Rich wrote:
"The Villages!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gerry wrote:
Heh! Heh! The Villages has such a large concentration of Republicans, it's a
regular stop for Republican political candidates seeking votes in Florida, but
one of the Villages main claims to fame is described below:
"The Villages Retirement Community Exposed After Couple Allegedly Had Sex In
Public"
SUMTER COUNTY
Florida’s “Friendliest Retirement Hometown” is in the spotlight after two
people were caught allegedly getting very friendly with each other inside the
community’s confines.
On June 2, Margaret Ann Klemm, 68, and David Bobilya, 49, were charged with
indecent exposure and disorderly conduct after being allegedly caught sans
pants in the “square” of The Villages in Sumter County.
Following that arrest, the Daily Mail launched a much-needed investigation into
life inside The Village and found, among other things:
— There are “ten women to every man” and there’s a black market for Viagra in
the community of 100,000 residents.
— “All of the women work hard to look good... "Turn your back for a minute and
someone will try to steal your husband,” said resident Belinda Beard, 62.
— Contrary to what your standard calendar would have you believe, “every night
is Saturday night,” according to author and expose-er, Andrew Blechman.
— A local bar is selling a “Sex on the Square” cocktail in honor of the
arrested couple.
A spokesperson for The Villages did not immediately return a request for
comment from The Huffington Post.
The racy underbelly of The Villages has been written about before.
In 2009, the New York Post came back from Florida with similar findings.
The Post claims that an unidentified gynecologist “treated more cases of herpes
and human papillomavirus at The Villages than she did when she worked in Miami.”
But The Villages isn’t the only place where seniors are reportedly getting
their swing on. In 2011, the Orlando Sentinel reported that STD cases are on
the rise in senior communities across the country.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/17/the-villages-florida_n_5504154.html
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Fresh and juicy scandals in Disney World for old people.
The Villages
The Native American tribes that once inhabited Florida left behind some
wonderfully mellifluous place names, such as Okahumpka, Wewahitchka, Wacahoota,
Umatilla, and Sopchoppy. The early settlers threw in some colorful ones, too:
Tate’s Hell Swamp, Yeehaw Junction, and my personal fave, Two Egg.
But the oddest community in Florida has the blandest name imaginable: the
Villages. The place doesn't generate a lot of strange news, like Miami, Key
West, and Pasco County. But that's part of what makes it so weird—even weirder,
I would argue, than Gibsonton, the town so odd it inspired an X-Files episode.
The Villages is the largest gated over-55 community in the world. It holds more
than 100,000 residents in an area bigger than Manhattan. And everyone gets
around via golf cart. The first time I visited, I couldn’t believe it. There
were designated parking areas for golf carts at all the businesses. There were
golf-cart tracks going everywhere. There are golf-cart tunnels and even a
golf-cart bridge to cross the major highways. Why golf carts? Because nobody
there really needs a car. Everything they could ever want is inside the gates.
Some of the golf carts “cost upwards of $25,000 and were souped up to look like
Hummers, MERCEDES SEDANS, and hot rods,” Andrew D. Blechman noted in his book
Leisureville: Adventures in America’s Retirement Utopias. They aren’t just for
traveling around the three-dozen golf courses, either. According to Blechman,
the Villages made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for the world's
longest golf-cart parade by lining up 3,321 of them.
There are other records the Villages holds. "We have the highest consumption of
draft beer in the state of Florida,” one Villages official boasted in 2002. It helps
that the community has its own microbrewery that pipes beer beneath the streets to
its town-square restaurants.
And then there are the distinctions they are not so thrilled about. In 2009,
the New York Post labeled it “ground zero for geriatrics who are seriously
getting it on.” The story reported that couples had been caught having quickies
in the golf carts and noted there was a thriving black market for Viagra. A
local police officer told the paper, “You see two 70-year-olds with canes
fighting over a woman and you think, ‘Oh, jeez.’ ” As a result, the place that
likes to bill itself as “America’s Friendliest Hometown” has seen a huge
increase in sexually transmitted diseases.
While pretty much anything goes in the community that some residents call “TV,”
one thing alone is forbidden: children. They can visit briefly, but that's it.
“It's amazing that there's a place in America where children get visitors'
passes like international visas,” Blechman said. The Villages is “an endless
playground for adults, but I only found one playground for children.”
My buddy Jerry has parents who bought a home in the Villages 10 years ago. When
Jerry visited his folks after they first moved in, the place creeped him out
with its Stepford-like uniformity. “It was like Disney World for old people,”
he said. Then about five years ago he started thinking of it as “a college
campus for old people. It's like an expensive party school.” (His dad drove one
of the golf carts in the parade that made the Guinness book.) Now, he says, he
thinks of it as being “like a landlocked cruise ship. It's got everything you
want to do, 16 hours a day. But then everything shuts down at 10 p.m.”
If you stroll around and read the historical plaques, as Jerry did, you find
that the area had a fascinating history dating back to before the Civil War,
full of Native American attacks, epidemics, shipping accidents, and odd
characters like the guy who built a lighthouse on a lake and insisted he be
called “the Commodore.” The stories are a load of hooey, concocted over a
bottle of scotch and a case of beer by its developers.
The real history starts with a trailer park and a dream. In the 1970s, a
Michigan businessman named Harold Schwartz bought land that became the Orange
Blossom Gardens mobile home park. A decade in, Schwartz got his son, H. Gary
Morse, to leave a Chicago advertising firm and come join him. They put in a
golf course and didn't charge residents for using it, and the lure of free golf
became the first step in drawing tens of thousands of new residents. By 1986
they were selling 500 homes a year and adding still more golf courses, pools,
clubhouses, recreation centers, theaters, even a hospital. They put up a statue
of Schwartz in a Disney-esque pose. After he died, his ashes were deposited
inside the statue. Schwartz used to circulate and glad-hand, but not Morse.
He's as approachable as the Wizard of Oz.
For Morse, the Villages has been akin to a private mint. He not only sold the
residents their houses. He also owned the mortgage company that financed them.
He's the landlord of all the commercial buildings. He owns all or part of
pretty much everything worth owning in the Villages, including the bank, the
hospital, the utilities, the garbage collection company, the TV and radio
stations, and the newspaper, where never is heard a discouraging word about
life in the Villages. (Also never mentioned: the numerous sinkholes that open
up because of all the water pumped out of the ground to keep all those lawns
and golf courses looking green.)
Thanks to the Villages, Morse is now a billionaire, and he’s built a powerful
political base. Morse and his family donated more than $1 million to Mitt
Romney. They've already given $80,000 to Gov. Rick Scott's re-election
committee. All the politicians he supports make sure they come to the Villages
for a flag-waving campaign stop.
But here's where it gets really interesting. According to the Internal Revenue
Service, the way Morse has built this grand empire may be about as rock-solid
as the sinkhole-prone ground beneath it.
Like many Florida developers, Morse financed a big chunk of construction using
something called a community development district, or CDD for short. The
district levies fees on the homeowners to pay for roads and other improvements
and under state law can borrow money using tax-free bonds. The CDDs in the
Villages paid Morse millions of dollars to buy golf courses, guardhouses, and
other amenities from him. But the IRS ruled last month that the Villages' CDD
bonds did not deserve to be tax-exempt. Why? Because everyone who sits on the
district board—like everything else in the Villages—is controlled by Morse.
Those seats are supposed to be filled by residents, the IRS said.
So far Morse has politicians from both parties going to bat for him to make the
IRS back off. But his most potent argument against the IRS comes from the
Villages' residents themselves. According to Blechman, most show little
interest in seizing control of their community from a leader they never see.
Like most Americans, they're not interested in local politics. Maybe they'd
feel differently if, instead of spending millions of dollars, the board was in
charge of dispensing draft beer and Viagra.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/florida/features/2013/oh_florida/the_villages_scandals_irs_stds_golf_carts_and_made_up_history.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On 3/19/16 11:09 AM, Rick Knoble via Mercedes wrote:
Bob Arrr sez:
look for a possible retirement >home.
Del Webb?
Heavens Gate Assisted Senior Living?
Rick
Sent from my BlackBerry Z10
_______________________________________
http://www.okiebenz.com
To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/
To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to:
http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
