Undercover Reporter "Buys" Miami Real Estate: Shocker: They Don't Give A Shit About Sea Level
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I walked around this property—it also had a water view—in the slow, pensive way of the rich shopper, cultivating an opaque expression which could suggest equally the taking in of beauty, or polite condemnation. The place was lovely, but it was also like everything in Miami, beige, beige, beige, pink, white, beige, blue, beige, beige, white. The Zen-like bedrooms all looked like ideal places for thinking about not looking at screens at night, while looking at a screen.
The rhythm of these things is as follows: greeting, walk around, short chat, good bye. This short chat was longer. We talked about shoes and jewelry and the intense beauty of Miami, which I meant every word of. I felt bad lying to her and with no good segue for my true mission, I was worried that when I came out with my questions, her demeanor would change. But just as charmingly as she received my greetings and compliments on the layout of the kitchen and, on her shoes, she said sure, there was a problem, but if anything was going to happen, she thought it would be more like in fifty years than thirty. It’s amazing that people in these situations tell you what they think. I think bread actually takes twenty minutes to bake, she said, removing the doughy mass from the oven. I think I can drive a car after I’ve run out of gas, he said, as he rolled silently into the breakdown lane.
I did not say this; I said nothing, because I did not have to, because—fiddling attractively with a circular gold pendant at her tan throat all the while—she continued to talk. “The scientists, economists, and environmentalists that are saying this stuff, they don’t realize what a wealthy area this is.” She said that she lived here and wasn’t leaving, and that the people selling Miami were confident, and all working on the same goal as a community to maintain this place, with the pumps and the zoning and raising the streets. There were just too many millionaires and billionaires here for a disaster on a great scale to be allowed to take place.
I thought about the moment in Us when the family has been taken hostage, and, in exchange for their freedom, the father offers his wallet, his car, his boat. His daughter, understanding that the threat here is not material, but existential, says in a trembling voice, Nobody wants our boat, dad.
EDIT
https://popula.com/2019/04/02/heaven-or-high-water/
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