Why West Palm Beach Will Never Be Miami or Palm Beach West

On certain summer nights, the balmy air in my neighborhood is thick with the scent of garlicky-oniony black beans simmering in a pot and roast chicken. Redolent with purple Fabuloso - always the purple - and night blooming jasmine.

This is West Palm Beach.

A small city where residents know they can grab a cafe con leche at Havana at 4:45am after a long night or to start a long day.

West Palm Beach was Sunfest (RIP) - sunny days and rainy nights dashing up and down Flagler in flip-flops from stage to stage fueled with nothing more than iced coffee and blueberry-vodka lemonades.

West Palm Beach is the lady at Publix who refuses to believe I’m not Spanish and speaks to me accordingly, it’s the guy in the beat-up white pick-up who tells me that he’s a, “straight-up Florida cracker” while showing off his anti-Trump sign. It’s the three little Haitian girls who live next-door, the youngest of whom faces down Indiana and

his bone-rattling barks without flinching.

West Palm Beach is not a suburb of Miami, despite best efforts to make it Wynwood Norte.

It isn’t an appendage of Palm Beach despite the unfounded rumors of a rebrand as Palm Beach West.

And on that note - I don’t know what in the pandering ass fuck the Palm Beach Post is playing at here, but I can assure you that the Island is not “Donald Trump’s Palm Beach.”

Palm Beach has existed long before Trump, it will continue to exist long after he is gone and anyone who lives here knows that if anything, Palm Beach belongs to Lilly Pulitzer.

And it certainly the fuck isn’t Wall Street South despite what the New York Post, Stephen Ross, a litany of voracious developers and carpetbagging, bad driving transplants want it to be with their high-rises and $22 salads with a mandatory service charge of 20%.

West Palm Beach is Honda Civics with the tweeters, neighborhood cats with sleepy orange eyes, teachers and mechanics and nurses and lawn guys and pool guys and “Don’t worry, I know a guy” guys.

It’s cupboards stacked with green Flanigans cups, sweltering heat and coming together to put up plywood before a hurricane and knowing that when Steve Weagle issues a Snuggle Alert, it’s gonna dip down to the 50s and you better grab a hoodie but you’ll still wear your Reefs.

It’s knowing to get your juices and smoothies at Don Victorio’s because they’re literally half the price of the bougie juice places and you can also grab some serranos, onions and plum tomatoes while you’re there.

West Palm Beach is a community with its own identity - a strong one.

Change is the only constant in life and I welcome change and the opportunity that it brings…but not at the cost of losing who we are to become a diluted version of what someone with more money wants us to be.