Volume 3 . Issue 3
March 2010
Serving Hypoluxo Island, South Palm Beach, Manalapan, Ocean Ridge, Briny Breezes, Gulf Stream and Coastal Delray Beach
Along the Coast
Group wants to plant signs and seed bicycle safety By Margie Plunkett
Plant signs and you might grow safety and cooperation: At least that’s the hope of a cyclists’ advocacy campaign that would use new road signs to instruct A1A motorists and bicyclists how to share the road. The Florida Department of Transportation is working with cycling group zMotion to post bicycle safety signs with two messages at eight proposed areas on A1A, from Boca Raton to Manalapan, in a pilot Graphic by Bonnie Lallky-Seibert
Blum and his Lady are a hit in therapy settings
Kitesurfers and sharks often mix
By Arden Moore
By Emily J. Minor
See KITESURFING on page 33
Inside Seaside dining Some local restaurants offer an ocean view. Page 20 Meet your neighbor and tour 6 gardens. Page 23
See SAFETY on page 5
Coastal Star
Along the Coast
These days, news travels fast “even when you’re a bohemian sort like Billy Blackman” and that’s how Blackman found out a man died while kitesurfing up in Martin County. Fast, and right to the point. “I got a text,” Blackman said. “I was actually giving a (kitesurfing) lesson, and a friend of mine texted me.” Blackman, 46, likes it on the edge. A Boynton Beach native who now lives in the county pocket, he’s been surfing since he was 13. He started kitesurfing in 1999 after he took a trip to Hawaii and saw a guy on this odd board, skimming across the water, a billowing kite zipping him along. “I flew back home and bought a kite on the Internet from Maui,” he said. “I taught myself — no video, no instructions, no nothing. It took me about a year to figure it out.” He has a day job, sure. He runs a tree-trimming business. But if the wind is kicking up, even just a little,
program that could expand to other areas. The signs are part of zMotion’s “Ride Right. Drive Right” campaign to make roads safer and save lives by educating motorists and cyclists to share the road, according to Mike Schweiger, CFO of Zimmerman Advertising. Schweiger also is co-founder of zMotion, the Fort Lauderdale cycling group that is paying for the signs and working with
Kitesurfer Billy Blackman takes to the sky off Dog Beach. Photo by Krishna Espanet
A few years ago, civic leader Peter Blum, heading home to Manalapan from the Peter Blum Family YMCA of Boca Raton, popped in at an animal shelter. “Our meeting ended early and I had some time to kill, so I decided I would go to the shelter and just look around,” he says. A lifelong dog lover, Blum convinced himself that he would just stroll up and down the shelter’s corridors Peter Blum and therapy dog Lady to greet the leaping and offer cheer to Bethesda patient Harriet yapping dogs vying Doctor. Photo by Jerry Lower for permanent homes. Then he turned the corner and On July 1, 2008, Blum’s spotted a Chow-collie mix wife, Maureen Ann (known sitting quietly and making as Teena), suffered a stroke direct eye contact. and received care at Bethesda “The sign on her cage said Memorial Hospital in Boynton that her name was Lady and Beach and Harbour’s Edge in that she truly was a lady,” recalls Delray Beach. Each day, Blum Blum. “I put my hand in and she and Lady visited Teena. licked it. I took her for a walk “I first met Teena when I was and she walked nicely by my in the ninth grade in Peoria, side. I adopted her that day.” Ill., and we married the year Little did Blum know at the after we graduated from high time that this dog was a lady — school,” he says. “We had a great and more. She has proved to be marriage — made it to 60 years an emotional lifeline to him and See BLUM on page 2 many others.
ELECTION PREVIEW A look at the candidates in South Palm Beach, Manalapan, Ocean Ridge and Delray Beach. Pages 9-12
House of the Month Oceanfront in Ocean Ridge Page 38
Design approved for Lantana Bridge Construction to begin in 2011. Page 17