When I lived in Minnesota, it was relatively uncommon to hear a foreign language being spoken. When you heard it, you noticed. Now I live in Florida, but not just anywhere; I live on 'Florida's Riviera'. It is officially, Sunny Isles Beach, but the true boundaries include Bal Harbor, Golden Beach and Aventura East of Biscayne Boulevard.
I was mentioning to a friend just the other day that I have stopped noticing that I am living in the middle of Babel. I speak Russian, some German and some Spanish. But that doesn't even begin to cover what we hear in this town. Portuguese, Hebrew, French, Bulgarian, Italian, Hungarian and many more languages are common enough to hear a couple of times per day.
Some of that is because we are a tourist destination. However, tourist season is over now and the proliferation of languages continues. These languages are coming from what I might call International itinerants. The Mansions at Acqualina just announced that they have sold two of their $16 million penthouses, one to a Russian family the other to a South American family, most likely either Argentinian or Brazilian. What is astonishing is that in neither case will these likely be their primary residence. These are second, third or even fourth residences.
A real estate agent I was speaking with told me that, with private jets and 'jet cards', families are going one place for a month, another place for two weeks, etc. The children have a nanny or tutor that travels with the family. They really are not permanent residents anywhere, but they, based upon arcane legal analyses, maintain the fiction of residence at one locale.
This is the future. In reality, Sunny Isles Beach is not part of America. It is a new kind of place. True, the legal jurisdiction is U.S., Florida, Miami-Dade, but the cultural, social and economic reality is that it is a EuroAmerican village. People are from Rio/Banf, Sunny Isles Beach or Moscow/Cern/Sunny Isles Beach or Toronto/Hamptons/Sunny Isles Beach.
The other day at the Starbucks, I heard two men talking. One said that they were next going to go to Rio. The other man asked what it was like there now. The first replied that it is very similar to Sunny Isles Beach in the winter. The second said that it sounded good and that he and his wife would meet them there. Where do they live? The short answer is, 'Where ever they want.'
While the great contemporary civilizations, EuroAmerica, China, India and Islam will likely persist for quite some time, we are seeing here the seeds of the destruction of the Nation State as the dominant expression of sovereignty. If you life in Omaha or Portland, you probably don't notice yet. However, it will be coming to your town, too.
An important aspect of this is how rapidly Sunny Isles Beach formed. In 1999 it was here as a EuroAmerican Village. by 2007 it existed in mature form. That is how quickly it can happen, no matter where you are.
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