July 21: Street Party

It's Saturday night. Again. But it's not the usual thing this week. Because we're going to this "Saturday Nite Alive" deal my friends were talking about. Basically it's a big street party on the Fort Lauderdale beach. Supposedly pretty cool, even if it's been arranged by spelling-challenged promoters. Haha. Yeah, yeah I know - it's officially called "Saturday Nite Alive." Whatever. We took a free trolley to get here but they have reduced parking rates for anyone who wants to drive, I guess. Not sure it's going to be worth the time to check it all out but what the heck. Give it a try, right? So now here we are walking north on A1A and there are like so many bands everywhere. I'm hearing something that sounds like flamenco music, acoustic guitars being strummed like mad. Kinda fun. Then that flamenco sound starts blending in with some Caribbean stuff on steel drums and whatever else is in the air right now.

Those friends who came here last week told me there's like 20 bands spread out from the Sheraton Fort Lauderdale Beach Hotel north to the Atlantic Hotel. All I know is that I'm hearing a lot of music of all kinds. Even some hip-hop and electronic mixed in. Yeah, ok, this is cool. I admit it.

It's one of those typical summer nights on the Fort Lauderdale beach. The air feels sultry hot. Sweaty. Sexy. So many good-looking people walking around in everything you can imagine. Fine linen pants and dress shoes, cut-off shorts and flip-flops, dressed-up couples and dressed-down groups of folks. It's fun. I read somewhere that they have 25 restaurants and outdoor cafes along this stretch of the beach. That's easy to believe from the looks of it. Anyway we decide to slide into a couple café seats now and order. One margarita, one mojito please. Maybe then we'll wander somewhere else for dinner, ok? There's a beautiful, sweet seabreeze that cools things off as we sit listening to some Latin band. The moon is rising all ivory over the ocean and we're sipping those cocktails now and just smiling a lot. I'm not sure where we're going next but, like, who cares? The party started at 7 p.m. and goes up to 11 p.m. so we still have some time. Ya know, this Saturday Nite Alive thing is a great idea really. It happens every Saturday night in July so maybe we'll come back next week too. We'll see. For now, I don't want to think ahead even that far. Yeah for right now, this music and my mojito and the moon - they're enough for me.