'Nother ATTABOY!
Wilt
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rich Thomas via Mercedes" <mercedes@okiebenz.com>
To: <mercedes@okiebenz.com>
Cc: "Rich Thomas" <richthomas79td...@constructivity.net>
Sent: Saturday, March 19, 2016 10:31 PM
Subject: Re: [MBZ] OT: The Villages. Was: Italian tune up with a turbo
Sounds like the IRS is trying to do to the owner what the residents are
trying to do with each other (at least the geezers whom a woman can grab).
On another note, a little while ago I got to meet Jane Pauley some years
on -- when I was in college at Purdue, my buddies and I used to watch her
on the noon news out of Indianapolis, her first job after college (she
went to IU, grew up in Indy). We all thought she was really hot so we
always made it a point to watch her. Seeing her tonight, 42 years on, I
can say that she is still hot (and told her so but she wasn't buying it).
I told her that story and she got a charge out of it. I also got her an
apple cobbler with some really good ice cream, I think that sealed the
deal! That was my exciting evening.
--R
On 3/19/16 9:56 PM, archer75--- via Mercedes wrote:
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
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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
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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
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