There Used To Be A Beach Over There Someplace

I'm relegated to going outside to have a smoke these days. For the past couple of years the South Florida Fishing Club has been meeting at Tony Romas located in Sunny Isles Beach. The original Tony Romas was located on U.S. 1 in a small building backed up against the Florida East Coast R.R. track on the mainland side of the bay, but I guess they thought that being in a canyon of hi-rise condo buildings by the ocean would bring them closer to an upscale clientel.

In the last decade or so Sunny Isles Beach has incorporated, allowing it to make its own rules and zoning regulations instead of being largely governed by the county government. What's happened as a result? Well, a bunch of beachfront property owners that once owned one and two story motels along the ocean either sold out to, or became, developers of hi-rise condo buildings, with some apartments selling in the millions.

Traffic along Collins Avenue, the main drag, has become bumper to bumper, even with twice as many lanes in the newly widened road. Tens of thousands of people would need to evacuate for a hurricane. When it was just motels to deal with folks would just have stayed away to begin with. Nobody knows what would happen top the state's catastrophic insurance fund if a hurricane of Andrew's size and intensity comes through here. Nobody knows where all these people would stay when the evacuation notice is announced.

One thing I can't seem to get any information about is the possible changes to the weather in the Miami area caused by suddenly erecting an almost continuous miles long wall of 500 foot tall buildings along the beach, intrerrupting the normal flow of the sea breeze, deflecting it upwards. Could that be adding to our draught? Or perhaps the cause of it? Maybe I should just finish my cigarette and go back inside and eat. Tony Romas still has the best ribs around. Some things never change.