Showing posts with label North Miami Beach. Show all posts
Showing posts with label North Miami Beach. Show all posts

Friday, February 8, 2019

For me, he was simply THE master politician of my 15 years in Washington, D.C. Remembering John Dingell and what legislators used to do and be











WDIV-TV, Detroit BREAKING: Former Michigan Rep. John Dingell dies at age 92

John Dingell writes a note to his younger self
CBS This Morning
Published on Dec 10, 2013
Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., begins his 58th year as a member of the House of Representatives. At age 87, he is the longest serving member of Congress in history. In the "CBS This Morning" ongoing series, "Note to Self," Dingell write about his personal connection to Pearl Harbor.






















Make sure you read the pillow he's holding!
Longest-serving Rep. Dingell on how Washington has changed
Longest-serving Rep. Dingell on how Washington has changed
Video: CBS News, Published on June 9, 2013 

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., the longest-serving congressman in American history, discusses how Washington has changed since he arrived on Capitol Hill more than 57 years ago, particularly the gradual loss of bipartisan cooperation.

Updated February 11, 2019

Upon my arrival in Washington, D.C. in February of 1988, the day after the Super Tuesday presidential primary election day in Florida, the Southeast U.S. and a few other states, I was more than elated to finally be in the city that I had always wanted to live and work in, and I made a promise to myself.
That vow was that I’d do everything in my power to expand my base of knowledge of policy and process on many different issues in a way that would also help me get a job in a very competitive environment. Growing up in North Miami Beach in the 1970's sans the Internet, I always believed that information was power and always strived to be a person “in the know” whom other smart and savvy people turned to for advice or counsel. And all throughout high school at NMB Senior High and college at Indiana University in Bloomington, and various national and state political campaigns I worked on at a pretty high level, that’s exactly who I was and the reputation I garnered.

I have always had a crazy memory for trivia and context that always helped me recall details that others didn't know or recall. Yes, I was that guy who often won trivia contests at spring break events, at hotel bars or restaurants or get-together at parties in Dc and suburban Northern Virginia.
And thanks to a lot of hard work and diligent effort, I became a well-connected person that was in-the-know. Or so it seemed to me. But who can really know. right?
Growing up in South Florida, because of my personality and interests, I always knew LOTS of TV and print reporters and columnists and editors, when I was in high school at NMB -spent hundreds of hours at the late Miami News at both their Sports and Entertainment desks- and that was also true at IU where college newspaper, the IDS, was one of the best managed in the country, housed in a building named for a journalism icon, Ernie Pyle, an IU alum.

I knew nearly everyone who was anyone at the ids and frequently attended get-to-gethers with many of them on Sunday nights in the Fall after the last NFL football broadcast. We'd meet around 7:30 pm in the school library cafeteria on the ground floor, and there, over burgers, fries, cokes and pizza, we'd discuss what was REALLY happening on campus.
The stories that few students on campus knew about but should be talking about, ones we often knew a bit too much about to keep quiet for very long.
By the end of my freshman year at IU I knew and was friends with lots of influential people at the I.U. Varsity Athletics Dept., and gave camous tours for them when VIPs were in town, often before a big game, and knew as well some of the more influential students on campus at the various student groups, including the three most important: student government, Student Athletic Board and Student Alumni Council, being especially devoted to the latter two when not in class, spending hundreds of hours a semester doing things to help them prosper and have fun at the same time.

All in all, I'd done pretty well to create a well-oiled little network for myself in Blooomington, and I hoped to replicate someting similar in Washington, D.C., however difficult that would seem at the outset. Because of my insatiable curiosity, I was always digging to know a little bit MORE than most people about what was really going on below-the-radar and how the sausage was put together if you will.
That led to people noticing that I had a way of getting things done and get the results I wanted more often than not. Plus, in keeping with my outgoing ENFP personality, I was able to do that without grating on people, a not uninmportant ability that I knew would help me qa lot in Washington, based on conversations with friends who already worked there.
But I knew that there were LOTS and LOTS of people in Washington my age who knew a great deal more than me about specific subjects, and that while my general knowledge may've been better than most, I needed to figure out a way of getting MUCh BETTER informed on those subjects that I was clearly lacking in.
To help accomplish that, from 1988-2003, I took copious contemporaneous notes of what I observed first-hand at myriad events with policy makers, journalists and news makers at the Brookings Institution, CSIS, SAIS at Johns Hopkins, AEI, the Wilson Center, the Goethe Institute, the Center for Security Policy, the IMF and The World Bank -BEST wine!-the Economic Strategy Institute, et al. 
There I'd hear subjects and stories that, for whatever reason, rarely saw the light of day in the pages of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post. Not even mentioned by friends of mine who worked at those media groups. 
This, naturally, had the entirely predictable ripple effect of making me realize that this would only ensure that these stories and issues almost NEVER made the airwaves of the TV networks, cablenets or, even NPR, either.
So, combined with my own personality and interests, the nature of my jobs in DC and the kinds of friends I had, and all those days and nights I was going to forums and events ariound town, I wound up with a front-row seat and below-the-radar perspective on many of the most contentious and implacable issues in Washington, D.C.
That was especially true for the sorts of policy debates that would take place on Capitol Hill, and their resultant fallout at DC-area think tanks, industry groups and public policy groups.

Nothing thou proved more valuable to me in widening my horizons than actually attending Congressional hearings and becoming familiar with not only the well-known public issues at hand, but also issues below-the-radar, and comparing and contrasting how the individual Members, their staff and the news media in attendance, all performed and interacted -or didn't- to either help illuminate or obfuscate an issue, for better or worse.

I heard pinpoint criticism of policies by members of Congress that I never saw mentioned in the press, and heard analysis that I hadn't heretofore known existed, found out that ideas that I always thought were popular had actually evaded public scrutiny, transparency or accountability for years, and I heard lots of well-aimed personal brickbats. 
Every week, I was able to see examples of the proverbial case of the media watchdog that doesn't bark, or see examples of why the latest case of media conventional wisdom had -again- been proven wrong, and why.
So on Capitol Hill, especially before the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994 that saw so many of my Democratic friends on Congressional committees get the heave-hoo, I saw first-hand how some Members chose to be earnest and diligent work-horses.
People like Lee Hamilton or Dante Fascell, my own Members back in Bloomington and Miami.

Members who did their hardest work behind-the-scenes, which was apparent by their choice of questions and their ability to intelligently follow-up  and elicit interesting answers from the people testifying, to get to the larger truth of an issue.
Others, of course, the Congressional show-horses, the majority, were largely content to simply show up and read the questions their well-informed but partisan staff had written for them, missing obvious follow-up opportunities. I also saw something I never imagined -Members who seemed to be bored with such a great job. A job I and so many others in the crowd would kill to have.

There were a few, though, who combined the work ethic of a work-horse and the showmanship of a show-horse, and one of them was John Dingell, the veteran Michigan Democrat who had held his Detroit-area seat since 1955, succeeding his father, who'd been swept into power during the first FDR presidential victory of 1932.
Dingell’s voluble style and legendary ability to generate both passion and news headlines were famous long before I arrived on the scene in Washington in 1988, of course, so I knew that whenever possible, I needed to attend one of his hearings so that I could see him operate in-person if I wanted to see how things could really work on the Hill, because those rare moments when he was properly engaged and enraged were truly magic.
I saw that Dingell magic for myself many times in the fifteen years I lived and worked in Washington, spending thousands and thousands of hours at/on/around Capitol Hill.

The hearings that made the most powerful impression on me came in April of 1988, just months after my arrival. I was fortunate enough to grab a seat at a Energy & Commerce committee hearing he chaired, after waiting in line for hours to get one of the coveted 30-plus seats inside, where Drexel’s Michael Milken was to testify before what seemed like most of the Beltway press corps.
A hearing where tension was already thick even before it started and then only seemed to grow once Milken publicly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination as camneras all over the room clicked, refusing to respond to the committee’s very pointed and explosive questions.
This, despite the fact that his attorney, the legendary Edward Bennett Williams -the Williams of the famous D.C. law firm, Williams & Connolly, as well as the cantankerous owner of the Washington Redskins football team and Baltimore Orioles baseball team- had already told the committee in advance that his client would not answer its questions because Milken was already under grand jury investigation. John Dingell, though, had bigger fish to fry that day, and was cagey enough to see Milken’s refusal to talk publicly for what it really was -for Dingell.
An opportunity for John Dingell to make a point much larger than the simple one being written about by the legion of journalistic lemmings in American newspapers and business magazines regarding whether Michael Milken and his business approach were a force of corporate good or evil. Dingell used his opening statement -which came before anyone else spoke- to outline what he perceived to be the “evils” of Drexels’s junk bonds, and their use in corporate takeovers that had led to the collapse of longstanding companies, thousands of productive jobs in towns large and small throughout America’s heartland.
People whose lives Dingell believed could never be made whole again. That was to be the drama.
April 27, 1988  Securities Markets and Federal Laws
The subcommittee held a hearing relating to the operations of the nation’s securities markets and the effectiveness of the federal securities laws. Following members' opening remarks, Mr. Milken invoked committee rules preventing television cameras from recording his testimony. After cameras left the room, he invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self incrimination. He was under investigation for racketeering and securities fraud.

The comedy was to come later, when Drexel’s CEO, Fred Joseph, came into the room and testified, apparently oblivious to everything everyone else in the room who counts had heard Dingell say from his seat in the middle of the dais during Milken’s portion of the hearing. In a shocking example of making a bad situation even worse, Joseph refused to address the legitimate points Dingell had raised, instead, claiming that financing takeovers was a small part of Drexel’s overall business.
(As opposed to, say, their percentage of company profits! If it really was so small, logically, you’d think that Joseph would try to address the thornier questions posed to Milken, without the embarrassment of taking the Fifth, but he didn’t.)
By the time Fred Joseph had concluded his testimony, the damage had largely been done. Dingell, ever the master pol, had simply let Milken and Joseph hang themselves on TV: Milken by his silence and Joseph by his inability to see the bigger picture that all of America would see that night on the network TV newscasts, via a narrative written and framed by Congressman John Dingell.
APRIL 28, 1988 Securities Markets & Federal Laws

The subcommittee met to investigate several areas of the securities market with the intent of improving the laws in this area. Subcommittee members were interested in regulating the market while also preserving the confidence of the public in the free market system.

John Dingell Visitation And Funeral Arrangements:



Thursday, September 17, 2015

#Ethics still matter in South Florida! Stephanie Kienzle of Votersopinion.com keeps her eyes firmly on what's going on with the VERY CURIOUS legal antics of FL state Rep. Joe Geller, even as most of South Florida's news media keeps ignoring what's right in front of us.

According to ever-vigilant Stephanie Kienzle at VotersOpinion despite what appears to be his obviously unethical -and possibly illegal- delay tactics, it looks like Florida state Rep. Joe Geller is going have to face the music for lying to the Courts in Miami.

Geller certainly plays a mean game of four-corners defense to try to run the clock out, but then consider Geller's client: North Miami Beach City Council member Phyliss Smith, who is accused of... wait for it: absentee ballot fraud!

And it's abundantly clear that she has considerably less than a fig-leaf for a defense.
And did I mention that she refused a court order to turn over relevant records?


VotersOpinion blog
September 17, 2015

Despite the obviously unethical, and possibly illegal, delay tactics employed by Joseph S. Geller, Esquire, the lawsuit filed against North Miami Beach “Councilwoman” Phyllis Smith is finally moving ahead.  In a few short days, she’ll be compelled to answer the allegations of absentee ballot fraud.
Read the rest of Stephanie's fact-filled post at: http://www.votersopinion.com/2015/09/17/is-the-fat-lady-about-to-sing/
Some of you more informed readers will recall that earlier this year while wearing his legislator hat, Joe Geller tried to make logic stand on its head by offering a bill that would, as the legislature's own website put it:
"Repeals requirement that write-in candidate reside within district represented by office sought at time of qualification."

Who could possibly think this is a good idea for civic engagement, public accountability and genuine transparency? 
Joe Geller did. 

Fortunately, the bill died:

(For those of you reading this who don't know, Joseph S. Geller is also the former mayor of the long ethically-challenged town of North Bay Village in northern Miami-Dade County, and more recently was elected to the state House of Representatives last November as a dependable knee-jerk Liberal vote.
Thus, Geller represents those parts of southeast Broward County that are the most important parts of our "beat" on this blog: Hallandale Beach and Hollywood, and necessarily, Geller's various actions and antics in Tallahasse and locally are part of our regular focus.

Yes, he's the brother of the former state Senator for this area, lobbyist/lawyer/developer mouthpiece Steve Geller, who was the frequent subject of so many posts on this blog in the past, including when he ran for Broward County Commissioner in 2010 -BEFORE actually living within the district. 
Fortunately for everyone in this area, and common sense, his track record in office and strange sense of what he as a lawyer/lobbyist was entitled to do was found wanting, and Commissioner Sue Gunzburger was handily re-elected, with stronger ethics in Broward one of her key legacies.) 

Kudos to my friend, truth-telling Stephanie for keeping her eyes firmly on the ball while most of the South Florida news media seems to be too distracted and giddy from the return of the football season to notice that there ARE still a LOT of very unsavory things going on with pols in South Florida 
and the Sunshine State that ARE worth investigating and making public.
And worth prosecuting!

Tomorrow on my blog I'll have some interesting details and background info you may want to peruse regarding another case of an official in power in South Florida whose track record makes clear that he is an unrepentant serial abuser of the public trust.

Despite this, he remains both surprisingly aloof and intent on maintaining his very clear sense of entitlement, despite self-evident facts that would make others in his position resign out of either sheer guilt or embarrassment.
Or both!

But he remains steadfast and without remorse, making decisions that affect lots of South Florida residents everyday.

Such is the price we all pay for living in an area of the country where to our collective and continuing dismay, we have FAR MORE than our fair share of elected officials and govt. officials with more self-confidence and hubris than common sense.

Stay tuned!

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Insight into my varied soccer resume and "expertise," gleaned first-hand from the sidelines & seats watching Pelé, the NMB Chargers, Miami Toros, Ft. Lauderdale Strikers, Indiana Hoosiers and Premier League; Insightful observations and good questions from @TimothyJPratton on soccer development in the United States


@TimothyJPratt  My first story w/the Guardian asks: Are European giants exploiting US soccer or improving it?









Me, I'm the sort of soccer fan who got up very early last October to watch SkyTV's EARLY morning reporting, via my desktop, on the new English National Team football HQ at St George's Park, in Staffordshire.

The cameras literally showed the sun rising on beautiful-but-dewy empty pitches that Prince William later came by to offically christen.
So, yes, with that said, I think this article is very timely.

When I was a kid growing up in South Florida in the 1970's, my Mother worked as a secretary for Pavarini Construction as part of the Pavarini Gerrits team involved in constructing One Biscayne Tower on the corner of Flagler Street and Biscayne Blvd, the heart of what was Miami for most people I knew at the time.

One Biscayne Tower in Miami, 39 floors, 1973 Pavarini Construction, 
http://skyscrapercenter.com/miami/one-biscayne-tower/4008

That mammoth construction project was just across the street from where the office was located until the bldg. was finished in 1973, which at 39 stories, made it the largest building south of Atlanta until some time in the '90's, when I was already working up in D.C. area and not quite so aware of what new taller buildings were going up.

Their whole office could bring their families in late in the afternoon on New Years's Eve since one of the perks of that location was we could all watch the Orange Bowl Parade from their second floor balcony as it made the turn onto Flagler. That was back when NBC aired that LIVE every year across the country but the local NBC affiliate in Miami aired it the next morning, because they wanted bodies on the streets, not ratings, at the behest of the Miami business community and powers-that-be tried to put on a good face for the rest of the country.

Mr Stass had all sorts of pull and despite the great competition to get them, managed to get some tickets for the January 1975 Orange Bowl Game between Bear Bryant's Alabama squad and Notre Dame in Ara Parseghian's last game as Irish head coach. 
And he gave some of them to my Mom!
We sat in the East (open) End Zone of The Orange Bowl and we were surrounded by the extra Alabama cheerleaders, pep team, and marching band. 

For a big sports fan like me who'd grown-up watching Lindsey Nelson's ND highlight show on Sunday mornings in the fall, it was like heaven, since by then I'd already been going to U-M home games for years when Chuck Foreman and Burgess Owens played for some truly terrible U-M teams. Teams which drew so poorly that I'd often have that end zone all to myself.

Years later I often wondered whether one of the cheerleaders near me whose good looks and sweet Southern accent made me melt in my seat might've included Sela Ward.

In those days, Sela dated future Dolphin 'Killer B' defensive star Bob Baumhower. 
The romantic in me likes to imagine that Sela was sitting there, somewhere, in that row behind me, so I'd like to think that game was where I first heard and saw the wonderful Sela, whom I've admired and adored since first seeing her on the big screen in Chicago at the theatre at Water Tower in 1986's "Nothing in Common," starring Tom Hanks and Jackie GleasonIronically, a film set in Chicago. 

My mother's boss, Frank J, Stass was also a public policy, civic-minded type -back when Miami
had more of them them- who was always willing to do his part to help local Miami businesses.
When the NASL came to Miami as the Gatos, he bought some season tickets for the games at the Orange Bowl, for employees and they were excellent seats!
Right in the middle of the stadium and about 15 rows up, back when the Tampa Bay Rowdies and the Cosmos were their biggest and most bitter of rivals.

I first started going when they were the Gatos in 1971, as a ten-year old, and kept going after they were re-christened the Toros. Before the Robbies moved the Toros up to Fort Lauderdale and they become the Strikers, they played the Cosmos in Pele's first game in Miami his first year in the NASL.

For some reason that I don't quite recall, they played the game out on the VERY NICE soccer field out at FIU which later became the FIU football team's many, many years later once they got D-1 football and expanded the facility. 

(That was the best soccer field in South Florida outside of Lockhart Stadium, where my junior year at IU, 1982, we beat Duke there for the NCAA championship on the 2nd or 3rd day of my Christmas Break, which created an awesome scene back at the Yankee Trader Hotel hotel afterwards with all my close friends on the team -and their parents and the whole IU and Hoosier sports administrators, plus Indy media.)

Team photo of 1982 NCAA Champion Indiana Hoosiers coached by Jerry Yeagley

But for the Pele first match, the capacity was just over 10,000 and since we were season ticket holders of a sort, we got first dibs and I was even able to persuade my non-soccer loving father to come long. He'd come to some of my youth games once in a while but he was not someone who was a natural fan 

Yes, I think it's fair to say that from 1971 to 1976, there were few people in South Florida who 
attended more Miami Gatos/Toros NASL soccer games at the Orange Bowl than yours truly.

I witnessed all their great FEISTY and bitter games against their arch-rival Tampa Bay Rowdies back when that was the only pro team Tampa had, and their fans WOULD travel in droves and tailgate HERE. I even witnessed their heart-breaking loss on penalty kicks in the 1974 NASL title game at the Orange Bowl -televised by CBS- to the Los Angeles Aztecs. AFTER two over-times on a hot and humid afternoon! 

Somewhere, I still have the Toros game programs, esp. the ones that on the cover proclaimed Kyle Rote, Jr. of the Dallas Tornadoes as "the American Pelé." 
As many of you may recall, Rote was a tremendously talented player who understood his unique role as an ambassador for the sport, but even though I was a kid at the time, I thought that putting things like that on the cover of game programs was FAR TOO MUCH pressure for a kid just barely out of college!

Because of our location and demographics, I was fortunate to play for some very talented Optimist teams in North Miami Beach -after football and baseball season were over- that had a mix of styles and lots of telnted kids from lots of different countries, esp. Latin America.
After that,  was fortunate to go to North Miami Beach Senior High, a high school in South Florida with a great soccer reputation, despite it being only a few years old, thanks entirely to the devotion, dedication and hard work of our head coach Victor "Vic" Cappillo, who also drove the team bus to all points on the compass. 
(Coach Cappillo later wrote a letter of recommendation for me to IU.)

While I was still in eight-grade at JFK Junior High, with my personality, nose for news and media inclinations being roughly the same as they are now, just less developed, in part because I was already known to most of the players, and a friend to many, I persuaded Coach Cappillo to let me be the Team Manager, attending all home and away matches and handled calling the two Miami newspapers afterwards to drum up support in getting us some publicity.
And I was very successful.
But our great talent on the field certainly helped!

The following year, 1975-76, when I was a freshman, this good relationship continued and thanks to a historic Ciro Martinez-led last-second Charger win at arch-rival North Miami, a game whose last two minutes seemed to go in slo-motion, we eventually won the 1976 Florida high Scool soccer championship.
Days afterwards at a team dinner to honor the team and its supporters, I unexpectedly received a blue Varsity Letterman's jacket that quickly became my most valuable possession for years afterwards, despite how impractical a jacket is in NMB for most of the year because of the weather.
I'd wear that jacket every chance I had whenever it got under 50 degrees.

In 1977, with most of the team returning, one of our two arch-rivals, nearby Miami Norland Senior High School, inflicted a painful loss on the Chargers, knocking us out of the Florida state playoffs at Lockhart Stadium and ending our hope of winning back-to-back Florida state soccer championships. The Norland Vikings eventually finished as the state runner-up that year.

When Joe and Elizabeth Robbie relocated the team to Ft. Lauderdale and Lockhart Stadium for the 1977 season, much closer to my friends and I in North Miami Beach, we were ecstatic. The drive to Lockhart up I-95 was so much quicker, as we joined other "Striker Likers," eager to literally yell ourselves hoarse watching their exciting brand of soccer, esp, against the dreaded Rowdies and Cosmos! 
Oh, did we ever hate them!

(This happened to coincide with a time period when the Dolphins were less successful due to the reign of the Steelers and Raiders and the rise of the Bert Jones-led Baltimore Colts, so it was great to be able to cheer in-person at a home game and not have it be sarcastic.) 

When the NASL folded and then went indoor via the awful MISL, I never looked back at pro soccer teams in the U.S. because at the time it meant that my IU friends -and neighbors like Mike Hylla and Dave Boncek, who were always doing impressive skill and control drills in front of the swimming pool at out apt. complex- could never play for teams outdoors in their own country, as soccer was clearly intended to be played.

Even now, after all these years and all the effort they've put into trying to make it palatable, I've NEVER watched even one minute of the MLS on ESPN. 

To me, it's largely unwatchable, so I just stick to English Premier League games. 
I did go see some of the WUSA games, though, while I was in DC when Mia Hamm played for the Freedom.

I will be updating this post over the next few days, looking to include some photos.

Friday, August 2, 2013

Flashback Friday returns to the Summer of 1980 - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers sing "American Girl" (LIVE) on ABC-TV's "Fridays" on June 6, 1980; remembering summer nights at Rum Runner Bay in North Miami Beach in the 1980's, soon to be the Marina Palms Yacht Club & Residences


shoutfactory YouTube Channel video: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers sing "American Girl" (LIVE) on ABC-TV's "Fridays" on June 6, 1980Uploaded August 1, 2013. http://youtu.be/b2nbHpF7-qk
Personally, I always thought that the camera-work done on this ABC-TV show when musical acts performed was better than over at NBC's Saturday Night Live.

I was just recently back from my freshman year at Indiana University in Bloomington when this particular program first aired, three years after the song had come out on Tom Petty's first album.
The night it aired I'd gone out earlier to the old Rum Runner Bay Bar & Restaurant that I used to visit with friends who were also going to college out-of-state when I was back from IU for Christmas Break or the summer in the early 1980's.

It was located on the water off of Biscayne Blvd. and N.E. 172nd Street in North Miami Beach -back before Aventura existed, and far too far south to be called "Turnberry"- to meet with some friends I hadn't seen since my visit home at Christmas, since they had a different week for spring break, when I'd driven down to Fort Lauderdale from Bloomington with some friends and would spend all day and most of the night at the excellent Yankee Trader Hotel or at the beach across the street, but would then go home to NMB most nights to crash.

(Loved, loved, loved the Yankee Trader Hotel pool scene!!!
That was like the "W" Hotel concept before there was a "W" concept, or the pool scene on the NBC-TV series "Vegas," but for college kids, and NOT a compete rip-off price-wise.

Every friendly and good-looking coed from a school my friends and I had never heard of, except perhaps from a couple of sentences from Street & Smith's College Football Preview issue, made a beeline from where ever they were for that pool up top with the great view of the beach: Eastern Kentucky University, Central Connecticut State University...
We couldn't believe our luck at being in a place that seemed like we'd literally dreamed it up on the drive down.

As one friend who was a Journalism major at IU remarked about the army of friendly and good-looking college girls in that pre-Internet era, before we could make the hotel Social Media Gold by tweeting about it, "What they lack in fanfare, they make up for in Quality and Friendliness." Yes.)

This was back before the State of Florida changed the drinking age from 18 to 21 -which meant that I could legally drink in my last semester of high school if I was so inclined- we'd meet there and a handful of other places in North Dade and South Broward where we'd all exaggerate how great everything was going for us back at school, especially relationship-wise.


The very big advantage that Rum Runner Bay had was its great central location -and on the water- very attractive wait staff and even better-looking customers, AND, beers from around the world. 
Plus the likelihood that at least one or two people we knew from North Miami Beach High School would show up. 
It was a very, very sociable place!

Now THAT was a relaxing place!
Wish we had something close to that on the water now in Hallandale Beach.

At some point, according to what Curbed Miami wrote a few months ago, that site of so much fun for me and my friends is going to be a condominium complex called Marina Palms Yacht Club & Residences, and as these things go, it actually looks attractive to me, or at least not hideous or unattractive like so many condos down here that I could name that screw-up or ruin perfectly good locations.
  
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On August 6th Shout Factory is releasing their best of Fridays DVD 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Girl_(song)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Fridays_episodes