Death to My Hometown: On $50k Social Clubs, Dark Bars, and the Real West Palm Beach

In another life, I would have made an excellent bartender.

I like cooking and playing with flavors so I’d probably craft some pretty interesting drinks - tamarind mezcal margarita with a chaat-masala rim or a pomegranate-hibiscus gin cocktail with pomegranate seltzer and Rooh Afza ice cubes which slowly melt down to sweeten your drink.

I like people. Or at least, I’m good with people. Listening to them and their stories, doling out whatever they needed in that moment be it compassion, advice or, more likely these days, a kick in the ass - “Is your girlfriend really crazy or are you just a dick who messes with her at every turn?”

I like the ritual of drinking but hate being drunk.

All a girl needs to feel civilized is a big glass swirling with jammy pinot noir overlooking a mountainous Oregon vista or a heavy tumbler filled with Bluecoat gin and tonic, clinking with ice overlooking….anything.

I love bars.

In Florida, you can’t swing a cat without hitting a beach bar - brightly colored decor, rum-and-tropical fruit based beverages and country pop and Jimmy Buffett alternating on the PA system, but my favorite kind of bar is the dark and cavernous kind with dim lighting - a place where you hide your sins from God. The kind of place where Henry Chinaski would have scribbled on cheap paper napkins - “the tigers have found me and I do not care.”

My two favorite bars in West Palm are Flanigans, but especially Flanigan’s at Christmas because it feels even more like home and manages to be both festive and pensive…all the while serving you margaritas in pint glasses and the bar at the Okeechobee Steak House.

Warm chestnut whiskey-hued ambiance, icy martinis and security in the knowledge that you don’t have to speak more than twenty words the entire time you’re there.

I heard Hotel Biba had a great bar - a courtyard aglow with string lights, sangria amidst swaying palm trees - but now, the site is to be renovated and gone is the oasis off of Belvedere and in its place is a members-only social club with, “diverse offerings to a curated community.”

Curated like a gallery exhibit. Chosen.

Not organic. Not part of what was already there but appointed. Preferred.

And with a club membership of $50,000+ - divinely fucking ordained, it seems.

It’s a big club and we ain’t in it but lately, the body blows from it are landing with a particularly brutal intensity.

Fuck ‘em.

I don’t want to be part of any club that would have me as a member. I want to be part of a community and I am.

I don’t need to move somewhere and spend the equivalent of someone’s salary to feel as if I belong.

I already do belong. This is my town.

See you at Flanny’s tomorrow - tumbleweeds on me.