High life | 19 May 2012 | The Spectator

Miami Beach

I thought it a good time to visit, neither spring break debauchery nor fashionista pretence time. So I signed up yet again for the judo championships, trained very hard and flew down with four buddies hoping to stay in a family hotel near the water, a bit like Bogie stopping at a place in Key Largo and running into Johnny Rocco, a crime tsar grown old and bitter and played by Edward G. Robinson. In that wonderful golden oldie, Claire Trevor played Rocco’s alcoholic mistress and portrayed the hooker as a sympathetic victim. (She also won the Academy Award for that role.)

Well, I’ve got news for you. There are no hotels like the one in Key Largo left anywhere in Florida, no Claire Trevors and certainly no Bogies. Sure, there are plenty of Johnny Roccos around, but they’re Cuban, they’re very fat, very loud, and much too vulgar even for Miami off-season. The judo tournament was being held at the Doral ‘Golf resort and Spa’, as far removed from what I was hoping for as Humphrey Bogart was from Michael Jackson. The Doral golf resort and spa means you never hear a telephone operator’s voice, only recordings, and the only time I had some individual attention was when I went for a walk on the golf course and was intercepted by a very polite heavy in a buggy who informed me that walking on the course was for golfers only. In other words, one can be staying and paying at the Doral, but one cannot be walking on the course unless one pays extra. Par for the course, pun intended.