History and small towns and villages
Glenn Terry wrote a beautiful story on small town New England in his blog, The Grove Guy. In the article, "In Praise of a Small Town," Glenn really gets to the crux the issue here in Coconut Grove. What was/is a small sailing and arts village is now turning into a mini metropolis (the Grove, not New England).
I love New England, I am there often, I often threaten to move there or to Hoboken, NJ, but the cold winters deter me. I did a story on Hoboken here. I love Cambridge, but I've been all over that area. They have an excellent commuter rail in New England and in a short period of time you can be anywhere. I am usually based in Boston or Cambridge and I've gone to Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut and basically all over the colonies. The one thing they have in common is their smallness and quaintness. Last summer I saw a Melissa Etheridge concert in Westhampton, NY, in an old playhouse that has been restored.
This November I am doing one of my favorite things - spending time in Boston/Cambridge and then taking the train down to New York for Thanksgiving. Riding the rails through the back woods of New England in the fall is a spectacular thing. If you hit it right, the leaves are red and yellow and the whole trip is amazing. I remember one year, there was a couple from Australia on the train and the guy kept jumping up and pointing to the New England scenery. He could not get over the postcard images - all very Norman Rockwell.
I am assuming most people who moved to Coconut Grove did so for the small community aspect and it's a shame that it is being built over.
I saw an article in Curbed New York called, "16 Small towns near NYC you need to visit right now." It's from last summer, but the towns of course have bee untouched and it all still rings true, which made me laugh because if this was a story on Coconut Grove from last summer, I daresay some of the things written about would be changed or completely gone. I've been to some of these places in the article. I always imagine what it would be like to live in Mystic, CT or Beacon, NY. Woodstock, NY, Rhinebeck, NY, the Birkshires, MA; all amazing small places.
posted by Tom Falco at 5:00 AM
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2 Comments:
One may only imagine how much more wonderful and desirable Coconut Grove could be if we had been better stewards of our past. The Spaniards tried to eliminate Inca's past and ISIS is trying to eliminate Iraq's past. It seems as if greed, developers and our commissioners, have been even more successful in eliminating Coconut Grove's past that once made us so unique. What a sad loss for our community and generations to come!
A generation or two from now, someone will say ”there used to be a quaint little village here called Coconut Grove, you think we can rebuild it?
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