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View From Mars

Vacation Inflation

Florida by the numbers

August 19, 2008
Article and Illustration By Jim Burger

 
Vacation Inflation
 

I love waking up drunk in a lounge chair next to a pool. I had better love it; I do it often enough. This happens every time I come down here to Florida. It’s the combination of the heat and the easy access to well-made cocktails. Cuban exiles seem to be particularly advanced in this subject and I’ve certainly been doing my part to promote harmony between our opposing nations. This time, my wife and I have washed up at the old Hotel Nash in South Miami Beach, where everyone else appears to be speaking either German or French. I might be the only one conversing in anything resembling English — an ominous situation that simultaneously signals doom for our currency and mother tongue. The Nash has the usual Art Deco flourishes I enjoy — crisp, geometric and symmetrical. In short, nothing like myself. The accommodations themselves are far nicer than anything I’m used to. I attribute this to a phenomenon I can only call, for lack of a more scientific term, Vacation Inflation.

It started a few years ago. The Baltimore winter had dragged on well into the spring, far longer than anyone could have predicted. My bride, not blessed with my tolerance for foul weather, became unglued. Her complaints about the atmospheric conditions were so constant I all but insisted that she orchestrate a vacation to more hospitable climes. Naturally her mood improved immediately and not a cycle of the clock had passed before she booked our getaway via the Internet.

The price seemed impossibly low, but she showed me a printout of the advertisement touting something called the “Eastern Special.”

“The entire East Coast is frozen,” she told me. “Florida just wants to help us out.”

So that was how we arrived at a used-up roadhouse on Miami Beach. When we checked in even the man behind the desk was shocked at the rock-bottom price we were paying. He called the manager who in turn examined our documents and the attached promotion. He disappeared into his office and returned a few minutes later to inform us there had been a mistake. It wasn’t the “Eastern Special,” it was the “Easter Special,” a two-day deal for a holiday long past. The hotel had misspelled it on its website. He further stated we would need to pay the regular price.

With that I went and sat on the couch at the other side of the lobby, knowing the fireworks that were about to ensue. God help anyone who stands between my wife and a bargain, so I left the final negotiations in her capable hands. I watched proudly as she waved the papers under his nose and wagged her finger in his hapless face. I almost pitied him — I had suffered his fate on more than one occasion. Sure enough, a few minutes later the defeated gentleman was handing over the keys and swallowing the shortfall.

Our victory was short-lived however. As we entered the room I was met with the unmistakable smell of a murdered tourist decomposing under the bed. Certainly we were paying bargain prices, but the lodgings could qualify as a Superfund site. I pointed this out to my wife, but she was suffering from a sinus infection at the time and couldn’t smell a thing. She dismissed my protests as a transparent attention-getting device.

A few days and numerous air fresheners later, I could stand it no more. “Look,” I said to Mrs. Burger as I emptied another can of Lysol onto the moldy carpet, “I’ve had a good year. I’m making nice money. We don’t have to stay in joints like this anymore.”

It was an enormous tactical error on my part. From that trip on, our vacations have gotten more and more lavish. Costs have skyrocketed and I’m powerless to stop the upward spiral. On our last excursion we stayed in a place with a heated outdoor spa. We drank our nightcaps in 105-degree water, and I couldn’t say a word about the $38 tab before tip. If I did my wife would have simply said: “Does the room stink? No?
Then quit your complaining.”

So here I sit, doing my best to enjoy the pricy, odor-free tropical paradise I’ve wished upon myself. Across Collins Avenue I can see the Palmer House Hotel. At first glance it looks like a ruin that could collapse with the gust of a gentle breeze. Not the case in the slightest. Behind its façade it has been completely gutted and is undergoing a massive restoration. Soon it will reopen with much fanfare and room rates to reflect its place in the South Beach hotel hierarchy. And not much longer after that the Burgers of Baltimore, MD, will be guests there. I know this as I know that the sun will rise and the rain will fall. And as we sign the guest register I will be able to do little more than glance over my shoulder, to the other side of the street, and whisper to no one in particular: “Oh, the Hotel Nash. So affordable. So affordable.”

 
 
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