Editor's Note

I’ve been in France for the past several weeks visiting my family-in-law, so you’ll have to forgive me if I appear out of touch. It’s a wonderful place, France, and not without its flaws– much like here — but undeniably an... [Read more...]

Features This Month

It’s said you can tell a lot about a person by the car they drive. If that’s the case, then surely the woodie owner rides in the most revealing and loquacious of biographers. The woodie is undeniably fetching, yet it exudes the kind of understated and approachable attractiveness you find in the girl next door, the one you’ve had your eye on since first grade. It whispers the sort of comfortable affluence earned by dint of hard work and deep appreciation for days off rather than... [Read more...]

By: Tobin Bennison

In one of the most referenced, praised, and unread books in the world of literature, Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past,” it’s the chance bite of a madeleine, a small, scallop-shaped cake, that spurs the author on a 7-volume rediscovery of his youth. The episode proved so resonant that “a madeleine” has since become synonymous with any sensory agent that seems to magically evoke a flood of memories. I myself have several madeleines — the smell of... [Read more...]

Words and photos by L. Paul Mann

Affluent international travelers have made Switzerland a top vacation destination for centuries. Jet setters fly in to some of the most exclusive ski resorts in the world — places like St. Moritz, Zermatt and Gstaad — and summer music fans swarm to the many music festivals, among them, the renowned Montreux Jazz Festival, the largest of its kind in the world. International backpackers flock to the Swiss Alps to hike in the serene countryside in picture postcard-perfect mountain villages... [Read more...]

In 1985, the National Trust for Historic Preservation formed the National Main Street Center and introduced the “Main Street Four-Point Approach” as a community-driven comprehensive methodology for revitalizing older, traditional business districts throughout the Country. Those four points? Organization, by building cooperation and consensus among many groups and individuals, or “stakeholders;” Design: By working with property owners and the City to enhance the physical appearance... [Read more...]

Word On The Street

CITY A planned fireworks display over the Indian River Lagoon is to provide the highlight of Melbourne’s Independence Day celebration. The display is scheduled for 9 p.m. on July 4 over the Indian River Lagoon just south of the Melbourne Cswy. at Claude Edge Front Street Park. Free bus transportation will be provided between the park and the Melbourne Auditorium, 625 Hibiscus Blvd. Buses are to depart for the park at 7:10, 7:50, and 8:10 and will return to the auditorium at 7:30, 8:10, 8:50,... [Read more...]

Local Scribes

The following is offered as a work of fiction, and therefore should not be construed by any attorneys as a reason to justify their retainers or pad their billable hours. It is a purely hypothetical musing on the current state of what were once lofty ideals, precepts held on high, and on how easily such fragile fictions may be toppled by the seemingly innocuous acts of petty men. Should any one man find too many similarities herein and think himself maligned, that would be his problem. Should he... [Read more...]

Florida summers are like molasses, thick, hot, dripping… The birds move with a certain languor, the yard is overgrown with wild, exotic grasses, the plumeria and mosquitoes swarm into full bloom, and a bright, lazy mist hangs over everything. It is stifling outside something terrible, your car feels like an oven, the sweat runs into your eyes, the sand burns your feet, the no-see-ums gnaw incessantly at your legs… In a sort of reverse-hibernatory instinct, you want to hide away, tuck... [Read more...]

Shhh! Don’t be alarmed, but I’m here to tell you that there is a secret society afoot in the Space Coast you should be aware of. Our members generally meet in the early mornings. Some arrive in spandex, sipping bottled water. Others, like me, sport baggy sweats and slug back nonfat mochas. All of us come in from the too-hot, or too-humid, or too-much-du jour that our weather can be around here and begin walking through the empty, echoing halls. Our reflections follow us, skipping silently from... [Read more...]

Several years ago I needed a new roof. Actually, this place needed a new roof the minute we moved in. This we discovered during our first real downpour as new homeowners, a nagging inundation known as Tropical Storm Gordon in 1994. A stain spread across our living room ceiling that still exists, somewhat resembling the outline of Iceland. Or is it Afghanistan? Anyway, after five months of living here, I had never inspected the attic. This was cause for a stepladder and flashlight, the tearing of... [Read more...]

At the end of my neighborhood in Indialantic, Florida, a narrow drainage canal begins and runs in a straight line toward the lagoon. Lined with cattail reeds and tropical philodendrons, the hundred yard-long conduit is the path I follow to the old dock. Tree frogs bark from deep in the ditch. Startled soft shell turtles slide off the shoreline as I stroll by. In spots where the plants clear up, timid tilapias cower for cover in the clear canal. Where the freshwater canal dumps into the saltwater... [Read more...]

Previous Restaurant Reviews

Love. Surf. Eat. You’d be hard pressed to find a motto that captures the spirit of beachside living better than that. Those three simple directives form Da Kine Diego’s guiding credo, which, while certainly catchy and pithily evocative of this area’s ingrained principles, also hides a meaning that runs far deeper than mere sloganeering. Considering Da Kine’s long-held status as a beachside institution, the words seem to hold the power of a whispered magical incantation, one... [Read more...]

Chef Matt Nugnes left much of the County feeling bereft after the hurricanes of 2004 forced him to close his revered Tropical Grill. And though that parting came with a promise to return in a different guise, it didn’t really offer much consolation. Because of the intense, almost consuming passion Matt’s food inspires among devotees, the four years separating the opening of that promised new venture felt decades longer. The degree of anticipation with which Brevardians have patiently... [Read more...]

When celebrated Irish writer/house painter Brendan Behan was asked his opinion of William Butler Yeats’ reputation as the greatest poet of the 20th century, he replied with a colorful anecdote about the aristocratic aesthete turning up his nose at a plate of freshly-cooked parsnips. The highly embellished version goes that Mr. Yeats harrumphed audibly and pushed the lowly root vegetables aside as undeserving of his refined palate. “I don’t care if he wrote ‘Cathleen Ní Houlihan’,”... [Read more...]