A seagull rides the wind as champion surfer Kelly Slater braves the
waves generated by Hurricane Sandy near Boynton Inlet. Photo by James Knill
By Thom Smith
As Hurricane Sandy blew past, she didn’t seem like such a big deal. A little flooding here, a flattened seawall there. New Age musician Yanni lost his pool and lots of turtle nests were washed to sea. Mother Nature doesn’t play favorites. Compared to past storms, however, damage was minimal.
To Peter Mendia of West Palm Beach, whose life is surfing, Oct. 28 was the “day of days.” Mendia was hardly alone. The swell attracted Shea Lopez from Daytona, legendary Cocoa board builder Matt Kechele and his prize pupil, Kelly Slater, a world champ 11 times, to waves so big, so fast and so powerful that they used jet skis to launch them at Boynton Inlet and at Pump House in Palm Beach.
Sandy plodded up the coast, and like every other storm, its siren song lured thousands of surfers and beachniks to the shore to marvel at its power. Little did they know just how powerful it would become, although never did it grow larger than Category 2. As I wrapped up my column for The Coastal Star’s November issue, it came ashore five miles south of Atlantic City with peak winds barely 90 miles an hour. A day later it was a rainy trough soaking Pennsylvania.
Only 90 miles an hour. A few days later, my phone rang. It was FEMA, summoning me to my second deployment as a DAE (disaster assistance employee). I had two days to pack, put my affairs in order and head to New Jersey. For six weeks, as a writer in the Planning and Products division, I would work on press releases, how-to pamphlets, flood insurance fact sheets, and dozens of other documents that provide information to homeowners, businesses, government officials and FEMA staffers.
Even before the storm made landfall, FEMA was staging personnel and supplies. Within two weeks, headquarters had been set up in what was once a 350,000-square-foot Bell Labs facility in Lincroft, a hamlet in Monmouth County, only a few miles from the Jersey Shore. In less than a week, trucks laden with desks, tables, chairs, even toilet paper and towels were ready to go. The building was completely rewired for computers and telephones. Satellite receivers were erected in the parking lot. And in a matter of days, more than 2,000 FEMA workers — some permanent employees, some temps like me — were doing our part to help the people of New Jersey dig out, shore up and get on with their lives.
FEMA maintains a contingent of more than 5,000 on-call employees around the nation who make themselves available for the temporary work. Usually, the work is regional: Californians handle their own mudslides and wildfires; Missourians respond to floods in the heartland. But Sandy’s damage was so extensive that DAEs were called in from everywhere.
Initial work week: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week, with the 14th day off. Then it was cut to 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., six days a week. Some work a few weeks and rotate out; others remain for months.
The pay is decent, but not great. More important is the opportunity to help.
Funny thing about Sandy: We all know about the roller coaster in the surf and the neighborhood burned out by ruptured gas lines, but in many areas you’d never know a storm blew through. A few trees down here, a damaged roof there. But just as with Hurricanes Andrew and Katrina, the rebuilding will take years.
It’s good to be home, but if the phone rings, I’ll be on the next flight out.
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What I would have given to take a train into the Big Apple on Dec. 4. Angelo Elia, the king of South Florida’s Italian cuisine including D’Angelo Trattoria in Delray and Casa D’Angelo in Boca, cooked a meal at the James Beard House. His six-course, country-inspired Italian Christmas featured elk tartar with white alba truffle shavings, pheasant and faro soup, and baby octopus in a San Marzano tomato sauce with appropriate wines, including Jankara, a vermentino from his own winery in Sardinia.
The menu was developed specifically for the Beard dinner, but occasionally he offers risotto carnaroli with taleggio and seasonal alba white truffle shavings as an “off-menu” special, possibly even at his newest restaurant, expected to open this spring at Addison Place in Delray on Jog Road.
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Bam! No sooner had Angelo returned to warmer climes than another hot chef hit town. Emeril Lagasse was on a taping mission for his new Cooking Channel series Emeril’s Florida, which will feature a healthy number of Palm Beach County restaurants.
“I think he enjoyed himself,” said Mark DeAtley, general manager at 50 Ocean and Boston’s on the Beach in Delray. 50 Ocean will be featured Feb. 17. The March 10 show will include 32 East in Delray, Buccan in Palm Beach, Swank Farms in Loxahatchee, Quantum House in West Palm Beach and Guanabanas in Jupiter, and the March 17 show, “Big Night Out,” stops at The Breakers’ new HMF bar.
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She’s not the little girl we once knew. In 2001, Boca’s Morgan Pressel created quite a stir when she qualified for the U.S. Women’s Open as a 12-year-old. On Jan. 19, Pressel, now 24, took another giant step at The Breakers when she married longtime boyfriend Andy Bush, a golf tournament manager for Octagon, a sports marketing firm. Bush, from Michigan, previously worked for Jack Nicklaus’ Golden Bear International.
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When the Super Bowl is over, I can’t help but wonder how one football player, known for his passion and intensity on the field and the sidelines, will adjust to retirement in Highland Beach.
Yes, Highland Beach. For those who don’t know, Ray Lewis, the heart and soul of the Baltimore Ravens and former University of Miami All-America, owns an oceanfront house in the little beach town.
He bought the 6,788-square-foot estate with six balconied bedrooms in 2004 for $5.2 million but got no takers when he put it up for sale in 2010 for just under $11 million. Lewis is retiring after 17 years in the NFL, all with Baltimore, because he wants to watch his son play football at UM.
Ray Lewis III is a running back — weighs less than 190 pounds — but at Lake Mary Prep in Central Florida, he gained more than 9,000 yards and scored 89 touchdowns.
Incidentally, other celebs who lived in Highland Beach include Mariah Carey, Oprah Winfrey and race driver Jeff Gordon.
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No matter who lives there, Highland Beach will never be hot. But the celebrity temperature in Delray and Boca keeps rising. Holiday action offered a little bit for everyone — glamour, celebrity, comedy.
Just after Christmas, Atlantic Avenue was abuzz because “that woman” was in town. That woman being TV bombshell Sofia Vergara of Modern Family, who was enjoying a break from the show with her main squeeze, Delray’s own Nick Loeb. Among other delights, they lunched at Burger Fi and stopped for dinner at Buddah Sky Bar.
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Down in Boca, Adam Sandler, no stranger to the area, dined at Max’s Grille. Rock ’n’ roll daughter turned fashion designer Stella McCartney helped raise $40,000 for Florence Fuller Child Development Center at an invite-only cocktail party to kick off her new boutique at Saks Fifth Avenue at Town Center. Don’t know if she has Paul’s voice, but she definitely has his eyes.
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It’s not just police departments that have had to adjust to the demise of the Crown Victoria, Ford’s largest sedan, which went out of production in 2011. Taxicab companies, which have used the Crown Vics as a mainstay of their fleet for decades, are also scrambling to find suitable replacements and in Palm Beach County, one cab company is exchanging the gas-guzzling Ford for a fuel-efficient hybrid.
Last month, Delray Beach-based Metro Taxi of Palm Beach County added a Toyota Prius to its fleet, a move that the owners say makes Metro the first cab company in the county to use a hybrid taxi. Soon Metro Taxi’s fleet of about 30 cabs could include more hybrids, says Arielle Richardson, whose father, Brock Rosayn, founded the company about 25 years ago.
“We’re already on the hunt for a second one,” she said.
Across the country, a growing number of taxi companies are switching to hybrids as they replace the Crown Victoria, in large part due to the fuel-cost savings. Richardson says that the fuel savings, along with the reduced environmental impact, help offset that initial higher cost.
Check ’em out:
Neil Simon’s Chapter Two continues through Feb. 10 as the ambitious Plaza Theatre continues its second season at Plaza Del Mar in Manalapan, followed by a series of revues: Jodie Langel offers up A Tribute to Andrew Lloyd Webber on the 11th and 18th; Melissa Jacobson performs her second Tribute to Judy Garland on Feb. 25; and on March 4 and 11, veteran area performer Missy McArdle presents If They Could See Me Now: A Broad’s Way With Broadway!
West of the Intracoastal and a little farther south, enter Stage Left, the newest theatrical enterprise in, of all places, Boynton Beach. The newest baby of Peter Pagliaro, who ran the Royal Playhouse in Royal Palm Beach, will debut Feb. 8 at the Boynton Beach Madsen Center at 145SE Second Ave. Such a deal … for the 18-month lease, Pagliaro puts up $1 a month for rent, pays utilities and makes interior improvements and will stage at least five productions and conduct after-school workshops and a summer program for kids. First up, another Simon comedy, I Ought To Be in Pictures, (www.stagelefttheatre.net).
Michael Cavanaugh, who was Billy Joel’s pick for the role on Broadway, brings Movin’ Out to the Crest Theatre at what used to be Old School Square before it was renamed Delray Beach Center for the Arts to attract patrons who weren’t so hip to the old “square” name. Cavanaugh’s in town from Feb. 15-17. Versatile Sam Harris, who in 1983 won the first Star Search, the granddaddy of American Idol, opens the month with shows Feb. 4 and 5, and Broadway star Elaine Paige, often called “The First Lady of Musical Theater,” drops in March 4 and 5.
Half a block away, Lou Tyrrell’s Theatre at Arts Garage is “going to blow up,” predicts playwright Israel Horovitz, whose Gloucester Blue will wrap its world premiere on Feb. 17. Horovitz who spent much of January watching his new work take shape, sees the garage as a “very, very cool space … It’s going to be a very important thing.”
At one time, Caldwell Theatre Company was an imposing institution with a strong patron base, strong productions and a beautiful facility on Federal Highway at the north end of Boca. But something went awry: The fans left, but the debt didn’t and the county’s oldest theater declared bankruptcy. In December, mortgage-holder Legacy Bank bought it at auction for $1,000,100, which was $100 more than Florida Rental Specialists bid. Someday soon it will go up for sale.
Who knows what will replace it, but don’t bet on a theater. Once imposing, it is now dwarfed by the multi-story apartment complex to its immediate south. Parties rumored to be interested include a church, a charter school, a fitness center, a medical facility. R.I.P.
Next up in Lynn University’s Live at Lynn series is Cirque D’Amour (Feb. 16 and 17), a hybrid of European circuses and burlesque. This season Boca’s grand dame of theater, Jan McArt, the school’s director of theatre arts program development, is taking a different tack by offering acts with multiple performers instead of solo artists
Abbacadabra, the ABBA cover group, performs March 2 and 3 followed by the 25-member Miami All Stars dance troupe of TV’s America’s Got Talent fame April 6 and 7.
Of course, McArt doesn’t just produce. A trouper at heart, she’ll belt out a few numbers in Champagne and Bosom Buddies: A Tribute to Jerry Herman, March 18, another example of Lynn’s full season of theater, classical music and student performances. (http://events.lynn.edu/upcoming-events)
On a bit more cerebral level, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Mark Neely headlines a two-day symposium on Abraham Lincoln at Florida Atlantic University. Neely will deliver the keynote address at the seventh annual Alan B. Larkin Symposium on the American Presidency, Feb. 20 at 3:30 p.m. in the Carole and Barry Kaye Performing Arts Auditorium. The next day he’ll join international scholars for a series of panel discussions about Lincoln’s presidency and Civil War America.
30th Annual Luncheon & Art Auction: Latitudes Ocean Grill, Highland Beach – Jan. 24
Palm Beach Watercolor Society members Barbara Pickle and Tammy Seymour (l-r) of Boca Raton, view artwork during the Society’s Luncheon & Art Auction.
Kurtis Boggs/The Coastal Star
20th Annual Caribbean Cowboy Ball for George Snow Scholarship Fun: Red Reef Park, Boca Raton – Jan. 26
Tommy LaSalle, Anna Grudzinska, Chris LaSalle, Jessica Kornahrens, and Kevin Kornahrens.
Linda and Frank Palmer.
Tim and Jeff Snow.
Photos by Tim Stepien/The Coastal Star
Thom Smith is a freelance writer. Contact him at thomsmith@ymail.com.
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