"We think if they build a new building for slot machines, they will not fix this building," the Spaniard said, echoing an elemental fear for jai-alai players at Dania Beach.
Voters approved a measure in 2005 that will allow slot machines in Broward pari-mutuels, but until the state decides how to regulate those little cash registers, the players' future is uncertain. With the value of the blocky-looking, repair-needing fronton stadium on Dania Beach Boulevard resting more on its potential as a casino than on its setting for jai alai, the prospect of the tail wagging the dog seems all too real here.
So who needs jai alai, a fading sport with Pyrenean roots that draws a few hundred tenacious bettors a night when there's an insatiable hunger out there for slot machines?
The worst-case scenario is that Florida winds up like Rhode Island, where slot machines doomed live jai alai, says Riki Lasa, president of the International Jai-Alai Players Association. Once Little Rhodie found itself strapped for cash, it renegotiated with the owners of the fronton to jettison the costly enterprise of jai alai in exchange for higher slots taxes.
"It's ridiculous that everywhere they've built a casino, jai alai dies," Lasa said by phone. "They get their teeth in, the legislature gets a taste of that money, and they say the heck with the sport."
Dania Jai-Alai's assistant general manager, Marty Fleischman, is happy to report that, in case you hadn't noticed, Florida isn't Rhode Island. "Jai alai has been part of Florida since 1926," he says. "It's been part of the fabric of Florida. To worry that the same thing will happen, I don't think that's something that should be a concern." He also notes that the law stipulates that Dania must run at least 150 annual jai-alai performances to operate slots.
The current number, including matinees and evening shows, is more than 400. "We have no plans to change that," Fleischman says.
Forgive Tailpipe for hearing nothing but the jingle of coins in Fleischman's avuncular assurances. These promises are not worth the toilet paper they could be written on. How long do you think it will take for the jai-alai magnates to start shaving the performance numbers, once the slots are in place? How many jai-alai cards a year was that? Oh, let's say 400 going on 150...
Of course, the players haven't been assured any cut of the inevitable slots windfall. Those pickets want some formal assurances that their careers won't be slowly whittled away. And they want a piece of the action. Jai-alai players, whose skills include catching and hurling a pelota (the size and hardness of a cue ball) at speeds of 150 mph, earn at most about $50,000 a year (and some less than that). They get health benefits, but, if one of those speeding objects smashes a bone, there's no assurance that there will be a new contract.
The 'Pipe can't begrudge players pressuring their bosses for fatter wages. Jai alai can be a brutal game, and the big leagues are in Dania and Miami; there's no higher level to aspire to. The troops deserve a slice of the proverbial pie. The 'Pipe took his cut the other night, hitting the exacta in the fourth match of the night, which Foronda and Ulises won. Gracias, Foronda. Long may you share in the winnings.
Rigged Science
Tom DeRosa has long dreamed of opening a "creation science museum." Once a science teacher in the Broward County public school system, DeRosa found God in 1978 and, ever since, has been doing his best to undermine Darwin's theory of evolution. A special sore point has been the "secular" science museums, "places of worship for those who deny the creator" and their dubious evolution displays.
In 1988, with the help of D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries and the Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale, DeRosa founded the Fort Lauderdale-based Creation Studies Institute to promote "the biblical foundation of creation," the idea that the fossil record supposedly proves that Earth was made 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, and that Adam and Eve cavorted among dinosaurs. The centerpiece of his vision has always been a science museum that puts God in his proper place: at the center of natural history, in the middle of the dinosaur bones. DeRosa has been leading devout Christians on fossil-digging expeditions along the Peace River in Southwestern Florida for years, amassing a collection of fossils supposedly from the Flood and pre-Flood eras. Until now, they've been stored in a trailer.
DeRosa's dream finally becomes reality in May, when the Creation Museum and Science Resource Center will hold its grand opening. But the 'Pipe couldn't wait to check out Fort Lauderdale's newest museum. A few weeks ago, he popped in to the unmarked building on the edge of the Calvary Chapel campus in Cypress Creek, expecting a great shining structure, not unlike the pearly gates, to mark the museum entrance. Instead, at the end of a short hallway lined with classrooms and a library, he found... another classroom.
A large one, to be sure, but not quite the "place for wonder and amazement" that DeRosa had promised. A few fossils sat at the entrance, including a mammoth jaw. Inside, on the floor wrestling with a piece of plywood, was Joanne Rabolli, a dedicated churchgoer and mom who is the main designer and builder of the museum. Hired last April to make DeRosa's grand vision come to life, she's designed all the exhibits and displays herself and built them with the help of local college students and homeschoolers. ("It's a lot of work for women and children," she says.)
Proud of her handiwork, Rabolli was happy to show the 'Pipe around the partially constructed exhibits. She has transformed the classroom into several "rooms" with plywood partitions, and she eagerly describes the murals that will soon cover them.
"On that wall," she says, "you'll be looking out of a cave onto the Ice Age world." Then she points to the floor, where the painted tracks of some sort of dinosaur meander from display to display. "That little guy goes everywhere," she says, laughing. Behind her is a large "dig pit" filled with sand and "fossils" for kids to dig up and photographs of animals interspersed with crosses and placards reading "designed for a purpose."
"It's educational as well as fun," Rabolli says, and indeed, it does seem benign and sciency, like a kindergarten classroom. But then she leads the 'Pipe into the passageway depicting Earth before the flood. Dominating the wall is a mural called "Job Beholding the Behemoth," with Job sitting on a rock placidly watching a brontosaurus munch some greenery while zebras graze in the background.
"That's from the chapter where God says, 'Behold the Behemoth,'" Rabolli explains. "'He chews the cud like a cow —watch out for his tail!'"
There are plastic flowers lining the tops of the exhibits. "Those are there to remind us that God's fruits will soon fade," Rabolli says. "Everything has a little connotation."
She could have added that everything has the plastic smell of rigged "science," Tailpipe thought, heading for a bar.
Cuffed Rocket
The next time one of those insane daredevils on a Japanese motorcycle hits warp speed as it passes you on the highway, rest assured it isn't David Carpenter hugging the handlebars. Instead of outrunning police helicopters while tearing down the Florida Turnpike on his Honda CBR 1000, Carpenter ("Crotch Rocketeers," July 7, 2005), once among Broward County's most notorious scofflaws, lives at a slower pace these days. In January, he was found guilty of three counts of fleeing and eluding police and two counts of assault on an officer (cops tend to take a dim view when you shoot your crotch rocket in their direction), and it doesn't look like he'll be driving anything more than golf balls for a while. A long while.
In fact, says Carolina Corona, prosecutor for the State Attorney's Office on the case, Carpenter's license is suspended and he's on probation until 2012. The first two years of that probation is Community Control, "which is basically house arrest," adds Corona, so video golf may be his only option for the time being. In addition, she says, Carpenter's going to spend the next two years bumming rides just to make it to his community service job as well as to give lectures at local schools about the error of his speed-demon ways. He also had to reimburse the cost of all those man-hours police spent chasing him through turnpike tollbooths at 140 mph.
For a dude who used to outrun pursuit helicopters and phalanxes of highway patrolmen, it must be a drag. But maybe Carpenter's lucky. As some former rocketeers will tell you, an ankle bracelet's not nearly as uncomfortable as having your legs sliced off by a metal guardrail.
La Vida FEMA
Some windows remain boarded up in downtown Fort Lauderdale's skyscrapers. Some fences have definitely seen better days. And all of your neighbors now own gas-powered electric generators. But the signs of last year's exhausting hurricane season are pretty much gone, right?
Well, no. Along the U.S. Gulf Coast, 90,000 lightweight trailers provide shelter to families left homeless from 2005's hurricanes, according to a recent count by the New York Times. If another mammoth storm comes through, these tin-can trailers will likely be destroyed. And the Gulf Coast isn't alone with this problem. Take a look at the numbers in Broward and Palm Beach:
452 — the number of FEMA trailers in use in Broward
$106 million — the amount of FEMA money paid in Broward for housing assistance and other needs
378 — the number of FEMA trailers in use in Palm Beach
$67 million — the amount of FEMA money paid in Palm Beach for housing assistance and other needs
2 — the number of months before 2006's hurricane season officially begins
— As told to Edmund Newton
