Word: fortes
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Apart from the weather, spring is a state of mind, one that expresses itself in rituals of celebration. The beach at Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for example, is once again a jungle of young bodies celebrating each other's youth and strewing the sands with beer cans. At New York's Radio City Music Hall, temporarily rescued from destruction by being designated a city landmark, the legendary Rockettes observed Easter by wearing bunny ears, and crowds lined up for what was announced as the last show in the 45-year-old art deco theater. In New Orleans, this...
...Midwesterners cruising in turquoise Firebirds with tailwings and racing stripes. It had no 30-year-old hangers-on. It had no wet t-shirt contests. Elvis Presley could never have made one of his Tarzan-of-our-time movies at Harvard's Memorial Hall. But the requisite Fort Lauderdale scam of being charming to strangers seemed too much like the mixer mentality for Namo and I to feel that we had escaped from much. The main thing everyone there had left behind was restraint...
...crucible and the focus of the primitive energies unleashed in Fort Lauderdale is the strip in the evening. The city's beach is nice, its motels are mediocre, and its restaurant franchises are just like those anywhere in the country; a Burger King is a Burger King is a Burger King. But the city's strip is perhaps the ultimate cruise in America in late March--rivalled only by Daytona Beach to the north. Everyone puts up his coolest front, wears his hippest clothes, drivers his meanest car. And they do it by the thousands, all along a one-mile...
...Fort Lauderdale is not a place to linger. Old people there stand out in a cruel light. It is best to come in fired up, blow off steam quickly, and then leave quickly, rather than stay on a few extra days to sit sipping gin and tonics and waiting for more craziness and wild adventures that never quite materialize. In the end, Namo and I probably stayed one day too long. Four days was enough to get some good sun, meet some interesting people, and find the good nightclubs, the bad clubs, and, accidentally, the gay clubs; five days...
...tires, the turning of the passengers asleep in the back seat, the constant mirror check for state police, the dashboard light casting eerie shadows across the driver's face, the A.M. radio pulling in music from Nashville, New York City, Tulsa, Cleveland, Savannah. The mirage of Fort Lauderdale was far behind, left to reform in the distance. For now anyway, we were in motion, and that was enough