No gems among the pearls
My New Year’s resolution: Help no stranger, acquaintance, associate, friend, relative, dumb animal, business connection, migrant, editor or in-law get anything wholesale for anybody at any time anywhere for any reason.
A dear friend — no longer dear — wanted pearls. A catch at her throat (not a diamond one) needed a necklace. Wholesale.
I tried to help. Better for the oysters had I contracted laryngitis.
Being hectic holiday time my jewelry contact didn’t consider this the greatest meeting since Potsdam.
Sterile oysters, unaware the month had an “r” in it, weren’t developing pearls fast enough.
I wasted a whole day while she chose. “This too baroque . . . this isn’t white enough . . . these are graduated but I wanted all one size. Like maybe what Rihanna might wear.”
Then, price. She wanted 10-millimeter but could only afford 5. The seller wanted her removed. He ogled her as though to say, “When it rains, anything comes up from the ground.”
She looked back as though to say, “Same to you in spades.”
She wanted a different catch. He remade the original one. She didn’t like it. Or him. Or me. He remade the thing.
November she joined the aged yenta caravan to Florida and her second-floor rear condo, which overlooked an alligator.
He promised to send the necklace. He got the address wrong. I had to call him. He’d packed it, insured it, prepaid first-class airmail special. The holiday came. The holiday went. So did the gift.
Interrupting her mahjong game before late dinner at 5 o’clock, she called. To announce it finally came. She had the thing appraised. Even my black phone blanched. The appraiser said it wasn’t worth spit. This Florida jeweler with his pop-up store then sold her another necklace.
That so-called friend still talks to me — but not often.
My jeweler contact won’t do business with me anymore. Sorry we ever met.
And who do I think I am anyway bringing him such cheap people to do business with him.
So, my New Year’s resolution. Never again get anything wholesale for anybody anywhere for any reason at any time again ever.
However, happens I do have a very good contact for rugs. If anyone’s interested in broadloom — 30% off — contact me care of this paper.
Rainbow leads to fool’s gold
Florida always nails a 10-year run. Late ’50s, nirvana. Ten years later, end of ’60s — a ghetto. Early ’80s big TV show “Miami Vice” was the grab. The place re-bloomed. Next up? Sunk. The drug capital.
Now it has sun and it’s a tax haven. So again a temp.
Hot restaurants are NYC retreads: Rao’s, Cipriani, Avra, Milos.
And every set of bones — comes back. Here. To New York — for A-1 entertainment. Palm trees are Broadway?
Plus, all those senior bones schlep back here — here — for their doctors. Here.
Transplants all say it’s so great down there. But they’re here while saying that.
Also, if Florida’s gov pushes Disney some more those seniors won’t even have their juniors to schlep onto the rides.
Definition of a White House meeting: a group of politicians who individually can do zero, but as a group — can meet and decide that nothing can be done.
Only in Washington, kids, only in Washington.
Source link: https://nypost.com/2024/01/09/opinion/florida-may-be-a-sunny-tax-haven-but-its-no-new-york/