avoid those, I guess. The town I lived in North Lauderdale, seems to have gone downhill. The old city park I used to visit to play basketball with local kids or just sit on the swing, it's still there. But there are graffiti tags on the buildings, the basketball court was empty, and there were two broken-down cars in the parking lot with vacancy and towing notices on them. Tennis shoes hung from phone lines, and it seemed most of the signs around town had been tagged with one of two I-hope-they-aren't-but-I-think-they-are gang symbols. Yards had been let go. It was sad. The local strawberry and tomato field had been half plowed under to make way for a new gated apartment community, and the on-site produce market had gone out of business. I wouldn't move back if I were returning to Broward County today.

Downtown had seen more significant and much more positive change. In five years, something on the order of six new towers have been built in downtown, all 20 stories plus. The downtown that used to look like, as a friend of mine said, Waco, has become a dense and interesting place. Tampa, Jacksonville, and Orlando have all jumped on the downtown-living bandwagon lately, but Fort Lauderdale seems to have beat them all by a few years. It would be an interesting place to live, if you could afford it. Trouble is, few can. Tampa's fighting the same battle right now; how do we make downtown both desirable and affordable?

I dropped by the old office. Marketing is no longer on the same floor, and the community newspaper has moved to an entirely different building. I couldn't find either group. At the university, the planning department hadn't moved, but not a single one of the professors who taught me was still on staff, except of course for Dr. John DeGrove, the father of Florida growth management and one of the few professors who was actually competent to teach when I was there. He'll never leave. I had planned to spend a few minutes talking with him, but he was out of the office when I dropped by. As it was, when I'd sat down to write questions for him, I realized that they were all questions for his character, and not for him. I would have been wasting his time.

I was less impressed with Miami and Coral Gables. In fact, I couldn't wait to leave them, which I did earlier than I'd planned to on Friday afternoon. Funny. I'd always been terribly impressed with Coral Gables. It is a very nice place, University of Miami aside, but on Friday the traffic was too bad and I was too lost to have any fun. I did finally find the Biltmore, but never located the Venetian Pool. Miami was just a horrific mess, too horrific even for me to stop and take a picture of the courthouse. This of course means that I'll actually have to go back there at some point, hopefully on a Sunday when I can find parking.

Miami Beach had changed, mostly for the better. Nearly all the old art deco hotels on Ocean Drive have been are are being rehabbed. The building that served as The Birdcage in the movie looks to be nearly finished with its rehab, and should be a block of very pricey condos in a few months. The larger hotels at the southern end of the strip, south of 4th st, are still in bad shape. A few are vacant, more are mostly so, none are in terrific shape. I saw some signs of life there, though; one or two were being actively worked on and several others had signs in the windows advertising impending reconstruction. More impressive was the public parking garage on Collins entirely swathed in greenery, so that it looked like a giant cube of vine in the middle of the street. If you haven't been to Miami Beach you owe it to yourself to go. It's a piece of Americana entirely unique in the world.

Yes, things had definitely changed. Mostly for the better, occasionally for the worse. I no longer live there, which is clearly for the better.