Haunts of the very rich
| Haunts of the very rich |
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Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach all attract gay visitors of different types according to each city’s general character. Miami is Party Central where flashing cash and pectorals is de rigueur. Fort Lauderdale is more laidback, where people seek to be themselves. Palm Beach is for those who mingle in the most fashionable circles without the glare reflecting off bare skin on South Beach. Knowing the type of person I pretend to be, I was off to Palm Beach, a discreet place with an abnormally high number of eccentric people, with ‘eccentric’ defined as a bit crazy and very, very rich. The city’s main drag is Worth Avenue, a shopper’s dream. This open-air cathedral of extravagance is lined with opulent jewellery shops (such as that of the very creative Tracy Dara Kamenstein), whose baubles rival the size of the family jewels, and chic eateries staffed by gay-today waiters whose dazzling smiles, pretty eyes and perfect suntans make you want to change your order from crab cakes to ‘Yes, please’. One such place is Taboo, the restaurant of the moment for the In crowd. In New York or LA, you would expect a snooty maitre d’ to look you up and down before denying there are any tables available in a half-empty restaurant, but here in sunny Florida, the welcome mat is rolled out even for those wearing thongs and no labels whatsoever.
For accommodation, Palm Beach has several famous megahotels; all of them are far too big and impersonal for any gay traveller worth his Armani to even consider as The Tracksuit Set has moved into them in droves. Instead, for a true Palm Beach experience, try the sophistication of The Chesterfield. More a grand mansion than a hotel, the staff will make you feel as if you are lord of the manor and they your domestic staff to serve your every need. At night, The Chesterfield’s (in)famous Leopard Lounge with its naughty ceiling paintings of bacchanalia gone OTT attracts an eclectic crowd, with ‘eclectic’ defined as a bit crazy and very, very rich. The Chesterfield is conveniently located within a few blocks of both Worth Avenue and the beach – let’s not forget that the place is called Palm Beach.
Happily for gay travellers, West Palm Beach International Airport is one of the few in the US where rear entry of the aircraft is possible. JetBlue, the leading low-cost, high-service airline in the US, thinks of everything to make its G&L passengers happy from the moment they enter their planes, which can also be penetrated in California or New York to make connections to several South Florida destinations.
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Like the setting for the 1972 film, Haunts of the Very Rich, in which gay Brady Bunch dad Robert Reed played a minister and fabulous Cloris Leachman got worked over in an interracial lesbian pseudo-encounter, Florida can be a seductive place. Not surprisingly, it is one of the world’s most popular gay destinations.
Naturally, where money flows, art follows, and Palm Beach has a great museum in the form of the Flagler Museum, yet another mansion full of beautiful art set in lovely gardens, epitomising the wealth of America’s Gilded Age.
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