LauderBlog

This place is impressive. And I think many tourists would enjoy it as much as locals. Yesterday, I finally checked out the new Yellow Green Farmers Market in Hollywood. I was expecting, oh I dunno - a big place with some fruit and veggie stands, I guess. Not much more than that, probably with mediocre produce too. But I was wrong. For one thing, the Yellow Green Farmers Market isn't just big. It is cavernous. Huge, totally. And this also is much more than your typical "farmers market." Instead, it's a spot where you can find locally made arts and crafts and foods and clothing and stuff for your kids and other stuff for your pets. And more. I had no idea that the Yellow Green Farmers Market was anything like this.

Neither did Gwendolyn when she suggested we head over there on Sunday afternoon. It was yet another stunning January day in South Florida. The sky was clean and clear and the temperature was about 73 or so. "Wanna go see that Hollywood farmers market?" she asked me. Hey, why not? Sure.

Remember, we were going there late on a Sunday afternoon as the market was near closing for the weekend. But when we arrived, the parking lot still was packed with cars. Inside, the first thing I noticed was a photographic mural of a bucolic rural scene, a lovely shot covering one wall within this massive building. Then we wandered among the small stalls, starting at a long row of food stands. I'm talking about prepared meals, inexpensive and interesting foods such as gumbo or tacos or Vietnamese sandwiches. There were several produce stands, yes. I bought some nice local romaine lettuce. But we also found many merchants selling their handmade candles and paintings, handcarved masks and artisan jewelry. All kinds of goods, all kinds of food products. For instance, I saw locally produced raw honey, a huge bottle for $8. We passed stands selling homemade pies, homemade empanadas, homemade breads. It all looked delicious to me ... and was making me very hungry. We spent a good half hour or more just walking by all the little stalls. Next visit, I want to go earlier and allow much more time. This is a pretty cool addition to Greater Fort Lauderdale and a terrific destination for locally produced gifts or quality local foods. As I said, impressive. The Yellow Green Farmers Market website is http://www.ygfarmersmarket.com/ and their phone is 954-513-3990. The market is open only on weekends, from 8 am to 4 pm. It's a little tough to find at first, located off Taft Street at 1940 North 30^th Road. (That's a bit south of Sheridan and a bit west of I-95.) But once you get there, I suspect, you may find the place just as impressive as I did.

Wow, you guys are having some winter up there, eh? Up in the frigid north, I mean. I know what you're going through, believe me. Been there, done that - many times. I lived in Vermont for 14 years and recall the long, bitter winters I endured. I vividly remember two shivering weeks when the mercury never rose above zero degrees. Fahrenheit, that is. I've experienced a true temperature of -35F on a number of occasions. That's the kind of thing you're contending with now. Yikes. So I was amused to learn that Fort Lauderdale has come to your rescue, at least those of you living in New York City. Our tourism folks are in Manhattan passing out Fort Lauderdale ice scrapers and special cards that tell how a lucky twosome can win a free trip to South Florida's balmy sunshine.

If you're stuck there and haven't bumped into those people yet, or maybe don't live in NYC, you can still get a chance to snag that trip by checking out this link: www.sunny.org/findyoursunny. On the website, you also can learn about taking $100 off a Fort Lauderdale vacation through JetBlue.

Our clever tourism officials have even posted a billboard above Times Square with an enticing beach scene. And the Greater Fort Lauderdale Beachmobile has been tooling around town too. I love this thing - a glass-encased, rolling beach that tours the cold, cold city streets to remind everyone that, hey, it really is warm and sunny somewhere. This year, Greater Fort Lauderdale has added a funny new wrinkle to its annual New York winter tourism campaign. They dubbed it, "Defrost Your Swimsuit." Haha. The phrase alone makes me chuckle. So here's the deal: they froze four swimsuits in big blocks of ice and then "freed" the swimsuits for a thorough defrosting. Preferably, defrosting on the beach somewhere down here. Really, you have to appreciate the wit, don't you? Of course, it's much easier to appreciate the wit when you've got your windows open to the 70 degree air, as I do right now. It's supposed to hit 76 today, then dip a bit to highs just above 70 for the next few days. Then it'll warm up. Sorry. I know it must be painful to read about summery weather when you're suffering Arctic temps. Anyway, I'm just saying ... Greater Fort Lauderdale is doing what we can to help out, all right? If you can swing down our way sometime in the next couple months, warm relief will be here waiting for you. And if you can't, well, maybe you can score one of those Fort Lauderdale ice scrapers.

I've found a new spot for jazz. And sometimes blues too, I'm told. I can't vouch for that blues part yet. But since the club's name is Blue Jean Blues, I feel fairly comfortable in taking their word for it. Really, though, this is a fun place located right along A1A north of Oakland Park Boulevard. Some wonderful friends had stumbled on Blue Jean Blues recently and thought I'd like their find. They were right. So they suggested we all meet there last Friday night to catch some live jazz along with a wine tasting. Warren and Dee arrived first, holding a pleasant table near the door for the four of us. When Gwendolyn and I finally made it, we both were surprised how big the crowd was - and how charming the atmosphere inside the club.

Blue Jean Blues reminds me of one of those small jazz joints in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, the kind of cozy club where you hang out among serious jazz listeners. It's all exposed brick, with a small stage that holds a grand piano. There's soft lighting everywhere and tight seating that feels intimate rather than uncomfortable.

On Friday night a female singer was crooning jazz standards to a piano accompaniment, a swinging little duo that I found very enjoyable. After getting our hands stamped for the wine tasting, Gwendolyn and Dee made their way to a long table where the special food and beverage selection was set up. Warren and I followed soon after, all of us starting with a Chilean chardonnay as I recall. Fruity and light, the wine was pleasant to sip along with the nice apples and strawberries and cheeses that were part of the tasting. Blue Jean Blues also put out some good crackers and thick slices of cappocola - plenty of food to offset the wines. I thought the cheeses were unusually good for an inexpensive wine tasting, actually, especially the sharp Irish cheese. The wine tasting cost just $20 per person. For this reasonable amount, they offered five wines and poured generously enough that I tried only three of them before driving home. It was a delightful evening. Warren and Dee are great people to be around. And they have really good taste, as their suggestion of Blue Jean Blues proved again. The club does attract a mostly older crowd, or at least that was true the night we were there. I didn't see a lot of folks in their 20s and 30s. But whatever your age, you definitely should check out Blue Jean Blues if you like live jazz. You can learn more at http://www.bluejeanblues.net/. Or call 954-306-6330. It happens that I dearly love listening to live jazz. So, no, you cannot infer anything about my age when I tell you that I'll be back again. Soon.

I'm back in warm, delightful Fort Lauderdale after a few days away. I was up in the cold country, as you may recall. I saw snow on the ground. Ice on the lake. Skeleton trees silhouetted against a frigid moon. Birds crowding a feeder because they could find little else to eat. I enjoyed my brief winter sampler. But wow, this 70-something degree weather feels good to me. When I arrived at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, I stepped off the plane into pleasant humidity and comfortable heat. Nice. Then a funny thing happened that reminded me I was, indeed, back home. I stood with everyone else, waiting for the baggage carousel to bring my suitcase. Suddenly we heard the blast of a cruise ship horn along with smaller tugboat toots, followed by another couple of cruise horns. It was the airport's tongue-in-cheek signal that the carousel was about to move.

I chuckled to myself and so did some of the other passengers. The horns were just another way for Greater Fort Lauderdale to tell the world that this community is assuming the pre-eminent role in the cruise industry.

Last time I looked, Fort Lauderdale's Port Everglades still hadn't quite crossed into the lead for total cruise passengers. But we're very close now. And experts say Port Everglades should take over the top spot sometime within a year or so. Viewed from another angle, though, Fort Lauderdale already is this planet's cruise capital. Cruise ships bring us more than $1.3 billion in economic activity each year. We've got a perfect alignment of seaport and airport, which are located within a short taxi ride of each other. And both are very easy to get into and out of. We are the home port for the two largest cruise ships as well: Allure of the Seas and Oasis of the Seas. Fort Lauderdale hosts more than 50 different cruise ships from 15 cruise lines. Just take a look some Sunday morning from the 17^th Street bridge and you'll see a bunch of them. Everything from Carnival to Holland America, Royal Caribbean to Silversea. This week, Cunard's new Queen Elizabeth paid her maiden call on Port Everglades too. Whether or not the raw figures quite tell the tale yet, Fort Lauderdale has become "the" place to start and end a cruise. And really, why not? Look at the weather we're having today. It's not even noon and the temp is 77 degrees with intermittent sun. On January 19. Cold winter weather can hold its own charms - for a while. But no kidding, you wouldn't want to begin a January cruise from the chilly state I just visited. As much fun as I had while away, I'm glad to be home.
(Photo: Two Queens approaching Port Everglades on Sunday, 1/16. Courtesy of Len Kaufman)

I've never met you, but let me take a wild guess. You love chocolate. I know that I dearly love chocolate. Most of us do. Yes, there are exceptions. (I even have friends who will pass up perfectly delicious chocolate ice cream for plain old vanilla. Despite this, we remain friends somehow.) But it's pretty safe to say that chocolate is a distinct treat for many of us and a passion for others. And for some people, it's an addiction. I worked with a guy in the Sun Sentinel newsroom who felt he had to consume something chocolate every single day of his life. This was long before a chocolate-lover's dream shop called Schakolad opened on Las Olas Boulevard. I've passed it a number of times since it first arrived but I hadn't stopped for some reason.

Just the other day, I finally went inside Schakolad with my girlfriend. And whoa - were we impressed. I had expected very pricey confections, quite honestly. But that's not the case at all. The first thing you see is a display case loaded with delightful objects made entirely of chocolate. At very affordable prices.

A full-size chocolate telephone costs $30, for instance. They had a miniature chocolate piano, a chocolate manicure kit, a chocolate high heel shoe and lots more. You even can get chocolate business cards with your corporate logo. Or how about a toothbrush and toothpaste made from chocolate? Everything reasonably priced. When we walked into the store, a woman was making one of more than 200 chocolate Oscars for some big bar mitzvah. No kidding, chocolate replicas of Hollywood's Oscar statuettes. This store is a terrific addition to Fort Lauderdale's prime shopping street. After Gwendolyn and I kind of drooled our way through the shop, we settled on some of Schakolad's homemade gelato. I ordered chocolate gelato - what else? Gwendolyn got, well, vanilla. Whatever. Seriously, though, both were excellent ... I tried a couple tastes of her vanilla, just to be sure. Schakolad has a website at www.schakolad.com/store40. It's a franchise, you see. If you navigate to the main company website, you'll find the Schakolad story including their vision statement: "To cover the world in chocolate." Who could argue? The Las Olas store also has coffee drinks and individual chocolates and all sorts of other stuff that sounds awfully tasty. Schakolad is located at 1038 E. Las Olas. Their phone number is 954-306-8030. This is a spot most definitely worth checking out for yourself. But really, if you go please do get something chocolate. I think vanilla is a perfectly fine flavor, mind you. When you're inside a place like Schakolad, though, vanilla seems just plain wrong.

So I was driving through Lauderdale-by-the-Sea last weekend. Another spectacular, warm January morning. I noticed the car following me had California license plates. Then I pulled up to a stoplight behind a New Jersey car. I was sandwiched between tourists. I watched another automobile pass by me in the left turn lane. Wisconsin. It was amazing, actually, even for a local who's very accustomed to tourist plates. Because within the next two blocks alone, I spotted cars from Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut. Ontario, Georgia, New York. Then some oddball foreign plate I didn't recognize. Then Delaware. Ontario again, New York and New York and back to Massachusetts. I had predicted several weeks ago that this would be a very busy busy-season for us here in Greater Fort Lauderdale. But wow.

On my oceanside drive, I started to feel as if most of the Florida cars had been replaced by automobiles from every other state in the union. Not true, of course. The out-of-state folks had just added heavily to the mix of Florida cars on the road. But still, it was kinda weird there for a while.

New Jersey finally turned off and I almost felt relieved to come up on a BMW with a good ol' Florida license plate. But then this guy changed lanes and there in front of me - another dude from Wisconsin. That's not the half of it. By the time I got home, I'd seen Quebec and Quebec once more and then more of Ontario too. And many of those other places again that I already mentioned: Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and Connecticut and New York and New Jersey. Rhode Island as well and Michigan a few times. And, and, and. On and on it all went this way. I also saw lots of other South Florida visitors who were on foot along the beach - tourists just as obviously as the drivers with non-Florida plates. They wore summer clothes, for one thing. Flip-flops, baggy shorts, t-shirts. They were smiling and pointing at the ocean and clearly feeling happy to be alive. Locals may feel happy to be alive too, but we show it differently. And we probably aren't dressed quite the same way in January as in July. Anyway, I kept tooling on down A1A, then to Federal Highway and south. I finally arrived at my little side street and pulled into the left turn lane. A car was waiting ahead of me for the traffic to clear. The license plate was from Illinois. Like I said, a busy busy-season for sure. 

Later this week, I'm leaving gorgeous South Florida for a colder clime. Am I nuts? Before you answer, let me explain that some wonderful human beings would be quick to tell you - yes, he just may possibly be nuts. I might as well be upfront with you about that. True, I will not be gone long. Ok, only about four days. And I'm not exactly traveling to the Arctic Circle. I say all this in my own defense. Still, many many many people pay lots and lots of good money for the chance to stay in Greater Fort Lauderdale at this time of year. And here I am, flying north several hundred miles in January. By choice. This is not something a sane person would do, surely. Sane people come to South Florida. Only the nutballs head north.

To make you question my sanity a bit further, I will offer some additional details. The weather forecast where I'm going calls for much colder-than-normal conditions. I'll be heading off to North Carolina to visit my family there. My sister just emailed me to say, "DO BRING WARM CLOTHES. The low is to be around 18. In the house it will be fine but going out - BRRRRR!! Like Vermont. We may even have snow - or ice."

As I write this blog, I'm sitting in my Dania Beach condo with windows wide open to the breeze. It is sunny and pleasant. The air temperature is 73 degrees. Despite that, I am wearing a black cotton turtleneck as I work because it feels, well, slightly brisk to me at the moment. See what I mean? Someone who's chilled when it's 73 must be wacky to voluntarily go some place that should feel about like Helsinki. I did book the flight in October, long before North Carolina experienced a white Christmas. So I suppose that's another point in my favor here. Hey, and I also happen to love my family very much - what can I say? My sis and brother-in-law and nieces and nephews all are scattered around that state and I'm gonna see them all. Assuming we're not snowbound in Raleigh, that is. Which sounds entirely possible. Sheesh. Kidding aside, I think I'll actually enjoy this very brief taste of some real winter weather. I'm an ex-Northerner, after all. Just as long as that taste is, indeed, brief. And as long as I know that the sunshine and palm trees and beaches all are waiting for me in South Florida. I may be nuts but, believe me, I'm not crazy.

It sounds so futuristic to me somehow. Our new year: 2011. I've talked to friends who feel that way. You too maybe? I guess it just seems that, wow, we're now charging well into the new century and the new millennium. Has it really been 11 years since the calendar flipped over to 2000? Yep, it has. I'd imagined that we would have colonies on the moon or something by this time. That still appears to be some long way from happening. But I noticed that Fort Lauderdale officials are doing their part to move us toward a bold new future in 2011. They are about to allow morning liquor sales on Sundays. I, for one, would like to offer a word in response: Yay! And another few words too: It's about time.

You see, there was an era when South Florida wasn't like a separate state. It was more like the rest of Florida with a fairly traditional Southern culture. And so Blue Laws were common, even all the way down here in Broward County. These were regulations about things like Sundays and churchgoing and drinking and such.

Somewhere along the line, Fort Lauderdale officials in their wisdom decided people should be in church on Sunday mornings. The booze could wait until after the noon hour. Then things changed. We call this change, "modern life." South Florida changed as well. And so did Fort Lauderdale and the communities around it. We grew up. The whole region has taken on more sophisticated ways over the past two decades. Tourists travel here from great urban cultural centers - from New York and Chicago, from Montreal and Toronto, from London and Stockholm and Paris. These folks are on vacation when they're in Greater Fort Lauderdale. And mon dieu, they would like to enjoy a lovely cocktail when they wake up on Sunday. Is that too much to ask? They don't think so and neither do I. Speaking as a local, I have sometimes shared their frustration. During my beach staycations, sure, but also when I simply wanted to go out for a terrific breakfast by the sea ... with a mimosa or Bloody Mary, thank you very much. The current law has never made any sense to me. So yes, I am very glad to see that Fort Lauderdale city officials are about to change that regulation. The final vote is still a few weeks off but it's highly likely the new ordinance will pass. When it does, I hope to be among the first to celebrate with a Sunday Bloody Mary at 10am. Of course, I'm not suggesting any of this has quite the significance of colonies on the moon or anything. But I can think of worse ways to start 2011.

If you're not in South Florida right now, I'm sorry. Really. I was thinking about this over the weekend - about just how lucky we are to enjoy this particular place at this particular time. Those of us who live here do so, in part, for this very thing: tropical winters. Those who visit Greater Fort Lauderdale come in larger numbers during this period for that same reason. The New Year's weekend was just about ... perfect. What other word can I use? Sunshine with no rain at all, not a drop. Clear blue seas. Daytime air temps in the 70s, nighttime in the 60s. Light breezes, just enough to rustle the palm fronds. Like I said, what other single word really describes those conditions? Perfect. The forecast calls for much the same in the coming days.

Of course, I understand that many of you who read this blog can't be with us just now to soak up our great weather. Much as you might wish you were. Much as I feel absolutely certain you wish you were. So I thought I'd begin the new year with a suggestion for you.

How about a warm, sunny, tropical view of our beaches - live? Probably sounds pretty good if you're stuck in the snow. I suppose in some ways this is the next best thing to being here. I mention it today for a couple reasons. First, as a reminder about the popular Beach Cams on this website. Maybe it's been a while since you've checked them out. Or maybe you've never gotten around to doing that. Second, to tell you about a brand new Beach Cam that recently was added to the array of live shots from our Blue Wave beaches. The latest one can be found at the top of the page at http://sunny.org/visitors/livebeachviews. It comes from Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, specifically from a balcony at the Windjammer Beach Resort. And it's in high-def. The Windjammer Beach Cam is particularly cool because it's a continuous streaming view rather than a series of updated snapshots. I just watched a woman walk on to the beach, spread out her blanket and sit down near the ocean. Back on the main Beach Cam page, you also can choose from among several other camera angles on Greater Fort Lauderdale's waterfronts. Including the Fort Lauderdale beach, of course, and Pompano Beach, Deerfield Beach and Hollywood. Even Port Everglades has a live camera now. So if you can't come down for our warm sunshine this week, you can absorb some of the rays through your computer. You'll get here for real when you can, no doubt. In the meantime, look at the bright side of things - you get to look at the ocean without sand sticking to your feet. I know that's poor compensation for being far away from South Florida today. But I'm afraid it's about the best I can do for you.