Articles Posted by Bernard McCormick
Articles Posted by Bernard McCormick
Two fellows thought they recognized each other in a Los Angeles restaurant. Alan Hooper was there for the Florida State–Brigham Young football game. Tim Petrillo was celebrating his wife’s college graduation. They were both from Fort Lauderdale, and made plans to meet back home. That was 1996. It was the start of a business partnership that has produced some of the area’s more distinctive restaurants and residential buildings.
It has been a hectic day. Marilynn Wick says she’s lost a 40-year employee. Her new Mercedes-Benz won’t start, so she has to change the scheduled meeting from the theater in uppermost Boca Raton to her big costume warehouse in Deerfield Beach. People are popping in and out of her office with problems. Her office is like a stage, with citizens showing up unannounced from several entrances. Somebody has lost the wigs. A voice from somewhere says, “I may have heard her wrong. I’m trying to get an order that has to go out today.”
“Our ’57 trip to California was meant as a vacation, and if it didn’t exactly change our life, it sure changed that summer.”
There was Disneyland in California. The author recalls the early years of the original Disney theme park.
The weight of a compliment is directly proportional to the weight of the person giving it. Thus one of the most valued comments in our 56 years in the magazine business came from the late Dr. Abraham Fischler. We bumped into him at a luncheon a few years back. It was probably for Nova Southeastern University.
The air show returns to Fort Lauderdale this year with a new name and new aircraft.
“Excuse the horn blowing, but it is a fact that Gulfstream Media Group, with its six titles, most of which have been published for decades, has a wingspan unmatched by any other media we know.”
In defense of Bill O’Reilly, we can say without fear of contradiction that never once during his brief association with our magazines in the early 1970s was he ever accused of sexual harassment. In truth, we had no female employees to harass, but even if we had, in those days it would more likely have been aggressive women harassing him, than the other way around. He was a charming, intelligent, good-looking young dude.
It’s time for another density cap. Back in the mid-1970s, Perfect Town (also known as Boca Raton) got panicky when it saw tall buildings sprouting on Fort Lauderdale’s beach. Fearing contagion, it passed a law limiting the number of people who could live in Boca. Keep in mind that this was a time when the Royal Palm Polo Club, in the vicinity of what is now Town Center, was as far as Boca extended to the west. I-95 was not yet.
“If you wait 50 years, you may get only crumbs from the table. And pretty stale ones at that.”
So you have the boat you always wanted. You love to take your friends aboard and cruise the deep oceans, either showing off your seamanship by driving the boat yourself, or, if you dropped a few mil for a serious yacht, by hiring a skilled crew to pilot it so you and your guests can enjoy the kind of food they’d expect from a high-end restaurant.
The president called a press conference. The room was filled with reporters, but when the president walked in, they all walked out. Surprised, he turned to his press secretary, but the man had left. When he tried to find out from the Secret Service what was going on, he found they had all gone to bed. He went out to the presidential limo, just in time to hear the driver say he was quitting.
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