Greg Rice and his wife, Lori Miller, take a break during activities at Lake Worth’s July Fourth celebration.
Photo by Annamarie Hunt
Nice early birthday present for Boca-born Ariana Grande. Two weeks before she turned 20, her new song The Way, with Pittsburgh rapper Mac Miller, was certified platinum for sales of a million records. That doesn’t happen very often in this day and age. Seven
hours after its iTunes release, it was the No. 1 single. It debuted at No. 10 on Billboard’s Hot 100 and peaked at No. 9. Its sales in the first week were exceeded only by Suit & Tie, by Justin Timberlake featuring Jay-Z.
Not bad for Grande, who grew up in Boca and attended North Broward Prep. (Her father, Ed Butera, owns ibi designs in Boca.) After making a name vocally, the tiny girl (only 5 feet) with the big four-octave voice made the big jump to Broadway — as Charlotte in 13 — and then to Nickelodeon’s Victorious as Cat Valentine. She now stars in Nick’s Sam & Cat. In 2012 she won a Hollywood Teen TV Award for Favorite Actress. This year she was named Best Newcomer at the Billboard Mid-Year Music Awards and The Way is nominated in three categories for the Teen Choice Awards. Her first album, Yours Truly, will be released Sept. 2.
And to wrap up a wild and crazy summer, Grande will open three shows for Justin Bieber this month ... in Jacksonville (Aug. 7), Tampa (Aug. 8) and Atlanta (Aug. 10). Let’s hope the bad boy can handle it.
For Shane Todd’s family, no joy — and few answers. On July 8, a Singapore coroner ruled that the former Boca Raton resident’s death was a suicide. The family refuses to accept the finding, according to published reports in national and international media, claiming the suicide — asphyxiation by hanging — was staged to cover up murder.
Todd was born in California, his father a Navy pilot. They moved to Boca Raton, where Todd was an honor student and athlete at Boca High. Todd completed his undergraduate and master’s work at the University of Florida and a Ph.D. in engineering at the University of California Santa Barbara. He then signed on with the Institute for Micro Electronics, a division of the Singaporean government’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). The work involved a gallium nitride-powered amplifying device for the controversial Chinese telecom company Huawei.
As the work continued, Todd confided to his family, who had since moved to Montana, that he was uncomfortable with some of the work he was asked to do. His mother said he once told her if she didn’t hear from him every week to contact the American embassy. He was prescribed antidepressants to help him cope with the stress. He gave 60 days’ notice at IME, then stayed an additional 30. On his last day, friends and co-workers said he was upbeat. His girlfriend discovered his body a day later.
When Todd’s family arrived in Singapore they noted many inconsistencies in the police report and signs that didn’t point to someone considering suicide — unfinished laundry, recently written price tags to sell his furniture, his airline ticket on a table. A Missouri medical examiner consulted by the Todds argued that photos of marks on the body didn’t support suicide but after seeing additional information retracted his statements. An Illinois criminologist said the tone of Shane’s suicide note didn’t match his personality.
The Todds sought help from members of Congress and a petition was circulated online asking President Obama to authorize a Justice Department investigation. The FBI offered to cooperate with Singapore police, but did not come to any official conclusions regarding the case.
At the inquest, numerous witnesses supported the suicide scenario, including two chief medical examiners from the United States who were brought in as independent experts.
Saying they no longer believed in the “transparency and fairness of the system,” the Todds discharged their lawyers, withdrew from the inquiry, and returned home to continue their mission in “the court of public opinion for judgment.”
Lake Worth may not have been born on the Fourth of July, but what better day to celebrate a centennial? And they did it up right with a big dance at the newly restored pavilion on the beach, a sink-or-swim parade of homemade rafts in the lake and a boffo fireworks display.
Greg Rice, the city’s unofficial ambassador and the centennial committee’s official vice chair, wasted no time celebrating the success of the celebration and tossing a friendly jab at the much bigger neighbor to the north. “I wanted to point out,” Rice wrote in an email, “that the fireworks display for Lake Worth’s Centennial was bigger and lasted longer that the city of West Palm Beach’s Fourth on Flagler Celebration. (And) no, there’s no ED joke intended here. Happy birthday, Lake Worth and America!’’
Farther south, reviews are still mixed on the controversial move of Boca’s fireworks to the new de Hoernle Park on Spanish River Boulevard, just across I-95 from the old site on the FAU campus. The recently opened park is the newest contribution to the city by the Greater Boca Raton Beach and Park District.
The district is a separate taxing agency, yet, without consulting the district board, city officials decided to relocate the event. Unlike the campus, which offered unlimited parking and four access points, the park has space for fewer than 300 vehicles and only one way in and out. To compensate, the city ran shuttle buses from parking lots at the T Rex Corporate Center to the north.
Assistant City Manager Mike Woika claimed a turnout of 10,000, with about 2,300 cars parked and the last shuttle leaving the park at 10:30. Many attendees, he added, walked in or rode bikes.
Boca police, however, said the park wasn’t clear until 11:30, and observers experienced in crowd estimates said 4,000 to 5,000 would be a more realistic count. Of greater concern was the number of attendees who forsook the shuttles for a risky walk along Spanish River between the park and T Rex.
The Tax District’s annual budget includes a sizeable contribution to the city for its fireworks, but unless the city adopts a new policy — communication — that money may go elsewhere. As one board member explained: “It’s called respect.”
Back in 1925, Boca Raton was little more than sand, scrub and The Cloister, the swank hotel on Lake Boca Raton. When Addison Mizner, the dreamer who built the hotel, began building his headquarters just east of the Boca Raton railroad station on Camino Real, he named it, rather unglamorously, The Administration Building.
The promise of millions soon fizzled; a year later, Mizner was broke. For six more years he scrambled to keep his business afloat, but in 1933, he died in Palm Beach from a heart attack.
Fortunately for us, his legacy lives on in his buildings: the Boca Raton Resort & Club, the Old Floresta homes in Boca and estates in Palm Beach, California and Colorado, The Cloister in Sea Island, Ga., even a Baptist church in Jacksonville, and yes, the old Administration Building.
Now The Addison, it hosts some 500 private events each year — small club luncheons, corporate extravaganzas, weddings — plus the occasional public party. Last month the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences presented The Addison with its Five Star Diamond Award, citing its historical architecture, cuisine, charm and service. It’s the only private events venue in South Florida to be so honored.
Just up the road, The Wick Theatre is alive with the sounds of construction, renovation and, most of all, ticket sales for the theater’s Sept. 20 opening gala and performance of The Sound of Music. Last spring the Wick took over the bankrupt Caldwell Theatre Company complex at the north end of Boca with elaborate plans to offer live theater, dining and a theatrical costume museum based on founder Marilynn Wick’s world-class collection.
“Ticket sales are going great,” Wick said. “Subscriber-ship, too! We’re working feverishly. The museum won’t be ready until November, but we plan to have four huge cocktail parties for opening week. Be ready to eat and drink.”
Profit is profit, and speculators have made lots of it in Florida since Juan Ponce de Leon first arrived. But when you’re movie star Kevin James and you’ve just paid $18.5 million for a beachfront home in Delray, it hardly makes sense to put it back on the market a couple of months later for a mere $19.95 million.
That was the news in early July, but it was all a mistake. The agency that initially listed the home erroneously blogged that several big homes were on the market, including James’. Zillow, the real estate website, quickly picked it up. Then the media picked it up and called James’ people to inquire. James people called the agency and the item was quickly pulled, but no one was sure how it all happened.
The 12,828-square-foot Delray estate features a saltwater pool, massage table, wine room and staff quarters. It isn’t much larger than his old place in Encino, Calif., (11,291 square feet) that boasted a state-of-the-art movie theater, gym, chef’s kitchen and backyard vistas of the valley and mountains beyond. James bought it in 2003 for $3.2 million and put it on the market for $5.49 million. Actual selling price: $5.55 million.
Natasha Tretheway was born in 1966 in Mississippi, at the height of the civil rights struggle, to an African-American mother and a Canadian father — when mixed-race marriages were illegal in that state. Her parents divorced when she was young. Her mother remarried and shortly after a second divorce, when Tretheway was 19, was murdered by her second husband.
“That was the moment when I both felt that I would become a poet and then immediately afterward felt that I would not,” Tretheway recalled. “I turned to poetry to make sense of what had happened.”
Tretheway’s verse continues to make sense … and to inspire. In 2007 she received the Pulitzer Prize for her collection Native Guard. She directs the creative writing program at Emory University in Atlanta. In June, Librarian of Congress James Billington appointed her to a second term as the 19th United States poet laureate.
And next Jan. 20 at the Delray Beach Center for the Arts at Old School Square, she’ll headline one of the most auspicious gatherings of poets ever at the 10th annual Palm Beach Poetry Festival.
In addition to Tretheway, the six-day festival will feature workshops by Nick Flynn, Carolyn Forché, Linda Gregg, Thomas Lux, Campbell McGrath, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Mary Ruefle and Tim Seibles.
The festival will be dedicated to the memory of poet Kurt Brown, a frequent contributor to the festival who died last month. Brown’s widow, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, will give a reading and introduce Tretheway.
Founder and director Miles Coon promises “numerous opportunities for the public to hear truly great poetry, written from and for our time, read by poets who engage and enthrall the audience. They are truly a diverse group, ethnically, demo-graphically and aesthetically. When people hear them, they will hear America singing.”
For details, go to www.palmbeachpoetryfestival.org.
With Don Shula, nobody asks, “Where’s the beef!”
A winner, no matter where, “Shoes” has always known where to find the beef, first as a football player, then as coach of the Baltimore Colts and especially the Miami Dolphins, and finally as restaurateur. With the latter, he started at the top of the restaurant food chain with Shula’s Steak Houses and expanded into a league of restaurants — freestanding, in hotels, in airports — but all beef-centric with enough chicken and seafood to keep any team happy.
But just as football victories are ground out in the trenches, so is Shula’s newest concept — Shula Burger. Four have opened, including one last month at the spanking new Delray Marketplace, west of the Turnpike on Atlantic Avenue. Burgers start at $6.49 for the basic with American cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and pickles, but from there the sky’s the limit with an ingredients list that includes roasted peppers, goat cheese, roasted corn and black bean salsa, peppered bacon, cucumbers, avocados and red onion jam. Most intriguing is “The Don.” Try to picture a brioche-style bun, slathered with onion sauce, ketchup, yellow mustard, with a slice of American cheese and a pickle, atop a burger AND a hot dog.
The menu, of course, offers more than beef, with chicken, turkey and veggie burgers, steak sandwiches, hot dogs, salads, beer and wine, even hand-dipped Haagen-Dazs milkshakes.
All the fixin’s for a winner.
Thom Smith is a freelance writer. Contact him at thomsmith@ymail.com
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