A Rising Tide Of Foam In Front Of The Starbucks Coffee Shop

When they built this strip mall a couple of years ago they also built this nice fountain right on the corner, in front of the Starbucks Coffee Shop that I frequent the most. I'm really kind of amazed (and dissapointed?) that it took the current generation of neighborhood kids that long to discover what happens when you dump a box of laundry detergent into a fountain, with all the running, splashing, aerated water!

Back in 1976, the Bicentennial Year commemorating two hundred years since our country's founding, the City of North Miami built and dedicated a Bicentenial Fountain in the heart of downtown North Miami. I don't think that it took but a couple of weeks before soap suds were spilling out into the intesection of West Dixie Highway, N.E. 6th Ave., and 125th Street. Almost as quickly as the city employees would clean up the mess, drain and refill the pool with clean water, and get the pump turned on, some enterprising youngster would blow his lunch money on another box of Tide. After a year or so of municipal frustration the fountain was turned off, but the monument remains. And the kids? The current crop doesn't have the slightest clue what "bicentennial" means.

A few years ago the city built another fountain as part of the front of our new art museum. I think that the salvation of that fountain is the fact that the new police station is right next door to the art museum, probably less than fifty feet away. On the other hand the art museum fountain is only about one hundred feet away from the new downtown Starbucks Coffee Shop. Some people frequent both and just might have noticed that big mess of suds, walk the block to the President Supermarket, and check out the price of Tide.