It was a blustery day on the coast as I jumped out of the car between squalls to aim the camera in the most dangerous and interesting direction. This camera is fairly good at keeping out water, although I’ve never tested it in a torrent… nor do I want to… even though I do have the sweet Nikon D3x on my mind…
Shot across the bay between swells of the storm… The storm came across the sound very quickly right at sunset, so the fast-moving clouds made a new painting every few minutes… This one is my favorite from the batch I took.
Here are some nice textures, scattered around this unique restaurant in Palm Beach.
An early morning thunderstorm comes across the Atlantic towards Palm Beach in Florida…
It’s just slightly nicer than the Motel 6 way down the road, and they even let you play soccer there in the grass.
I was lucky that it was very stormy there and the rain let up right at dusk.
This is one of the most famous hotels in Palm Beach.
I was about to take down the top but I was afraid of another swell rolling in!
This is the famous Breakers hotel in Palm Beach. I have a good friend and partner there that lets me borrow his Jag whenever I come into town, so it was better than the old economy mid-size from Avis that I was used to!
The lounge area of the Breakers in Palm Beach has some very cool light-based sculptures. I’ve never seen anything quite like them. The hotel staff eyed me suspiciously as I went around with my tripod to get pictures. They kept looking at one another with a "I’m sure he got permission to do that" kinda look…
A few days ago I posted a picture of the storm at the airport here in Palm Beach. I was contemplating flying into the heart of the storm instead of sitting in a room full of attorneys for the day. Today I chose the latter and it was about as much fun as it sounds. It was my first time through this particular experience and it wasn’t what I would call a rockin’ good time. I wish I could have said, “Your honor, the witness (me) is being badgered” but there was no judge, just a bunch of lawyers quoting rules and regulations I’ve never heard of. I think, technically, lawyers have formed a sovereign nation who have created a set of rules that abstract them and all behavior from regular society. That’s another pseudo-sociological concept I am working on, but is a rather empty thing to really think about unless you are on a break in one of those badgering-sessions.
After the session, I headed out to get some pictures around Palm Beach. I twisted my ankle in an effort to get this one… that dock is even more uneven than it looks!
This always causes mild panic that I will be delayed in the airport. This was taken in Palm Beach, where I will be for a few days to meet with some attorneys. I don’t know if I would rather be in a plane in that storm or in a room full of attorneys… tough choice, really.
I missed my flight after that meeting, so I crashed here for the night at the Ritz-Carlton in Palm Beach. It’s called the Palm Beach one, but it was actually about 15 minutes away. The rooms were very nice and I spent most of the evening down in the bar, reading this new book I got called, “The Geography of Thought” that talks about how Asians think vs. how Westerners think.
It just so happened that I was at the hotel the same time as the South Florida Plastic Surgery convention, so I was surrounded at the bar by all these old plastic surgeons and their hot young botox buxom wives. They all were getting drunk and talking about all kinds of crazy stuff. They were talking about this one grandma that came in and they injected her with the knockout medicine, she started talking openly about a bunch of crazy hardcore lesbian experiences and all the nurses were cracking up.
I heard a bunch more stories that I can’t talk about… but it was certainly more lewd than the gaming industry!
Here is a picture I found from the Hotel Biba bar & lounge area. It was very cool, but totally empty. So it was only cool to hang out in there for about five minutes before I realized a place an upper limit on cool when you are the only one experiencing it. So I left and went to a really boring dinner meeting.
After I got home, I looked at my Amex bill and noticed they charged me three times for one night. What a pain… can’t Amex run some kind of daemon that checks for weird things like that and rectify these things on my behalf?
This is a slow week for me because of personal stuff (I don’t post a lot of personal family stuff on my blog because of the creeps out there, and, also, because family blogs are usually pretty boring - I don’t think that anyone really cares if Ethan gets new bedsheets).
But here is a pic from last week when I was in Palm Beach taken from my friend’s pad who lives on Worth. You can see the damage done by the recent hurricane on the beach. There used to be sand all down the beach, and now you can see it is half washed away! They actually bring these huge ships in and pump in new sand from the intercoastal at the cost of millions of dollars. Only in Palm Beach would they pay millions to move sand 3 miles.
Compare that to a picture I took a year earlier from about the same vantage point:
I stayed at the Hotel Biba here in Palm Beach because I like to hole up in cool little boutique hotels from time to time. Almost everywhere around here is still packed from the hurricane because a lot of people don’t have power. I kind of like how this lightbulb sculpture mocks all those people and their lack of electricity.
Here is a picture of my room below along with this big box of GoPets crap I had to carry around like a UPS man. People never know what to think when I walk into a business meeting with a sports coat and I end up popping open a box that spills out tons of stuffed animals. They also get even more confused when I tell them my room is full of bead curtains.
I got into Palm Beach late after a bad connection in Chicago. I was in a real hurry to get down to Fort Lauderdale for a meeting, and I quickly negotiated a very open and confusing deal with my driver. I told him I needed him to drive me around for the rest of the day and night. I told him I needed to Ft. Lauderdale while not sparing the horses, to wait outside while I had the meeting, to drive me back to Palm Beach, then to drive me to dinner, and then finally back to my hotel again.
After I got in the car, I realized that I really needed to pee, but I was late for the meeting and it was an hour away. I kept looking over there on the right at that champagne bottle, and I spent HALF the trip thinking about pouring out the champagne and peeing in the bottle. I thought of many many good reasons to justify the action, including that it was my limo for the day, and that is just the sort of thing that happens in limos.
Here, at the end of the night, it came time to pay him. It was $260! The worst thing was, he wanted it in cash! I made him drive me to a grocery store so I could get his stupid money. Here he is with the money in his hand, and he will probably use it to launch some Nigerian email scam.
