If you've had ideas, gripes or questions that you've been meaning to get off your chest the past few months, or have questions about items scheduled to be discussed at the next Hallandale Beach City Commission meeting scheduled for Wednesday, May 21st at 1:30 p.m., please keep in mind that Tuesday night's Resident Forum meeting will be the last one hosted by Comm. Keith London until August.I've been meaning to mention this here for the past two weeks, but on the chance that you didn't know it or don't read the newspaper regularly, both Comm. London as well as Hollywood Mayor Peter Bober were named to the Miami SunPost 50 list at the beginning of the month.
Also named to the list was the late George Berlin of Aventura, one of the original partners of Turnberry Associates, who was so instrumental in so many aspects of that part of NE Dade becoming something more than just the weird no-man's land between Greynolds Park and Gulfstream Park Race Track, when I was growing-up in North Miami Beach in the 197o's, since there wasn't much around there besides a few Turnberry buildings.
As to the idea of the forums, which I've been to three of so far, it's politically self-evident that smart and pro-active information outreach and sharing throughout the community is an important element of both effective governance and electioneering, yet given what I've seen over the last four years, it seems to be a point lost on all but a few people in Hallandale Beach, Hollywood and Aventura, save Keith London, Peter Bober and a handful of others.
This is a great example of what Hollywood's doing: http://www.miamisunpost.com/050808newshollywood.htm
I knew the race track best as the home of the Broward County Youth Fair -SO MUCH closer than the Dade County Youth Fair, way down in Tamiami!- where I went on what I think was probably the first blind date of the 3-4 I ever went on, with a friend's cousin down from Chicago for the holidays.
When he first broached the idea, perhaps at his mother's suggestion, I do recall asking why he'd never mentioned her before. Hello, literary foreshadowing!
But the good news was that she turned out to be funny, bright AND gorgeous, and resembled nothing so much as a blond teen version of Pamela Sue Martin, then of the Sunday night ABC-TV show, "The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries"
http://www.pamelasuemartin.net/television/nancy_drew/diamond_triangle/diamond23.htm
(Later when I was at IU, she played "Fallon Carrington Colby" on "Dynasty.")
I think the word SMITTEN was invented to describe my feelings for Pamela Sue Martin!
When she pulled up to my house in my friend's (her cousin's) Camaro, dressed in her sharp-looking cheerleader varsity jacket, with the megaphone pin on her school letters, I was positively dumb-struck.
The only real downer for the evening for me was that she was SO obsessed with then-popular teen heart-throb Leif Garrett, who was the featured performer the night we went to the Fair, that we spent most of our time hopping from one seat to another, trying to get a better vantage point, which was her idea, not mine.
It wasn't a total loss, since we did some things together the rest of the time she was visiting, but I lost the early opportunity to develop some rapport because of her desire to invest so much time and effort in moving around the stands.
By the way, speaking of the area that later became Aventura, I still remember when the Service Merchandise catalog store near Loehman's Plaza was THE place to go in NE Dade for nice radios and stereos, especially once the Gold Triangle store at Skylake Mall that I once worked at, closed for good. (I worked in sporting goods.)
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http://www.miamisunpost.com/archives/2008/04-24/042408sunpost50KeithLondon.htm
The 2008 SunPost 50
April 24, 08
Keith London
The Rabble-Rouser
http://www.miamisunpost.com/archives/2008/04-24/042408sunpost50PeterBober.htm
The 2008 SunPost 50
April 24, 08
Peter Bober
Fresh Blood
http://www.miamisunpost.com/archives/2008/04-24/042408sunpost50georgeberlin.htm
The 2008 SunPost 50
April 24, 08
SPECIAL HONOR
George Berlin
The Pioneer
