Luminous Landscape Forum

The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: RSL on November 27, 2019, 09:41:20 am

Title: The Villages
Post by: RSL on November 27, 2019, 09:41:20 am
Where New Yorkers go to escape New York taxes. . .
Title: Re: The Villages
Post by: petermfiore on November 27, 2019, 12:01:08 pm
Where New Yorkers go to escape New York taxes. . .

Interesting picture. It has me thinking...Are these privately owned by the citizenry? Or are these rentals?


Peter
Title: Re: The Villages
Post by: Eric Myrvaagnes on November 27, 2019, 12:03:27 pm
It reminds me a lot of the bike rental racks in Manhattan.
Good catch.
Title: Re: The Villages
Post by: RSL on November 27, 2019, 12:06:28 pm
Interesting picture. It has me thinking...Are these privately owned by the citizenry? Or are these rentals?


Peter

They're all privately owned, Peter. Just about everybody in The Villages has a golf cart. They even have separate roads that keep the carts away from cars.
Title: Re: The Villages
Post by: petermfiore on November 27, 2019, 12:12:31 pm
They're all privately owned, Peter. Just about everybody in The Villages has a golf cart. They even have separate roads that keep the carts away from cars.

I feared that might very well be the answer...


Peter
Title: Re: The Villages
Post by: RSL on November 27, 2019, 02:22:47 pm
It's pretty fearsome, Peter. And not just the golf carts. "The Villages" is like a virulent cancer spreading rapidly over central Florida. Construction involves cutting the native trees, then going in with bulldozers and turning the landscape into a moonscape. Once that's done, a "village" center is constructed, with stores, recreational and medical facilities, etc., etc. Finally the houses and golf courses and golf cart roads are put in. In the meantime, the drawdown of the Floridan aquifer increases, and the water level in the aquifer falls lower and lower. Gradually, what thirty-five or so years ago erupted at the surface in clear, clean artesian springs is being reduced to dribbles. Eventually -- fairly soon, I expect -- the water will turn salty, and Florida will have to find an alternative water source. They may have to turn to desalinating seawater. Can you imagine what that's going to cost? Especially since Hanoi Jane in The China Syndrome has frightened the ignorant about nuclear power.

In the meantime, I'm gonna move back to Colorado.
Title: Re: The Villages
Post by: petermfiore on November 27, 2019, 02:38:40 pm
It's pretty fearsome, Peter. And not just the golf carts. "The Villages" is like a virulent cancer spreading rapidly over central Florida. Construction involves cutting the native trees, then going in with bulldozers and turning the landscape into a moonscape. Once that's done, a "village" center is constructed, with stores, recreational and medical facilities, etc., etc. Finally the houses and golf courses and golf cart roads are put in. In the meantime, the drawdown of the Floridan aquifer increases, and the water level in the aquifer falls lower and lower. Gradually, what thirty-five or so years ago erupted at the surface in clear, clean artesian springs is being reduced to dribbles. Eventually -- fairly soon, I expect -- the water will turn salty, and Florida will have to find an alternative water source. They may have to turn to desalinating seawater. Can you imagine what that's going to cost? Especially since Hanoi Jane in The China Syndrome has frightened the ignorant about nuclear power.

In the meantime, I'm gonna move back to Colorado.
I have friends now approaching the big decision years. Where to go? I'm staying right here in Pa. I found this place 32 years ago when I was a young man and it has served me well. I shall continue on  until I am no longer.

Peter
Title: Re: The Villages
Post by: RSL on November 27, 2019, 04:06:58 pm
Three months and I'll be walking around in a 90-year-old body. We were snowbirds for thirty years and finally decided to move down here for good. Now our huge family back in Colorado is calling, and we're going to go back. Florida has changed a great deal in the past 30 years. I wish the powers that be in New York would quit driving their residents out of town and down here.
Title: Re: The Villages
Post by: Chris Calohan on November 27, 2019, 04:53:04 pm
Not to mention but the Villages have the highest STD cases in all of Florida...I wouldn't live there on a bet. Quite sure you'll be happier in CO.
Title: Re: The Villages
Post by: RSL on November 27, 2019, 07:47:35 pm
I wouldn't live there on a bet either, Chris. You know where I live in Florida. The Villages is almost like being up north as far as the attitudes around you are concerned. No thanks.
Title: Re: The Villages
Post by: Redcrown on November 28, 2019, 02:02:54 pm
I have a red neck gearhead brother-in-law who lives in Ocala, Florida, surrounded by those retirement villages and golf courses. He makes a very good retirement income "souping up" these golf carts. Ah, the stories he tells about geezers coming to him demanding that he make their cart faster than some other geezer's cart.
Title: Re: The Villages
Post by: Rob C on November 28, 2019, 02:09:43 pm
I have a red neck gearhead brother-in-law who lives in Ocala, Florida, surrounded by those retirement villages and golf courses. He makes a very good retirement income "souping up" these golf carts. Ah, the stories he tells about geezers coming to him demanding that he make their cart faster than some other geezer's cart.

Makes sense to me!

:-)