(R.J. Gators is a marvelous place to while away the afternoon).

Now, if you think I am going to go all hipster authentic on you and start bashing The Villages, you would be wrong. Of course it is all fake. The artistically cool shipwreck in back of B.J. Gator’s bar? Sunk there on purpose, naturally.

The Stepford Town? OK, so what? There is something about having a breakfast sandwich at the Johnny Rocket’s faux fifties restaurant on the town square, served up by Ashley, whose blonde hair is pinned up and wears black framed glasses and bright red lipstick, and looking at the jukebox where you could, if you wished, play “I Got You Babe” six times in a row for a quarter.

(You want a cool cart? They got ’em in spades. Watch out for whizzing seniors. But why all the round abouts for people who may be having the onset of dementia. Or is that just me?)

The Villages is the largest gated over-55 community in the world. It holds more than 100,000, and everyone gets around via golf cart. They have a parade once a year and the convoy numbers thousands of them. It all makes perfect sense, once you get re-calibrated. It is Disneyworld for the aging Boomers.

Some call the place “TV,” and I think it is.

(Kerrie working her magic at the two-for-one Happy Hour prices that start a little before lunch. This is living).

My Brother flew into Orlando yesterday and made his way down from the real world to this controlled colony. I had spent more time than I probably needed at B.J. Gator’s, a perfectly fine restaurant with an outdoor bar and a cheery hard-edged blonde named Kerri tending the bar. It was a hoot. I can see why the place has the capability to creep you out, but I decided to embrace it.

All these folks could be shut up in their houses up north, suffering through the endless winter, and instead they are out and about and having fun. I support the hell out of the concept. As far as I can tell, pretty much anything goes, so long as you don’t hurt anyone, and it has absolutely everything you want to do, 16 hours a day. But then everything shuts down at 10 p.m.

We ran into that last night, and the people who manage the Waterfront Hotel got quite cross with us, since the party crowd included some high-energy young ladies who were ready to rock and roll in a town where the rocks were silent and the rugs rolled up.

Spike and I went out and cruised around first thing in the crisp sunny morning air. The developer has marked some of the entirely new buildings with quaint historical information about things that might have been here are one time. In fact, the modern incarnation of the villages started off with a classic Florida tale, as American as Flagler’s train to Key West.

A Michigan guy Harold Schwartz began selling land tracts via mail order in the 1960s. They turned to developing mobile home parks, but the Feds shut them down with a law prohibiting land sales via first class mail. Stuck with a lot of land, Schwartz bought out his partner and brought in his son, H. Gary Morse. Gary had a new vision, one that would provide everything a mature couple could want, all in one place, every amenity you could think of.

Morse cracked the code on what would appeal to active seniors when he decided to put in a golf course and let the residents play for free. The rest is history.

The history is mostly fake, made up over Scotch at the Morse offices, but that is fine with me.

By 1986, Morse was selling 500 homes a year and adding more golf courses, pools, clubhouses, recreation centers, theaters and a hospital. It is all closed-circuit: The Morse machine sells the houses, owns the mortgage company, owns all the commercial buildings, including the bank, the utilities and the media outlets, which are relentlessly Republican.
And you know what? Who the hell cares? The only way out of here is feet first, and the place is a ball whether it is a company town or not. It is adult fun, and no one under 19 can live here without a waiver. Very cool.

Maybe that is why the IRS is in the process of gong after the Morse machine, which relied on something called the “community development district” (CDD) that levies fees on the residents for infrastructure maintenance and public works as a tax-exempt enterprise. The Feds want to stick it to Morse, like they do with anyone who comes to their attention.
So far, Morse has been able to keep them at bay, and regardless of what happens, The Villages is here to stay, with their own culture and community.

Disneyland for grownups. I love the place. Happy Hour here starts at eleven AM. Dynamite.

(It is a real wreck, even if it is only decorative).

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter @jayare303