No More Cream Cheese
Tony Bowers, a high-class haberdasher across from Miami Beach's Roney Plaza, took out of his window the hand-painted necktie marked $1,500 and put it out of sight. "It's murder now," he said tersely. "I have some $25 and $35 ties, but I don't take them out unless a customer comes in and asks for one." All Miami felt the same way Tony did. By last week the city was aware that World War II--and the boom that followed--was over.
The black-market set, having blown its tainted bankroll, had crawled back into the woodwork, leaving room for the merely wealthy. The total number of tourists this season was estimated at about 2,000,000 --down 1,000,000 from last winter and about equal to the 1940-41 season. The Miami News Bureau said that spending was 10 to 15% off the alltime high of 1946-47.
Gone were the days when people paid $15 a night to sleep on floors, when hackies made $300 a week. $30-a-day hotel rooms were going for $8. Merchants were marking down such items as $300 watches to $165, and case lots of Old Crow from $83.88 to $75.49. In eleven days of horseplay at Hialeah, only $9,500,000 was bet, a $2,600,000 drop compared with the same period last year. Receipts were off, too, at the dog tracks.
Fewer nightclubs were open, and some were working hard to stay open. The last two nights that Comic George Jessel played the Copacabana, the place threw away its minimum charge. The Latin Quarter advertised "a complete evening's entertainment for $5." Growled the headwaiter at the Latin Quarter: "The goose is here but she ain't layin' any more."
Even the weather was bad. Up to last week it was so cold that one hotel tried to keep its guests' minds off the chilliness by broadcasting northern temperatures over a loudspeaker every half hour. Miami's schools closed down for two days. Then the mercury finally climbed into the high 70s.
Few Miamians doubted that the great spree was over. That did not mean that grass would grow in the streets in front of the Roney Plaza. As one horseplayer put it: "From now on it'll be lox and bagel* but without the cream cheese."
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