I'm a little slow today. I just switched to Sanka. So...have a heart?

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Idiots.

I read about the Deco Festival in the Herald today, and I was struck by this dumb comment:

"Others came for the architecture, including Sara Fish, who was visiting the festival for the first time from Palm Beach.

''I'm disappointed that the buildings are solid colors, white and beige,'' said Gloria Golden, Fish's cousin from New York. ''The buildings aren't original, really sticking with the Art Deco style and colors,'' she said, pointing at the Deco Walk Hotel in front of her. ``It's strange because its supposed to be original.''

Note to Ms. Golden:

The pastel color palette which you're so disappointed is fading from Miami Beach, is not original to the Deco Movement. The Deco hotels would have been mostly white or off-white in their time, as White and Off-White would have reflected our hot, hot tropical sun, during an era when there was no such thing as air conditioning. So, in essence, it is original, and you're wrong. Wrong and dumb. Maybe if we didn't complain so much...?

The palette of which you speak was introduced in the 1980s to bring out the lines of the buildings that people weren't used to looking at. The colors aren't so much original as they're accents from the 80s and early 90s, and they were heavily photographed and used as propaganda to lure people down here, and make them forget that our city was the city of coke smuggling and tourist carjacking and murders. Sorry that the hotels are moving away from the Disney Pastels used to lure tourists down here in the early days of Modern Miami Beach, but they're going back to how they originally were, now that Miami Beach has reinvented itself...again.

And what buildings weren't original? The Cavalier is original. The Breakwater is being refurbished. The Kenmore is original, Pelican, Betsy Ross, Winterhaven, Astor, Ritz Plaza, Congress, Colony, Davis... Shall I go on?

I can't wait till I move to the beach. I'm going to join the Architectual society and become a tourguide! I'd be awesome at that... and because I'm a know-it-all smartypants, I'll be able to answer people's questions!

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