Ft. Lauderdale: same beaches, new city
By Karen Haymon Long/Tampa Tribune

Ft. Lauderdale hot spots
Area shopping
Tips for the trip

FORT LAUDERDALE - Water, water everywhere.

Canals earned Fort Lauderdale the nickname ``Venice of America.'' Its beach beckoned worldwide fame.

This city, as nearly every baby boomer knows, is ``Where the Boys Are'' and liquor flows; where yachts and speedboats are nearly as common as cars; and almost every day's hot enough for the beach.

Fort Lauderdale's beach is the first place you must go when you visit. Go directly there and walk past the palms, the Eisenhower-era hotels and the new, deco-inspired stark white wall, lighted by a ribbon of colored light.

Stroll as far as you can.

You'll find chunks of bleached coral and funny swirled shells, hear sea gulls shriek, smell salty breezes and spot huge tankers chugging to and from Port Everglades.

Waves - usually too tame for surfing - will splash your feet if you walk along the seashore. And soon, you'll know your voyage here, no matter how far you came, was worth your effort.

Long ago, Fort Lauderdale's leaders were smart. They banned high-rises and hotels on the beach side of State Road A1A. Hotels and motels, restaurants, bars, T-shirt shops and even a McDonald's line the other side of the street. But the beach was mercifully spared.

That's one reason this 2 1/2-mile beach is one of Florida's more alluring.

So that we could walk to the beach every morning, we stayed a block from the Atlantic on the Intracoastal Waterway in a small, homey motel called Pillars Waterfront Inn.

One windy morning, as we strolled south, roller skaters whizzed by on the sidewalk and three surfers took advantage of the unusual swells. Farther south, two men went one-on- one on what may be one of the world's few basketball courts within sight and sound of an ocean.

Time, it seems, stalled on this part of the beach. Little seems to have changed since Ike was in the White House. Giant Australian pines still shade picnic tables next to the basketball court. Sleek yachts and sailboats still line Bahia Mar marina, across the street. The Yankee Clipper hotel still guards the south edge of the beach, although it's now the Sheraton Yankee Clipper.

Of course, some shops and restaurants are different. But the Elbow Room is still there - open 24 hours a day on the corner of A1A and Las Olas Boulevard.

By 1960, when the movie ``Where the Boys Are'' came out, Fort Lauderdale's beach was drawing college kids by the thousands during spring break. Here, in the city they called ``Fort Liquordale,'' they partied until all hours, many of them at the Elbow Room, where part of the movie was filmed.

College kids still come to Fort Lauderdale, although not as many as in the heyday of the '60s and '70s. You're more likely now to see British or French Canadian tourists on the beach: Nearly half a million overseas visitors came here last year, with 340,000 more from Canada.

Tourists, in fact, spent $3.4 billion in 1993 in the greater Fort Lauderdale area.

They come for good reasons: Besides its famous beach, Fort Lauderdale is known for its good restaurants, pretty parks - Birch State Park across from the beach is a beautiful one - a fine art museum, a very fine science museum, a popular port, decent shopping malls and new performing arts and convention centers.

But if you feel nourished merely by looking at water, that's reason enough for a visit. This Venice of America has 300 miles of navigable waterways.

One visitor, who lives near the water in Dunedin, marveled at how beautiful Fort Lauderdale's waterways are and at the number of boats that always seem to be tooling around.

``There's a lot of money here,'' he said. ``A lot of money.''

And so many boats that the city could now fairly be called ``Where the Boats Are.''

To see some of Fort Lauderdale's prettier canals, we walked from the beach west on Las Olas (which means ``the waves''), over an Intracoastal bridge, past sailboats and yachts and radiantly white bridges that lead to islands of expensive homes. The architecture is part Spanish - white or terra cotta-colored rambling houses, some with courtyards and red tile roofs - and part '50s Florida. Yards are thick with red hibiscus and lush sea grape bushes.

Farther west, toward downtown, Las Olas turns into a palm-lined street of boutiques, art galleries and cafes - similar to Palm Beach's Worth Avenue or Winter Park's Park Avenue.

On weekend evenings, Las Olas heats up with jazz, locals tell us.

If the beaches are the same as they've been for a long, long time, downtown couldn't have changed more.

FT. LAUDERDALE HOT SPOTS

New within the last few years are the Broward Center for Performing Arts, the Museum of Discovery & Science and Blockbuster IMAX Theater, the Museum of Art, and Riverwalk, a shady brick walkway that wends beside New River.

The Museum of Discovery & Science has the only living Atlantic coral reef on public display, according to Sherwood Wilkes, the museum's curator of natural science. Brilliant yellow and electric blue fish swim among the reefs in one tank. A giant grouper named Boomer in another tank gets darker when he's anxious and seems to watch people watching him, Wilkes said.

The reefs are just one exhibit in this hands-on museum, as interesting to adults as to children. We were mesmerized by a film of a Rolling Stones concert in the IMAX Theater. Imagine Mick Jagger belting out ``Satisfaction'' over 42 speakers. Picture him in a green silk coat strutting across a screen five stories high and 80 feet wide. The film was practically as exciting as being at a Stones concert - except you didn't have to fight crowds afterward.

Across the street from the museum, we followed the smells of barbecued gator tail, fried squid and roasting corn to a seafood festival in Bubier Park sponsored by the Fort Lauderdale Historical Society. It was one of many events in Bubier Park throughout the year.

AREA SHOPPING

Years ago, if you wanted to go shopping in Fort Lauderdale, you went downtown, probably to Burdines. That store's gone now, replaced by a county building. But today, the greater Fort Lauderdale area has dozens of shopping malls and centers.

We've shopped in the Galleria, an elegant mall just over a bridge from the beach with Brooks Brothers, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and other pricey stores. So for a change of pace, we headed to Sawgrass Mills Mall west of Fort Lauderdale in Sunrise, billed as the largest discount mall in the world. Wear your hiking boots if you go. Designed in the shape of an alligator, it has two giant food courts and 240 stores, including Saks Fifth Avenue, Spiegel and Sharper Image outlets.

Another day, we headed to nearby Dania's famous antique row on U.S. Highway 1, where most shops specialize in glassware, jewelry and knickknacks.

Some may wonder, why drive across the state to watch the sun set over an intracoastal waterway when you could watch it over the Gulf? Or for that matter, to walk on a beach or to eat in good restaurants? Why go to another performing arts center when we have one of our own? Why take long walks past sailboats in other cities?

Fort Lauderdale is different enough and beautiful enough that it's worth the drive - maybe even from Canada.

TIPS FOR THE TRIP
HOW TO GET THERE

WHERE TO STAY WHERE TO DINE Broward County, according to its convention and visitors bureau, has ``2,500 wining and dining establishments ... more per capita than any other area in the United States.''

We don't doubt it. Every time we go, we find someplace new we like. But we have many favorites, too, most of them ones locals swear by.

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