Wayne Arnold's Royal Castle Reopens

For all you RC fans out there, please note that the second to last surviving RC has reopened at the corner of Northwest 125th Street and Seventh Avenue. Wayne Arnold has owned the restaurant since 1982, but the business has been at that corner since 1956. The store had been closed since a fire caused by a faulty freezer compressor swept through the inside of the restaurant on Aug. 30, 2005. Fortunately Wayne was able to reopen in part thanks to a $80,000 loan from North Miami's Community Redevelopment Agency. Only one other descendant of the original Royal Castle which started in 1937 remains in Miami-Dade at Northwest 79th Street and 27th Avenue. Arnold's is open 24 hours a day, just as it always was. It also brought back its breakfast menu of pancakes, eggs and grits, which customers can order any time. But the real stars are the tiny little castleburgers and birch beer, which are now served in a plastic cup instead of the frosty mug we all remember from our childhood. The burgers are now $1.00 compared to the 15 cents I remember, but just as tasty and satesfying. It is still true to its slogan ''Fit for a King'' ! I encourage all you old time Miamians like me to take your kids down to Arnolds RC in the near future and sample a really wonderful Miami memory!

The Coppertone Girl looks for a new home

Anyone who grew up in Miami in the 50s and 60s remembers driving by the Coppertone Girl when going through downtown Miami on Biscayne Boulevard. She and her naughty dog graced the Parkleigh Building on N.E. 6th Street and Biscayne strategically placed so that every tourist driving into Miami or going to the old Seaport to catch a cruise ship was greeted by her cute surprised expression as the dog pulled down her pants just enough to show what a beautiful tan you could get on any Miami beach. Unfortunately when the Parkleigh was demolished in 1991 the poor girl was left homeless. But not for long! Schering-Plough, owners of the Coppertone trademark, donated the sign to the citizens of Miami and placed it in the care of the Dade Heritage Trust. The Trust has taken loving care of its adopted daughter ever since. After refurbishment of the sign, the Trust relocated the sign to the east side of the Concord Building at 66 W. Flagler St., where the golden girl sans pooch hangs today. Sadly, now this second locale is no longer able to host the popular image.

The solution to this dilemma is to entrust the sign to the MiMo Biscayne Association. The group was verbally promised the sign last November and has been just as diligent as the Trust in pursuing any option that will save it for a second time. Schering-Plough has offered $2000 for the removal and inspection of the landmark. According to a spokesperson, Schering-Plough expects the sign to come down sometime in April at the latest, and then all parties involved will determine the next steps for the Coppertone tyke. It is expected that Miami's most famous sunbather will be relocated to the MIMO district to carouse among her contemporary motel row surroundings. Stay tuned for her rebirth.

By way of historical background, the Coppertone Girl was the creation of graphic artist Joyce Ballantyne Brand, using her daughter Cheri Irwin as the model. Cheri is presently employed as an aerobics instructor in Ocala, Florida. Later, Jodie Foster made her acting debut as the Coppertone girl in a television commercial, when she was 3 years old. The sign was built buy the well known Miami sign company, Webster Outdoor Advertising, that created many of the famous old signs around Miami of that era.

Villa Serena- Saved from the Wrecking Ball

Villa Serena was added to the Miami Register of Historic Places by the Historic and Environmental Preservation Board in December 2007. Constructed in 1913 Villa Serena is a notable example of Mediterranean Revival style architecture, built of steel-reinforced poured concrete and designed by August Geiger, an influential early Miami architect who had also designed the Miami Woman's Club, and the Dade County Courthouse (with Anthony Ten Eyck Brown). It was about to be sold to a foriegn investor that intended to tear it down to build yet another modern mansion on the bay. Apparently, a new buyer has since appeared that is interested in preserving and renovating it.

This palatial estate is located between Brickell Avenue and Biscayne Bay, at 3115 Brickell Avenue, and takes full advantage of both the street and the bay with facades of equal prominence and architectural beauty. Its Mediterranean characteristics include the prominent courtyard formed by the extension of the wings, the low, tiled hipped roofs and prominent parapet, intricate cast ornament in a basket weave pattern, and decorative details such as wrought iron railings and decorative tile imported from Cuba.

Villa Serena was the winter home of famed orator, lawyer, and three-time Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan and his wife Mary. Bryan is best known as the prosecutor in the famous Scopes Monkey trial opposing the teaching of evolution. However, he was also a life-long peace advocate and a staunch supporter of women's suffrage and worker's rights. Bryan, a fundamentalist Christian, became a key figure in Miami, as a spokesman for George Merrick's Coral Gables Corporation, and as a lay leader of the Presbyterian church.

In Miami, he hosted "Sunday schools" that served largely as a tourist attraction in the former Royal Palm Park, now Bayfront Park, that drew about 16,000 listeners. Coral Gables founder George Merrick paid Mr. Bryan $100,000 to speak daily at the Venetian Pool on topics such as the value of Florida real estate and he is credited with the idea of creating a local pan-American university: the University of Miami.

News of the Bizarre- The Dumb leading the Crazy

Chavez Grants Interview to Supermodel Naomi Campbell, AFP Says
By Matthew Walter
Jan. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez has given an interview to British supermodel Naomi Campbell, which will be published in an issue of the men's lifestyle magazine GQ, Agence France-Presse reported.
Campbell describes Chavez as a ``rebel angel'' in the article, according to AFP, which cites excerpts that were released in advance.
During the interview, Chavez said U.S. President George W. Bush was ``completely crazy,'' and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice worked for a ``genocidal government,'' according to the news service. The Venezuelan leader also said he thinks Bush wants to kill him, AFP said.
Campbell and Chavez also discussed fashion, pop music and the British royal family, the news service said. Chavez said he admires Prince Charles, and that Cuban President Fidel Castro was one of the world's most stylish leaders, according to the news service. Chavez said he was open to posing topless for photos, as his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin has done, and asked Campbell to feel his muscles, AFP reported.

Although this news item doesn't have anything to do with Miami's past, I just couldn't resist publishing it! While I am sure these two have provided plenty of fodder for comedians everywhere, two items stand out. Firstly, Chavez certainly seems well prepared to determine whether Bush or anyone else is completely crazy. Secondly, how did Prince Charles work himself into the conversation? I wonder which muscle Campbell was invited to feel?

Sepy Dobronyi- The Grove's Last Royalty

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Holidays at the Rod and Gun Club!

When I was growing up in Miami, we always used to go at some point during the Christmas holidays to the Rod and Gun Club in Everglades City for a day or two to enjoy the cool weather on the west coast of Florida, eat stone crabs and do a little boating through the Thousand Islands. In later years my best friend in High School and I used to organize an improptu day-long rally down Alligator Alley, with lunch at the Club, usually punctuated by someone's old british roadster breaking down along the way! It's amazing but this bit of Florida history is still around and kicking after all these years. Still as lovely as ever and great fun to visit. Less than a 2 hour trip from Miami, I am surprised so many Miamians either don't know the place or have never been to it. Everglades City was a pretty ramshackle town of the kind you saw many of in the old days. While its been somewhat modernized, it still retains that old Florida Cracker style and look.

Prior to 1923, Everglades City was called Everglade, a name given the settlement along the crooked little Allen's River in 1893 by Bembery Storter after the U.S. Post Office refused the request for the name Chokoloskee, which is now the name of an old outpost just to the south at the western entrance to Everglades National Park. Flamingo, the third of the old original towns, still marking the end of the main park road, is now a park community with a campground, ranger station, marina and lodge. Farming was the primary occupation of people living in the area and included sugarcane, bananas, and vegetables. George T. Storter is considered the true founder of the town. He and his family were prominent in Everglade's growth and activities and owned much of the land around the town until the arrival of Baron Collier in 1923. It was under the Storter stewardship that the Everglade began to draw visitors and sportsmen. The Rod and Gun Club was built around the Storter home.

Barron Collier is primarily responsible for the foundation of Everglades City as you see it today. In 1923 he and his company purchased most of the land in and surrounding the town. Within five years the sleepy trading post and farming community was converted into a bustling industrial-based company town replete with roads, a railroad, a bank, a telephone, sawmills, a boatyard, churches, a school, workers' barracks and mess halls, and even its own streetcar at one time. It served as the county seat of Collier County until 1960, when prosperity waned and county offices were moved to Naples. Neighboring Chokoloskee did not have a road until a causeway was built from the mainland in 1956.

The Grove........Now and Then

Funny, but what got me going on this riff was a Friday afternoon stopover to the Titanic Brewery by the University of Miami fopr a brew or two with my buddies the other day. It just hit me that this was the old Flick coffeehouse that I used to go to in the 60’s to see all the great musicians that lived in Coconut Grove back then. Back in the late 60’s I lived in a duplex apartment complex on Aviation Avenue in the Grove. It was owned by an old doll that had been a bit player in the movies back in the 20’s and 30’s and was a ringer for the Norma Desmond character in “Sunset Boulevard”. As with everyone else in the Grove she was a lovable eccentric. The complex was a big one acre property with four duplexes surrounded by beautiful vegetation that sat just above the bay looking down on Monty Traynor’s old place and the Dinner key marina. I shared the flat with a college buddy from UM that worked selling buttons for his uncle in New Jersey. I had just gotten a job for the county government as a photographer that barely paid me enough money to live but included a car so I was set.

Back then, the Grove was a pretty funky old fishing village and all the old Miamians would warn you not to drive through it lest you got shanghaied by some shady character. In the center of town was the Peacock family ship’s chandlery where Cocowalk now stands and the Florida Pharmacy catty corner to it where we all went to the luncheon counter to have breakfast. Peacock Park and the old Public Library stood just south of the main drag as it does today, running down to the bay. If you had a few extra bucks you went to have a few drinks at the Old Grove Pub, got dinner at the Taurus Steakhouse on Main Highway and went to see “Hair” or “Equus” at the Playhouse just down the street. Scornavacca had his art studio down the alleyway between the Pharmacy and St Stephen’s school which I attended for one year when it opened in 1959. Except for these landmarks, the Grove was a series of heavily vegetated little streets lined with old Florida slash pine bungalows built by the original Bahamian settlers back in the 1920’s. Most of these which ran along Oak Avenue were converted to “head shops” where the high school kids would go to buy psychedelic posters, pot paraphernalia and tied dyed anything. The town was patrolled by “Bob the Cop” on horseback and all official duties, including weddings, were performed by “Joe Bicycle” the local notary public and merchant.

The guy who really “discovered” the Grove in the 60’s and made it a favored haunt for the musical community was Vince Martin. Martin at the time was a folk legend and considered one of the great folk singers of his day by Bob Dylan Joni Mitchell, John Sebastian and many other contemporaries. As Vince tells it, he was here doing a gig in the early 1960’s when he found himself driving down South Bayshore Drive and happened upon this beautiful little village. There was a full moon and he could smell night blooming jasmine in the air. He was struck and eventually moved down here from Greenwich Village. He lived just down the street from me on Aviation Avenue. As his friends visited him and were struck by the natural beauty of the Grove, many moved here or spent a big part of their time here. One of these was the great Fred Neil who died here in 2001. Inspired by the Grove, in 1969 Vince wrote and recorded with Fred Neil “If the Jasmine Don't Get You ... the Bay Breeze Will”. John Sebastian was a close friend of Martin and Neil and spent a lot of time in the Grove at Vince’s house. If you’re old enough to Remember Spanky and the Gang, they got their start here in the Grove when Oz Bach and Nigel Pickering were showing Elaine “Spanky” MacFarlane around the Grove and a hurricane hit. They spent the next eight hours hiding out in a chicken coup jamming and that’s how the group eventually got together!

All these artists and so many more played the circuit here in Miami back in those days, including the Flick and the Gaslight Coffee House in the Grove. Joni Mitchell was discovered at the Gaslight by David Crosby who was passing through on his sailboat the Mayan which was docked at Dinner Key. In fact, Jimmy Buffet was then an unknown young kid who was the opening act for many guys like Martin and Neil at these coffeehouses. Besides Martin’s song, the Grove was immortalized by John Sebastian after he left the Lovin Spoonful and wrote the song “Coconut Grove”. As the song says “its really true how nothing matters, no mad, mad world, no mad hatters. Nobody’s pitching, cause there ain’t no batters in Coconut Grove” When I think back to those days, I can truly say it was a magical place. No resemblance to the crass commercial locale it has become. I know in many ways it is a “better” place today, but I can honestly say that what it was will never be rivaled by what it may become.