Before I left for Switzerland this summer, I gave myself an assignment: answer one question. Why do you travel? It sounds simple, and it isn’t. Is it the scenery, the food, the escape? Is it to see how other people live, or to see our own lives more clearly once we’re far enough away? I found my answer on the very last night, in a place I never expected to look. You’ll find it in these pages, and I hope this issue answers a question or two of your own.
This is our Art of Living issue. When we began planning it, I assumed it would be about taste: the beautiful room, the perfect plate, the right piece on the wall. Somewhere between the first assignments and the final layouts, it became about something quieter. Nearly every story in these pages turned out to be about paying attention.
Cindy Hing, on our cover, has built a career on the belief that there is a story everywhere if you are willing to look for it. She has spent years day-tripping through the Palm Beaches, and she is nowhere close to running out of material. On Clematis Street, Sophie DeWaal designed Arya Tea Bar as the opposite of the dark, hurried coffee shop: a light-filled room that asks you to slow down and fill your own cup first. In the Nora District, Philippe and Laura Horowicz are betting that Carousel Fine Art can help bring galleries back to a city that watched too many of them disappear. And in Palm Beach Palate, we preview Ela Curry & Cocktails‘ arrival at CityPlace, which means that by December, a corner of downtown will smell like cardamom.
In his Self column, Adam Revsen reminds us that living well is not something you buy. His grandmother made a lovely salad even when dinner was ordered-in pizza. That may be the whole philosophy in a single bowl.
My own story in this issue takes you to Lake Geneva. Many things stayed with me beyond the scenery, and a few of them made the trip home with me.
Which brings me home.
This issue carries the final installment of Re-Discover Downtown. For two years, the column followed downtown West Palm Beach as it grew into itself, and it ends on the conclusion we kept arriving at: downtown isn’t becoming something. It already is. Beginning this winter, that space becomes a new column, told by the people who make everyday life downtown possible.
After a slow summer and a few hard goodbyes, the season is back. A downtown is only as alive as the people who show up for it. So is a city, and so, I suspect, is a life.
I’ll see you out there.
Pedro…