Detour

Duran Duran did this.

As part of their reunion tour, the curiously well-preserved limey hunks headlined SunFest, a shitshow that clogs West Palm Beach for three days, enabling shitfaced music lovers to bask in the glory that was Simon, John, Nick and Ringo — while also learning about cool new groups like Death Cab for Cutie and Rick Springfield. My sole interest was in how the festival might affect my plans to get the hell out of town — after 72 hours in the company of my curiously well-preserved, and completely unmollified, 94-year-old mother. And, sure enough, setting off for the freeway and Fort Lauderdale Airport, I discovered 100,000 Duran Duran fans in the way.

No choice but to hang a U-ey back to A1A.

A1A is the original highway that’s now the two-lane scenic route — depending on your definition of scenic. It runs beside the Atlantic — this part of it, Palm Beach to Lake Worth, Briny Breezes, Boca, Pompano and Fort Lauderdale. If you had the time (and, having told sainted mama a 7 pm flight was re-scheduled for 5, I did), it might not be the worst way to kill it.

Some of my best friends are proud Floridians, so I’ll tread lightly here. But the Land of Hanging Chad regularly manages to muster a level of architectural butt-ugliness not available elsewhere in our nation of grasping, sightless builders. And — considering LA — that's saying something. And, yes, I understand the exigencies of hurricane preparedness, but the concrete silos, windowless to the road, teeming with the old and took-the-buyout old-at-heart (the latter penitentially peddling the road's shoulder clad in little but their own Corinthian-leather skin) filled me with despair.

Generally, I take full delight in architectural camp and architectural #fail and the beauty of ugliness. And while I’ll grant that three days of sainted-mothering, and its renewed vision of my own galloping decrepitude, may have left me less in the mood, this ugliness went too far. But before I could yank the rented Sentra rightward into the Intracoastal (thereby abrogating any incipient inclination to occupy a Pompano high-rise), I found myself captivated by the etymology of Gold Coast residential tower-naming.

Most of the buildings here are towers, by measurable fact, and some are by surname. But others are called Houses, Clubs, Casinos, Palaces and, oddly, Ranches (there’s an Ocean Ranch and Sky Ranch, neither any relation to the Ocean Sky).

Royal names adorn the exteriors of many A1A high-rises — the Sea Lord, Baron, Esquire, Royal Vista and Castle by the Sea — while some developers prefer to keep their high-falutin’ democratic, as in the President of Palm Beach. Not to be confused with Presidential Place, just down the road.

There are straight-up British names — fancy by default — some lifted from fancy Brit hotels: the Stratford Arms, Mayfair, Claridge, Dover House, Berkshire by the Ocean, Sutton Place and Whitehall. And as soon as those drunken SunFest fans start cashing their 401(k)s, maybe a Duran Duran.

There are names from across the English Channel, too. There is Le Chateau. And the Eau Palm Beach Resort and Spa. And one ambitious edifice mashes up fancypants France and the palace of the Russian czars to become L’Hermitage.

There are endless attempts, naturally, to evoke the romance of the coastal locale (that usually evoke instead the 1950s), residence names that begin with Sea, Surf, Sun, Ocean, Tide and Harbor or include the words Beach and Sand. There’s an Admiralty House and a Captain’s Quarters, and, at the other end of the seafaring scale, a Beachcomber. Appropriately enough, for a shoreline that’s rapidly sinking, there’s also an Atlantis.

Then there are names that, for no apparent reason, try to evoke other locales entirely: Diamondhead, Bermuda, Aruba, Europa, Barcelona and, least explicably, Canada House.

And if Canada's a stretch, everybody knows Italy means warmth, sensuality and early retirement. Accordingly, there’s a Toscana Tower, a Tuscany, a Fontana and, for the well-endowed perhaps, a Villa Magna.

Some names promise exclusivity — the Patrician, Enclave and Penthouse Towers. Some, pure chillin’ — the Placide and the Leisure. And some promise something else again — as in the dive bar called the Dive Bar, which features an undersea motif.

One tower signals its deluxe rank by plastering the Latinate word Atrium across the facade, with nary an atrium in sight. Another gets to the point quicker, dubbing itself Luxuria.

Then there’s the huge, glass condoplex that in huge, golden capitals shouts its monosyllabic name, rhyming with chump, at the pathetic little ocean below. And that name, of course, is one we’ve already heard quite enough of.

There are a few low-rise, mom-and-pop holdovers from the Fifties — the best being the Pink Dolphin, which is forest green. And shoehorned among the condos, a couple of unexpected cultural attractions. There’s the Gumbo Limbo Nature Center, which I’d like to investigate. And the International Swimming Hall of Fame, which I’m not so sure. Outside that august institution, founded in 1965 to celebrate the height of human achievement in water, is an unsettling announcement that, in big white type on a bright red banner, reads:

“Now hiring lifeguards.”