Heat Waves

Written by MARIE SPEED

have no idea why summer here tends to ground me like no other season. Oh, I hate the relentless heat, I’m terrified of hurricanes and I dread opening that FPL bill every month. But I also find a certain calming effect in the sweet heavy mornings as the sun comes up, the gathering afternoon storms. There are fewer cars whistling down A1A near my neighborhood, and our little beach is quieter, with fresh turtle treads from the night before. It’s as if a thick warm curtain has fallen around us for a few months—just those of us who live here year round, and we are left to navigate the season the way we always have, with no Happy Hour crowds packing every single restaurant, no crazy horn honking the second a light changes, no loud voices talking into phones, no lines at Publix.

It’s a respite from a busy year—as this issue highlights. Our Best of Boca feature (page 48) long ago ceased to be a focus on best this and best that and has morphed into more of a Year in Review—and what a year it’s been. The onslaught of people from the Northeast and the West Coast to Florida has continued to the tune of almost 600,000 in 2022. We became the fastest-growing state in the nation last year, with Palm Beach County adding more than 13,000 new residents, according to a Palm Beach Post article.

There is a lack of affordable housing, insurance rates have skyrocketed, and weather’s become its own issue, with storms predicted to be more frequent and stronger. Locally, some of the turmoil in Delray has calmed, while Boca is in the throes of its development woes again (see Aletto).

The county commissioners completely caved on the Ag Reserve, allowing GL Homes to build on land that was earmarked for preservation by the voters themselves in 1999. Up and down the coast, the pressure to build appears to win out over anything else—and preferably luxury housing even fewer people can afford. And don’t even get me started on our crazy political environment; who ever thought we’d miss Flori-Duh Man?

So no wonder summer feels like a warm bath. It’s a welcome illusion in my life. A chance to pretend things are really OK, are really just as they‘ve always been: too hot, a little lazy, full of ocean days and milky skies and endless possibility.

Or, as Hemingway once said,“wouldn’t it be pretty to think so?”

Goldsmith & Complications and Berd Vay’e have partnered to create America’s PasTime, a limited series of 30 mini-baseball bat sculptures. Wooden bat pieces are suspended inside transparent Lucite alongside vintage watch parts, bridging the worlds of sports and horology.

America’s PasTime is available exclusively at Goldsmith & Complications. View this piece and our entire collection of watches, clocks, and jewelry at our boutique on Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach, Florida.

66 thousand

How many jobs tourism supports in Palm Beach County