Same Pier, Different Place
I notice things have changed as I walk down the shore to the pier at Pompano Beach. The Atlantic Ocean to my left is gorgeous, quiet, and restful. But on my right, across from this gorgeous ocean, is a long, graying panorama of unkept windswept condos.
They all seem empty. It's weird. The beach should be littered with tan locals and pale tourists alike! It's high season. It's winter. This is the season where South Florida makes its money. But as I walk down the shore to the pier at Pompano Beach, it is empty. The economic recession is in full swing. It has punched South Florida in the face. The recession has already made life, as my father used to say to me when times where tough, "tough all over."
I reach the pier. I ascend the familiar sandy steps. When I reach the top? It has changed. Except for the beaten, wooden pier that extends out into the ocean...
Everything is gone! The crab shack, the bait shop, the pizza place, the bar with bad conch fritters, they're all gone! It's just pavement and sand. No longer is it the terrible fisherman's den that my father used to drag me to. It is the clean and winswept spot. I walk up to the man in the temporary little bait shop/bar/pizza shack and I ask him, Hugh, what happened. Hugh says they raized the old structure in order to build a new nicer plaza twice the size. I ask when they tore everything down. “About a year ago,” he says.
Have I been gone that long?
He points to the plans beside his window that show the architectural designs for the very nice, very wide plaza that will someday replace the old pier’s beaten, wooden shops with thatched roofs strewn over old wooden beams that look like they fell off pirate ships.
It’s a shame, really. While the architectural design is very nice in concept, it has the same look of any modern strip mall in Fort Lauderdale, the more popular city just south of Pompano. Same Spanish architecture. Same beige and coral hues. It’s a nice drawing, really. Not very Pompano Beach, but nice. Pompano is more… rough hewn than this nice thing. Pompano Beach is still more fisherman's town than Fort Lauderdale is. Less glitz. Less glamour. Less money. Much more Venice than Santa Monica, if you happen to know what I mean.
And it’s a shame the Pompano city planners chose to throw this identity out. For while the thatched, palm roofs and graying wood of the old shops were impractical as materials, incorporating the experience of those brandable elements into the new structure’d help preserve its identity. Perhaps even create a pride in the history of the 40 year old city structure, instead of implicitly showing embarrassment by erasing it
I ask Hugh when the plaza is supposed to be complete. "It's on hold because of the recession," he says. I shake my head, "Man, it's tough all over."
It's tough all over. Shops by the waterfront are closing down (for good) and yet no patrons are even around buy their 80% off items. I enter one of two shops still open on the block. The sign says, “Nothing is over $5.” I expect to find a stable of cheesy t-shirts, faux henna tatts, and Miami Vice colored trinkets.
Mostly it's cheesy Florida t-shirts and fake henna tattoos. But as I flip through those beloved cheesy Florida t-shirts, one actually catches my eye. The front says “Same Same." The back just says, “But Different." I like it. I buy it.
“Things are tough all over,” I say as I open conversation with Ayal, the owner. He nods. Ayal is closing down his small shop on Atlantic Blvd and is looking for a new state to live in. Florida, as a whole, is getting too expensive or him. “The summer was just dead, and that was tough,” he says, and “but now the busy season is dead now. No one is here. Nobody comes here. It’s dead.”
And it’s true. With this much beachfront property, I have to ask though: why does nobody come here? As I walk north on A1A, there is nothing but condos. Mostly empty. Even the newest ones - empty. All the space in the world to rent, but nothing – just nothing – to do. To build a more social community, people need good interaction spaces, not just space. Space is just the arena. Spaces are made memorable by the interactions made within them. But this space? No energy in the air. No people in the condos. No people in general.
That's what I'm missing from my walk today: the people that are normally here when I'm around the pier.
With nothing but condos to look at on A1A, I head back to the beach. At the pier I decide to pay a dollar to walk out where my father would occasionally take me to fish and talk. Mostly against my will and mostly to have those uncomfortable talks – sex, alcohol & drugs, finance – in some sort of public privacy. I dreaded those once.
But now he is gone, too. And the walk out there makes me think of him. Or rather, I’m in fact going out there to think of him and asking the old scenery to fill in the blanks of those wonderfully angst-ridden memories I have of him. I have no fishing pole, but I do go out to the edge of the pier by the fishermen. Some fishermen are teaching their children to fish. Some cocky teen with salt-broken blonde hair cleans a nice snapper with quick, skillful cuts. The young ones watch with amazement.
Another man with eight poles in the water wrings his hands. Watches the waters from edge-to-edge. He's desparate. I can tell he’s one of the fathers straight away. But what does not occur to me for awhile is that he's desparate because it is late in the day and he, it would seem from his actions, he needs to catch this food.
“Life is hard,” is what Dad would inevitably say to the end of those talks, “But Sean Ryan, things are tough all over.” I think of those words as I walk back to the base of the pier that no longer exists and I understand a little bit better that, yes, life is tough all over. And not only is it hard, time passes. And the even though this pier is the same, without the thatched roof shops, without the graying old wood, without bait shop, and without my father and his heartfelt talks?
Same same. Sure. But it's sure different.
They all seem empty. It's weird. The beach should be littered with tan locals and pale tourists alike! It's high season. It's winter. This is the season where South Florida makes its money. But as I walk down the shore to the pier at Pompano Beach, it is empty. The economic recession is in full swing. It has punched South Florida in the face. The recession has already made life, as my father used to say to me when times where tough, "tough all over."
I reach the pier. I ascend the familiar sandy steps. When I reach the top? It has changed. Except for the beaten, wooden pier that extends out into the ocean...
Everything is gone! The crab shack, the bait shop, the pizza place, the bar with bad conch fritters, they're all gone! It's just pavement and sand. No longer is it the terrible fisherman's den that my father used to drag me to. It is the clean and winswept spot. I walk up to the man in the temporary little bait shop/bar/pizza shack and I ask him, Hugh, what happened. Hugh says they raized the old structure in order to build a new nicer plaza twice the size. I ask when they tore everything down. “About a year ago,” he says.
Have I been gone that long?
He points to the plans beside his window that show the architectural designs for the very nice, very wide plaza that will someday replace the old pier’s beaten, wooden shops with thatched roofs strewn over old wooden beams that look like they fell off pirate ships.
It’s a shame, really. While the architectural design is very nice in concept, it has the same look of any modern strip mall in Fort Lauderdale, the more popular city just south of Pompano. Same Spanish architecture. Same beige and coral hues. It’s a nice drawing, really. Not very Pompano Beach, but nice. Pompano is more… rough hewn than this nice thing. Pompano Beach is still more fisherman's town than Fort Lauderdale is. Less glitz. Less glamour. Less money. Much more Venice than Santa Monica, if you happen to know what I mean.
And it’s a shame the Pompano city planners chose to throw this identity out. For while the thatched, palm roofs and graying wood of the old shops were impractical as materials, incorporating the experience of those brandable elements into the new structure’d help preserve its identity. Perhaps even create a pride in the history of the 40 year old city structure, instead of implicitly showing embarrassment by erasing it
I ask Hugh when the plaza is supposed to be complete. "It's on hold because of the recession," he says. I shake my head, "Man, it's tough all over."
It's tough all over. Shops by the waterfront are closing down (for good) and yet no patrons are even around buy their 80% off items. I enter one of two shops still open on the block. The sign says, “Nothing is over $5.” I expect to find a stable of cheesy t-shirts, faux henna tatts, and Miami Vice colored trinkets.
Mostly it's cheesy Florida t-shirts and fake henna tattoos. But as I flip through those beloved cheesy Florida t-shirts, one actually catches my eye. The front says “Same Same." The back just says, “But Different." I like it. I buy it.
“Things are tough all over,” I say as I open conversation with Ayal, the owner. He nods. Ayal is closing down his small shop on Atlantic Blvd and is looking for a new state to live in. Florida, as a whole, is getting too expensive or him. “The summer was just dead, and that was tough,” he says, and “but now the busy season is dead now. No one is here. Nobody comes here. It’s dead.”
And it’s true. With this much beachfront property, I have to ask though: why does nobody come here? As I walk north on A1A, there is nothing but condos. Mostly empty. Even the newest ones - empty. All the space in the world to rent, but nothing – just nothing – to do. To build a more social community, people need good interaction spaces, not just space. Space is just the arena. Spaces are made memorable by the interactions made within them. But this space? No energy in the air. No people in the condos. No people in general.
That's what I'm missing from my walk today: the people that are normally here when I'm around the pier.
With nothing but condos to look at on A1A, I head back to the beach. At the pier I decide to pay a dollar to walk out where my father would occasionally take me to fish and talk. Mostly against my will and mostly to have those uncomfortable talks – sex, alcohol & drugs, finance – in some sort of public privacy. I dreaded those once.
But now he is gone, too. And the walk out there makes me think of him. Or rather, I’m in fact going out there to think of him and asking the old scenery to fill in the blanks of those wonderfully angst-ridden memories I have of him. I have no fishing pole, but I do go out to the edge of the pier by the fishermen. Some fishermen are teaching their children to fish. Some cocky teen with salt-broken blonde hair cleans a nice snapper with quick, skillful cuts. The young ones watch with amazement.
Another man with eight poles in the water wrings his hands. Watches the waters from edge-to-edge. He's desparate. I can tell he’s one of the fathers straight away. But what does not occur to me for awhile is that he's desparate because it is late in the day and he, it would seem from his actions, he needs to catch this food.
“Life is hard,” is what Dad would inevitably say to the end of those talks, “But Sean Ryan, things are tough all over.” I think of those words as I walk back to the base of the pier that no longer exists and I understand a little bit better that, yes, life is tough all over. And not only is it hard, time passes. And the even though this pier is the same, without the thatched roof shops, without the graying old wood, without bait shop, and without my father and his heartfelt talks?
Same same. Sure. But it's sure different.
posted by Sean Connolly at
1:19 PM
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