How To Drive Australian
Not surprisingly, many Golden Beach residents, who pay the highest property taxes in the area, are fed up.
By Gail Graham
Contributing Writer
A Kind Word for Aventura Drivers
The English snowbird who complained so bitterly about Aventura drivers has obviously never visited Sydney.
Miami drivers may be the worst in the United States, but Sydney drivers are the worst in the entire world. Aventura drivers don’t always signal, but generally
speaking, they show a consistent degree of courtesy towards their fellow drivers. They slow down to let the driver in the other car change lanes, or pull in or out of a driveway or mall
entrance. When a sign says MERGE, they merge, even if it means letting someone else get in front of them. They don’t lean on their horns. They don’t leap out of their cars at red lights
and scream obscenities and smash your hood or your windscreen with a crow bar. They don’t get even with you for having taken “their” parking spot by slashing your tires. They don’t
tailgate, and they don’t run into the rear of your car to encourage you to go faster. And although I don’t know this for a fact, I’ll bet ten bucks that most of the drivers wending their
way along Biscayne Boulevard have valid licenses, and are driving legally registered and insured vehicles. (In Australia, one out of 10 vehicles is unregistered, stolen, or being driven by
an unlicensed driver) Count your blessings, snowbird. Compared to Sydney, Aventura is paradise.
Three Judaic Women
Peggy Guggenheim could buy anything she wanted in the way of art, and did. Unfortunately, I can’t. (Probably, you can’t, either) And so I find fabulous events
like Art Basel stimulating, but also a wee bit frustrating, because I know that I will never own a Picasso, not even a teensy, weensy Picasso. However, it is entirely possible that I might
acquire a painting by one of the three Argentinean artists featured at a new exhibition, The Art of Three Judaic Women, now showing at the Diego Victoria Fine Art Gallery at the
Intracoastal Mall, 3609 N.E. 163rd St., North Miami Beach. And knowing that I could actually afford to buy one of these works and take it home with me makes looking at them lots
more fun. It’s the difference between being a spectator, and being part of the action.
Graciela Shalev is a self-taught Israeli/Argentine artist whose enthusiastic brushwork and vivid palette convey a joyous celebration of life and movement. The works on
display literally leap and shimmer on the wall. Lithe figures limned in broad, rapid strokes in wonderful shades of blue and greens cavort across these canvases, and even when they come to
rest and gaze out at you, the colors delight. Claudia Ravel’s works are quite different, yet equally seductive. These are Middle Eastern views, mostly of Jerusalem and surroundings,
deceptively simple, almost cubist renditions of walls, pitched roofs, steeples, domes and minarets beneath blue skies. I found myself thinking
of some of Paul Klee’s Orientalist works,
and also of the Algerian Azouaou Mammeri, who was also the first North African artists to break with the Islam tradition of never depicting the human form. Ravel’s “In Front of the Wall”
is a particularly thoughtful exercise in the juxtaposition of animate and inanimate subject matter, an ostensible
jigsaw that gradually resolves into a quietly monumental tableau of
worship and prayer.
Marisa Leicach chooses a more figurative, traditional approach to create her moving, evocative canvasses of Jewish life and tradition. “El Rebe” seems about to speak,
lips parted beneath a wiry, white beard, eyes fixed upon his interlocutor, totally caught in the moment. “The Wedding” observes the bride and her groom from behind, unusual but also oddly
resonant. “Eve With Grapes and Apples” gives us a misty and enchanting
prelapsarian Eden, and a girlishly coy and mischievous young Eve. This exhibition is definitely worth a look.
Check it out. You won’t be disappointed. Contact Diego Victoria Fine Art Gallery at 305-405-0354.
Grumblings in Golden Beach
Golden Beach may be a suburb of million-dollar properties, but the local politicians up there seem to behave more like street-fighters than the elected
representatives and public servants of one of Florida’s wealthiest townships. At the moment, former Interim Police Chief Robert Nieman is accusing Mayor Michael Addicott, Town Manager
James Vardalis and Town Clerk Cathy Szabo of having Councilman Stanley J. Feinman arrested “for the sake of political gain “ and “vengeance.” (Vardalis is the one who suspended Nieman from
his job – which he’s still trying to get back – last year) Feinman himself claims he’s innocent of any wrongful behavior, and adds that “a conspiracy exists in Golden Beach.” Vardalis is
said to have used “a scorched-earth policy to rid himself of
every employee that is not in his plans.” All very complicated and nasty.
Not surprisingly, many Golden Beach residents,
who pay the highest property taxes in the area, are fed up. “Every time it rains, we have a flood. They fix and they fix, they assess and they assess and nothing happens. And this is no
new thing. They’ve spent a fortune on sewers, and what have we got to show for it? It rains, and all the streets flood. And it’s been like this for thirty years,” my Golden Beach informant
tells me. “We had a brand new Mercedes. There was a rainstorm, and the flooding was so bad that the Mercedes just
stopped. We had to leave it there, in the middle of the street. And
look at the mess they’ve made out of the landscaping down the center of A1A. They did it one time, and it was no good. Then they did it all again, and they still didn’t get it right. It
doesn’t even look like plants. It looks like weeds. So now they’re going to do it a third time. Why is it so hard for them to do a little bit of landscaping? There’s a lot of politics in
this town, and you can’t get past it. I don’t even go to the town meetings anymore. Whatever you say, it doesn’t matter." My informant has a point. Flooding may be a common South Florida
problem, but landscaping a median strip isn’t exactly rocket science. I told her she ought to start going to town meetings again, and she agreed.
