Stuff You Won’t Want To Miss This Week:

1. ★ TOP PICK THIS WEEK: Starting TONIGHT (Sep 10 - Sun Sep 13) multiple showtimes | Disney On Ice presents Spotlight Magic!. A four-day family marquee run right as school routines settle back in.

2. TODAY, all day | The Poppy Project Pop-Up Living Garden at Galleria. A living-garden installation supporting Henderson Behavioral Health.

3. Friday Morning, 9:30am | City of Fort Lauderdale 9/11 Remembrance Ceremony. Mark the 25th anniversary of the first-responders who ran into danger that day.

4. Friday | The Mavericks & Friends. Part of the Cleveland Clinic Rock Series.

5. Friday night, 6-8pm | Community Movie Night in Pompano. E. Pat Larkins Center, but no listing for the movie choice this week.

6. Also Friday Night, 8pm | Movie night at ArtsPark (Hollywood). This week they are playing “The Sheep Detective.” Bring your own blankets and chairs. Check the rain first.

7. Saturday Morning | Fort Lauderdale Beach Sweep. Volunteers needed. Bring water and sunscreen. The beaches don’t stay clean by themselves.

8. Saturday | Tito Puente Jr & His Orchestra. The Music of Tito Puente, a full orchestra night.

9. Opens Sat Sep 12, runs through Nov 13 | Andrew Dice Clay: Live on Stage (opening). Opening-night hook on a stand-up run.

10. Saturday, 7:30pm | Pro Rodeo in Davie. Fun for the entire family and will include the most dangerous event... BULLRIDING.

11. Saturday Night, 7-9pm | Singles Travel Trivia Night. At the Fitz on 2nd Ave in downtown FTL.

12. Saturday Night - Date Night Idea | Colours of Time at Savor Cinema. Festival-award winning film in French with subtitles. A true Hero’s Journey.

13. Sunday | Seraphic Fire - Pure Imagination. Part of the Amplify Arts Series.

14. Sunday, 12pm-4pm | Huizenga Park Community Market. Free, outdoors, downtown — the easy-yes local market.

15. Mon Sep 14 - Wed Sep 16 | Dine Out Lauderdale. Prix-fixe menus across dozens of restaurants — the highest-leverage ‘go eat something new’ item of the window.

16. Thu Sep 17, 10am-4pm | Viva Fort Lauderdale. Free heritage exhibition honoring Hispanic culture — concrete, local, timely.

17. Opens Fri Sep 18 | I AM WILD: A Charley Harper Exhibit (opening). Opening-day hook on a new nature-art exhibit — good family pick.

18. Sun Sep 20, 12pm-4pm | Flamingo Flea at Tarpon River Brewing. Our highest-keep-rate discovery source — handmade/vintage market at a brewery.

19. Sun Sep 20 | Florida Panthers vs. Carolina Hurricanes (NHL Preseason). First hockey of the season back in the building.

Featured Fort Lauderdale

A shipwreck… in a bar… with a porthole… that looks into a pool… to see mermaids.

Is there anything that sounds more like Fort Lauderdale than that?

On July 13, 1956, a hotel shaped like an ocean liner opened on Fort Lauderdale beach. The Yankee Clipper had a 400-foot beach as a Polynesian revue, and with one idea nobody else had ever considered. They added a bar built like a wrecked Spanish galleon, with portholes that looked straight into the swimming pool. From 1956 to 1965, swimmers performed behind the glass while the bar watched.

The hotel is the B Ocean Resort now, and the Wreck Bar is still there, aquariums and all. So are the swimmers. In 2006 Marina Anderson brought the show back as MeduSirena, with her troupe, the Aquaticats, in tails she makes by hand. She calls it a showgirl spectacle, not a mermaid act. By her count it is the last porthole pool in Florida that still runs a swim show.

Fridays and Saturdays, two shows a night: an early one for everyone, a 9 p.m. burlesque for 21 and up. Sunday brunch has swimmers too. Get there early. The portholes are the best seats in the house, and there are not many of them.

So... You Think You Know South Florida

You probably already know… Greater Fort Lauderdale has many amazing attractions including Butterfly World, the ten acres of aviaries inside Tradewinds Park in Coconut Creek.

What you might not know is… that it started as a retirement hobby.

Ronald Boender grew up chasing cabbage whites on his father’s farm in Illinois, became an electrical engineer, moved to Florida in 1968, and after he retired started raising butterflies at his house. When he learned that zoos and universities would pay for them, the hobby became a farm turning out a thousand pupae a week. In 1985 he flew to England to meet the man who ran the London Butterfly House, and on March 28, 1988, the two of them opened the first butterfly park in the Western Hemisphere.

It is still the largest in the world: about 20,000 butterflies, fifty species, and the biggest free-flight hummingbird aviary in the country, which almost nobody mentions.

Here is the part that should stop you. There is a lab at the University of Florida with Boender’s name on it, and Butterfly World credits it with helping save the Schaus’ swallowtail, a butterfly that lives almost nowhere except the islands of Biscayne National Park. In 2012 a survey found four of them. Four. UF started breeding them in captivity, and today there are more than 1,500 in the wild.

More Treats To Try

We don’t let just anyone sponsor this newsletter. Here’s who “made the cut” this week:

• Did you know that the AutoNation IMAX at MODS has extended the showings of The Odyssey through September 30th? If you haven’t seen the film that everyone is talking about, you still have a chance. A “must see” on the big(gest) screen.

• If you have been looking for music lessons to start the school year, Thoven is an online music academy founded in South Florida, where we help families find 1:1 music lessons that fit their kid and their schedule, from home. We work with a hand-picked, vetted network of teachers, including musicians and educators from schools like The Juilliard School and Berklee College of Music. If you’d like a personalized match, you can reach out to keri@thoven.co to talk to our head of music education.

• The Florida Renaissance Festival is once again hosting its Acting & Dance Workshops. You can attend as a Member or just $5 per workshop if you want to try it out. Classes from now until October. Use this page to register

• SAVE THE DATE. Founding Families Fall Festival. Stranahan House. September 25th. Email director@stranahanhouse.org for sponsorship opportunities.

• Brightline is offering $15 tickets. Book a ride in South Florida for just $15 one-way when you book by October 31 for travel through November 1, 2026. Simply book an Adult SMART fare on eligible trains running Friday, Saturday, and Sunday within South Florida with a 2-hour advance purchase. But hurry, fares this low will sell out fast, so book today.

• 👉 Buy YOUR OWN Classified Ad Here 👈

Just hit reply to this email to get started. Work with us to reach over 1500+ Greater Fort Lauderdale families.

Quote Of The Week

“You can choose courage, or you can choose comfort, but you cannot choose both.” ~ Brené Brown

Brené Brown is most famous for her groundbreaking research on vulnerability, courage, shame, and empathy, as well as her viral 2010 TED Talk titled “The Power of Vulnerability”.

Flotsam & Jetsam

Here’s one that is not South Florida, but if I didn’t share it I would kick myself.

We all love David Attenborough. That voice. That passion for the natural world.

And this year, he turns 100! So his work has inspired his admirers to collect and curate the best of Attenborough.

With Sir David turning 100 this year, someone built the thing that should have existed already: a searchable archive of nearly 5,000 episodes across 90 of his series, from Zoo Quest in 1954 to Secret Garden this year.

Type in any animal, a habitat, a place, or a phenomenon, and it hands you the episode and where to stream it. There is also a “surprise me” button, which is the correct way to lose an evening.

Word Play Of The Week

“Foot in Mouth”

This idiom refers to someone saying something embarrassing, inappropriate, or foolish. Its origins are not precisely documented, but similar phrases suggesting someone saying something regrettable or embarrassing have existed for centuries. ~ ​Source

‘Under-The-Radar’ Openings Job Board

Lots of folks offering cool positions here locally. Maybe there’s one for you or a friend?

• CHOICES Job & Community Resource Fair on Thursday, September 10, 2026, from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM at the E. Pat Larkins Community Center, 520 NW 3rd Street, Pompano Beach, FL 33060.

• Boat Detailer / Polisher — waterfront work in the Yachting Capital of the World, the kind of job that explains why every marina here looks that clean. Listing

• Puppy Care Team Member — a local pet-care startup, for the reader who has been quietly hoping their job search would lead here. Listing

• Cook II at the NSU Art Museum — the job behind the café at one of Fort Lauderdale’s best small museums. Listing

• Teaching Artist at Broward Center for the Performing Arts — contract role teaching across genres and age groups through the Center’s education wing. Listing

• Animal Husbandry Specialist II at the Museum of Discovery and Science — hands-on care for the animals behind MODS’s live exhibits. Listing

Do you have a listing you would like to place here for next week? Hit reply and let us know.

Lastly… One Big Idea For Your Week

If you knew this ahead of time, would it help you relax and enjoy the journey?

Tell Us How We Are Doing

Every week we are working to make #H!L better for you and to provide a cutting-edge media apprenticeship opportunity for our learners.

Please share your feedback. What do you love? What could we do better FOR YOU? What FTL businesses and experiences should we be highlighting?

Stuff You Won’t Want To Miss This Week:

1. ★ TOP PICK THIS WEEK: Now through Sep 30 | Broward Attractions and Museums Month (BAMM). Buy one admission, get a second free at 20+ museums and attractions across the county, six more are just free outright. Twenty-three places this year, double what it was five years ago.

2. TODAY - 11am–7pm | Free First Thursday at NSU Art Museum. Free admission, plus a Mini Muse kids workshop, one of two dated free-day hooks this month alongside BAMM.

3. TONIGHT - 6:30pm | Blues Traveler & Gin Blossoms at Hard Rock Live. The ‘90s radio-rock double bill. I might be dating myself, but when I was in college, Blues Traveler played on our campus and it was the biggest news of the year. They are still going strong.

4. Friday Night - 8pm | ‘Michael’ at the ArtsPark Movie Night. Bring your chairs, blankets, snacks, and beverages.

5. Friday Night | Steve Higgins: Moonlight, Memories & Music at the Rose and Alfred Miniaci Performing Arts Center.

6. Starting Friday - Sept 4 to 7 | South Florida’s Biggest Home Show. Four days at the Broward Convention Center. Hundreds of home pros, full-scale designer rooms, live stages and tastings.

7. Also Starting Friday - Sept 4 to 6 | Matt Tkachuk Hockey Celebration. Competitive hockey tournament featuring Boys AAA (Tier 1) and Girls AA (Tier 2) as they battle it out for The Matthew Tkachuk Cup. FREE open Public Skating Sessions too.

8. Saturday - 11am to 12pm | Chess Club at the Main Library. A chance for casual practice or play for ages 5-18.

9. Saturday | Starlight Jam Sessions. Starlight Musicals may be done for the summer but come out to the Palm Aire Gazebo in Pompano for a free outdoor community music night.

10. Sunday - 10am-2pm | Dream Car/Classic Car Show. Featuring dozens of classic cars, trucks, and other vehicles of interest. Free admission.

11. Sunday - 11am–2pm | Sunday Jazz Brunch at Riverwalk. First-Sunday-of-month only, so catch it while it’s actually in the window.

12. Sunday - 4pm to 9pm | Labor Day Festival at North Beach Neighborhood. Features a curated vintage car showcase, along with local vendors and sidewalk tag sales hosted by area boutiques.

13. Also Sunday · 12–5pm | Doc Reno’s 9th Bacon Beer & BBQ Festival, Margate Sports Complex. Quirky, local, needs the drive to Margate.

14. SAVE THE DATES for Next Week

    1. Saturday, Sep 13 | Pompano Beach historic downtown walking tour, two hours, stops include the Bailey Hotel (now BaCA Art Center).

    2. September 10 to 13 | Disney on Ice at Amerant Bank Arena. All your favorite movies and music come to life, on the ice. Multiple showings.

Featured Fort Lauderdale

Fort Lauderdale is famous for a few things. The beaches and vacation getaways. The world-class art, music, and food. Spring break. And… shipwrecks?

A lot of folks don’t know that in addition to trading along the New River, collecting the goods from ships wrecked by storms was a focus of early industry in the area.

And one of those “shipwrecks” ended up producing The Bonnet House Museum & Gardens.

Yup, the whole Bonnet House story starts with a shipwreck.

You might know Bonnet House as one of the oldest homes on Fort Lauderdale Beach. The land only became available because Chicago attorney Hugh Taylor Birch got marooned.

In 1893, Birch’s yacht ran aground during a storm. Stranded along the quiet southeast Florida coast for ten days, he didn’t just survive; he fell in love with the raw terrain.

Two years later, he returned to buy three miles of pristine oceanfront for roughly a dollar an acre.

When his daughter Helen married artist Frederic Clay Bartlett in 1919, Birch gave them 35 acres of that coastline as a wedding gift. The newlyweds broke ground on Bonnet House the following year, creating the Caribbean-style plantation home that still sits nestled between the ocean and the Intracoastal today.

What started as a shipwreck victim’s lucky detour ended up saving one of the last natural coastal ecosystems in South Florida from concrete and high-rises.

So... You Think You Know South Florida

You probably already know… here in Broward we have the Brightline, The Tri-Rail, and freight trains. You see them every day, maybe even sit at an intersection waiting for them to pass.

What you might not know is… some people LOVE trains!

Tucked inside the Deerfield Beach Tri-Rail station sits the South Florida Railway Museum, a low-key paradise for train enthusiasts, history buffs, and families alike.

Best of all? It costs absolutely nothing to visit.

The museum opens its doors to the public every second Saturday of the month from 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM. Inside, you will find intricate, fully operational model train layouts alongside authentic historical artifacts tracing Broward’s rich railway history.

Passionate and knowledgeable volunteer hosts are always on hand to answer questions while they run the lines.

Mark your calendar for their upcoming 2026 open house dates:

• September 12

• October 10

• November 14

• December 12

Whether you are looking for a weekend outing with the kids or simply want to discover a piece of local history, this local secret is well worth the trip.

Want to visit? 1300 W Hillsboro Blvd, Deerfield Beach, FL (Inside the Tri-Rail station)

More Treats To Try

We don’t let just anyone sponsor this newsletter. Here’s who “made the cut” this week:

• If you have been looking for music lessons to start the school year, Thoven is an online music academy founded in South Florida, where we help families find 1:1 music lessons that fit their kid and their schedule, from home. We work with a hand-picked, vetted network of teachers, including musicians and educators from schools like The Juilliard School and Berklee College of Music. If you’d like a personalized match, you can reach out to keri@thoven.co to talk to our head of music education.

• The Florida Renaissance Festival is once again hosting its Acting & Dance Workshops. You can attend as a Member or just $5 per workshop if you want to try it out. Classes from now until October. Use this page to register

• SAVE THE DATE. Founding Families Fall Festival. Stranahan House. September 25th. Email director@stranahanhouse.org for sponsorship opportunities.

• Brightline is offering $15 tickets. Book a ride in South Florida for just $15 one-way when you book by October 31 for travel through November 1, 2026. Simply book an Adult SMART fare on eligible trains running Friday, Saturday, and Sunday within South Florida with a 2-hour advance purchase. But hurry, fares this low will sell out fast, so book today.

• 👉 Buy YOUR OWN Classified Ad Here 👈

Just hit reply to this email to get started. Work with us to reach over 1500+ Greater Fort Lauderdale families.

Quote Of The Week

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

~ Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell was an American writer, teacher, and scholar who specialized in mythology and comparative religion. He’s often called the “father of modern mythology”. Campbell’s work explored the world’s mythological traditions and proposed the idea of a universal mythology that’s expressed differently across cultures.

The Hero’s Journey is part of our daily conversation at Acton, as we prepare young people for a world that will look very different in 10 years.

Flotsam & Jetsam

Most websites give you information. Neal Agarwal’s The Deep Sea gives you altitude sickness in reverse.

Hosted on neal.fun (we’ve shard a bunch of his fun projects), this interactive site turns a basic vertical scroll into a literal descent through the ocean’s depth zones. You start at the sunlit surface, surrounded by familiar sightseers like sea turtles and dolphins. Scroll down, and the page steadily darkens as sunlight dies off, pulling you through the mesopelagic, bathypelagic, and abyssopelagic zones.

A real-time depth counter in meters and feet keeps score as you sink past notable milestones, the deepest scuba dive, the wreck of the Titanic, and depth markers where the pressure becomes unfathomable. Along the way, the wildlife shifts from the familiar to the grotesque: giant isopods, stoplight loosejaws, and eventually the Mariana snailfish lingering near the absolute floor.

By the time you hit the bottom of the Mariana Trench at 10,924 meters, the sheer scale of the ocean hits you. It is one of the cleanest, most effective visual explanations of marine biology on the internet.

You can experience the descent yourself at neal.fun/deep-sea.

Word Play Of The Week

“Slice of the action”

The idiom “slice of the action” means to get a share of the involvement, profits, or excitement in a successful or lucrative activity. While the phrase sounds modern, the linguistic concept of “action” meaning a financial stake goes back to the early 1600s.

By the 1950s, the phrase broke out of casinos and into American pop culture via crime fiction and gangster movies. ~ ​Source

‘Under-The-Radar’ Openings Job Board

Lots of folks offering cool positions here locally. Maybe there’s one for you or a friend?

• CHOICES Job & Community Resource Fair on Thursday, September 10, 2026, from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM at the E. Pat Larkins Community Center, 520 NW 3rd Street, Pompano Beach, FL 33060.

Do you have a listing you would like to place here for next week? Hit reply and let us know.

Lastly… One Big Idea For Your Week

Is there one thing you are so sure of that nothing could change your mind?

Tell Us How We Are Doing

Every week we are working to make #H!L better for you and to provide a cutting-edge media apprenticeship opportunity for our learners.

Please share your feedback. What do you love? What could we do better FOR YOU? What FTL businesses and experiences should we be highlighting?

Stuff You Won’t Want To Miss This Week:

1. ★ TOP PICK THIS WEEK: One month in and one month to go for Dine Out Lauderdale. It is an overwhelming list of choices, so local Matt Hall created DineDecoded as a website that helps you navigate 262 menus across 179 restaurants. Worth exploring for the savoring and the saving. ~ Source: Axios Fort Lauderdale.

2. TODAY | Introduction to Clay: Hand Building. Bailey Contemporary Arts, Pompano. A hands-on pottery class for anyone who has never touched a wheel, no experience needed.

3. Friday Night - 6pm | Riverwalk Chocolate & Whiskey Tasting. Fort Lauderdale Woman’s Club, downtown. A guided pairing, the kind of date-night actually worth the ticket price.

4. Friday Night - 5-8pm | Taste of Trinidad & Tobago. Free entry, Inverrary Community Center, Lauderhill. Real Caribbean food and culture, not a festival-lite version of it.

5. Friday Night - 6:30pm | Zumba In The Park By Domingo. Need to move your body? Weekly fun and refreshing dance fitness class designed specifically for older adults and anyone looking for a lower-impact workout.

6. Also Friday Night - 8:30-10pm | Fear Circus Unleashed. Adults-only horror spectacular, blending immersive theater, circus arts, and spine-chilling entertainment.

7. Saturday Morning - 12-5pm | Indie Craft Bazaar. War Memorial Auditorium fills with local makers, the all-ages pick that isn’t a kids’ event dressed up as one.

8. Saturday Night - 6-10pm | Trinidad & Tobago Independence Celebration. Vizcaya Park, Miramar. Outdoor, community, free, the kind of night you stumble into and stay for hours.

9. Saturday Night - 6-9pm | Art Fest at Thrive Art District. Fort Lauderdale. Working artists, open studios, an “I didn’t know that existed” find that never makes a tourist map.

10. Sunday - 12-5pm | Free Fort Lauderdale Neighbor Day. NSU Art Museum. Free admission for residents, last Sunday of every month, the dated hook that makes an art museum worth an actual Sunday.

11. SAVE THESE DATES:

    1. Next week at Savor Cinema: Award-wining French movie Colours of Time will be running from the 3rd to the 6th. Catch it while you can.

    2. Saturday, Sep 5 · 8pm | Lil Baby & Kodak Black, “Fall Fest 2026” at Amerant Bank Arena, Sunrise. Ticketed, limited capacity.

    3. Sunday, Sep 6 · 12-5pm | Doc Reno’s 9th Bacon Beer & BBQ Festival, Margate Sports Complex. Quirky, local, worth the drive to Margate.

    4. Saturday, Sep 5, time TBD | Starlight Jam Sessions, Palm Aire Gazebo, Pompano. Free outdoor community music night.

Sweetwaters is coming to Huizenga Park this fall from the family behind Miami's Rusty Pelican. Reply with the one Fort Lauderdale restaurant, open or closed, you wish someone would bring back or reinvent.

Featured Fort Lauderdale

Get Lost in the Clouds at Superblue Miami

This one comes from Christine, a Hey! Lauderdale reader and Acton parent who came back raved about their visit. This is exactly the kind of find we want more of.

Superblue Miami is 50,000 square feet of art you don’t just look at, you walk into it. One room is a mirrored maze of sculpture. Another is a digital world where seasonal flowers bloom and waterfalls pour around you. Three thousand lights pulse to human heartbeats. And the showstopper is teamLab’s Massless Clouds: they hand you a poncho at the door, because you’re going to wade through the cloud, not admire it from a rope line.

The practical stuff: it’s in Allapattah (1101 NW 23rd Street, Miami) - an easy 40-ish minute run down I-95 from Fort Lauderdale. Plan 90 minutes to two hours. All ages welcome, and it genuinely works for the whole crew: adults are $32, Florida residents $29, ages 3–12 are $17, and under 3 are free. Open seven days, later on Friday and Saturday nights. Tickets at superblue.com.

Been somewhere lately your family can’t stop talking about? Hit reply — the best finds in this newsletter come from readers like Christine.

So... You Think You Know South Florida

You probably already know… the New River winds through downtown. Many of us drive over it several times a day (or wait in traffic while the bridge goes up).

What you might not know is… the river path traditionally moved on its own.

According to Seminole legend, it earned that name after an evening of howling wind, strange noises, and shaking ground, the people woke to find a deep river where none had been, and called it Himmarshee: “new water.” The recorded explanation? An earthquake collapsing the roof of an underground river.

Here’s the twist the postcards leave out: “New River” shows up on maps as early as the 1600s — more than a century before the Seminoles reached this coast — and one folk historian insists the Seminole name was actually Coontie-Hatchee, for the coontie plants on its banks. The overnight legend was first written down in 1940 by WPA writers, which makes it either a preserved oral tradition or very good marketing.

One part of the river really did move, though: its mouth. Before 1928, the barrier beach shifted on its own — the outlet wandering anywhere between Hillsborough and Dania — until Port Everglades was dredged and the channel fixed in place. The river stopped moving. The name stuck anyway. ~ Source

More Treats To Try

We don’t let just anyone sponsor this newsletter. Here’s who “made the cut” this week:

• The Florida Renaissance Festival is once again hosting its Acting & Dance Workshops. You can attend as a Member or just $5 per workshop if you want to try it out. Classes from now until October. Use this page to register

• The new school year is starting up. Lots of excitement for the first days of school. But if it is not feeling right for your family, you might want to look at something very different and totally worth it.

• SAVE THE DATE. Founding Families Fall Festival. Stranahan House. September 25th. Email director@stranahanhouse.org for sponsorship opportunities.

• 👉 Buy YOUR OWN Classified Ad Here 👈

Just hit reply to this email to get started. Work with us to reach over 1500+ Greater Fort Lauderdale families.

Quote Of The Week

“What goes too long unchanged destroys itself.” ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula Le Guin was an American author known for speculative fiction, including the Earthsea fantasy series and science fiction set in the Hainish universe. Her work is known for challenging ideas about human relations and the natural and inevitable.

Flotsam & Jetsam

This one will cost you five minutes and is just a visual meditation. It is called ZoomQuilt and travels from a single image that zooms forever. Each layer dissolves into the next scene.

Hard to imagine and hard to stop watching. Judge for yourself.

Word Play Of The Week

“A Blessing in Disguise”

This idiom means that something that appears to be a problem or misfortune at first turns out to be beneficial or good in the end.

The phrase has been in use since at least the 18th century. It was first recorded in James Hervey’s “Reflections on a Flower-Garden” in 1746, indicating that what seems unfortunate can often bring about good outcomes. ~ ​Source

‘Under-The-Radar’ Openings Job Board

Lots of folks offering cool positions here locally. Maybe there’s one for you or a friend?

• Broward County Aviation Job Fair: Friday, August 28th. 300 vacancies at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

• XB Architecture is looking for an Architectural Project Manager. High end residential construction projects.

• September 9th - Hospitality and Tourism Job Fair with CareerSource Broward.

• Animal Husbandry Specialist II (FT) at Museum of Discovery & Science (MODS) Listing

• Video Wall Installation Technician, Tamarac Listing

Do you have a listing you would like to place here for next week? Hit reply and let us know.

Lastly… One Big Idea For Your Week

What is one thing you are wildly curious about learning? What’s stopping you?

Tell Us How We Are Doing

Every week we are working to make #H!L better for you and to provide a cutting-edge media apprenticeship opportunity for our learners.

Please share your feedback. What do you love? What could we do better FOR YOU? What FTL businesses and experiences should we be highlighting?

Plus: sixty-four hatchlings went the wrong way on Friday night, and Harry and Meghan made a Girl Scout cookie documentary.👇👇👇

Stuff You Won’t Want To Miss This Week:

1. ★ TOP PICK THIS WEEK: TONIGHT - 7pm | Squeeze with Adam Ant and Haircut 100 at Hard Rock Live. Three British bands from the same five year stretch, on one stage, on the night Squeeze marks fifty years together. Tickets start at $65. If you owned any of these records, this bill is not coming back around.

2. TONIGHT - 8pm | Eureka Day at Island City Stage, Wilton Manors. The Tony winner about a private school board trying to talk its way through a measles outbreak. It is a comedy right up until it is not. Runs Thursdays through Sundays into September, in a room small enough that you can see everyone squirm.

3. TONIGHT - 6 to 9pm | Food Truck Frenzy at Brian Piccolo Sports Park, Cooper City. Broward County Parks rotates this one around the county on Thursdays, so the lineup changes with the park. Bring a chair, it is a field not a food hall.

4. TONIGHT - 7 to 9pm | Live Music at the Hollywood Beach Theatre. Free bands on the Broadwalk, three nights running through Saturday. There is room to dance and nobody minds if you do not.

5. Friday Night - 8 to 10pm | Sea turtle hatchling release at Anne Kolb Nature Center, Hollywood. Broward’s conservation program runs these Wednesday and Friday nights through the end of August, and then the season is done for the year. You watch hatchlings that were dug out of a nest make the last few feet to the water.

6. TONIGHT | Dine Out Lauderdale food tour, Lauderdale By The Sea. The restaurant-months program runs through September, and the walking tours are the part people forget about. You eat your way down a street instead of sitting in one room.

7. Friday Night - 8pm | Old Town’s Backyard Jam, Pompano Beach. The monthly outdoor concert in Pompano’s old downtown, free, with food on site. This one came in from a reader in July and it has produced every month since.

8. Friday Night - 9pm | Club 90’s presents MJ Night at Revolution Live. A full night of Michael Jackson, hits through deep cuts, 18 and up. $23 to $35.

9. Friday Night - 8pm | ArtsPark Movie Night: Cars, Downtown Hollywood. Free outdoor movie at the Young Circle amphitheater. Grass, a screen, and nobody checking whether you brought your own snacks.

10. Friday Morning - 9am | Sale of the Year, Spectacular, Miami Shores. An in-person warehouse estate sale that opens Friday and keeps going. Worth the drive if you like getting there before the dealers do.

11. Opens Saturday | Cookie Queens at Savor Cinema. The Girl Scout cookie documentary that won the audience award at SXSW, produced by Harry and Meghan, which is a sentence that reads like a joke and is not. Runs through Aug 30.

12. Saturday and Sunday | Monster Jam at Amerant Bank Arena, Sunrise. Trucks the size of a garage, indoors, extremely loud. Tickets move for this one and the good seats go first.

13. Saturday Morning - 10am to 2pm | Pompano Beach Fire Rescue’s 100 Year Anniversary at the Sample-McDougald House. A century of the city’s fire department, marked at Pompano’s 1916 house museum. The kind of local anniversary that happens once and that nobody outside city hall hears about.

14. Saturday Afternoon - 3 to 7pm | Flamingo Flea at Marina Village. Beachside market with a food hall, a DJ, and the two story boat bar. Small makers, not resellers, which is the whole point of this one.

15. Saturday Night - 7pm | STILL ALIVE, a Pearl Jam tribute at Revolution Live, with a Foo Fighters tribute opening. $23 to $27.

16. Saturday Afternoon - 4 to 9pm | Ukrainian Cultural Fest, West Palm Beach. Food, music and dance on the downtown waterfront. Out of county, but there is nothing else like it in South Florida this month.

17. Saturday Night - 6 to 10pm | West Palm Beach Beer Festival at Bryant Park. Fifth year, on the water, and far enough north that you should decide about the drive before you decide about the beer.

18. Saturday Afternoon - 2 to 6pm | Rock the Plaza, Boynton Beach. Free live music in a strip plaza parking lot, which sounds unpromising and is consistently better than it sounds.

19. Saturday | Introduction to Clay, wheel throwing at Bailey Contemporary Arts, Pompano. One of a handful of weekend studio classes at BaCA. Registration required and the wheel classes fill first.

20. Sunday - 11am to 4pm | Sunny Side Up Market at the Historic Stranahan House. Local makers, bakers and growers set up on the lawn of the oldest surviving house in Fort Lauderdale. Yoga and a sound bowl at 11, market from noon, live music 1 to 3. Free, on the New River, and the house itself is worth the walk around.

21. Sunday Afternoon - 12:30pm | Weston distressed estate sale. Live auction plus an in-person sale: luxury watches, fine art, high jewelry. Distressed sales are where the pricing gets strange.

22. Tuesday - 5 to 8:30pm | Tasty Tuesdays at Sunset Cove Amphitheater, Boca Raton. Food truck rally with live music from 5:30. Out of county, but it is the reliable weeknight one.

23. Wednesday | Community Bingo Night at the E. Pat Larkins Center, Pompano. Free bingo with prizes. Included because Pompano is chronically under-covered in our roundup, not because it is glamorous.

24. Thursday and Saturday | Watercolor and colored pencil classes at Bailey Contemporary Arts, Pompano.

25. Huizenga Happenings:

    1. Saturday Morning - 9am | FTL Free Workout Saturdays at Huizenga Park. Free hour in the park downtown. Ran in the Aug 13 issue and keeps drawing.

    2. Tuesday Night - 6:30pm | Huizenga Park Two Mile Run Club. Free weekly two miles from the park, downtown loop. Two miles is short enough that nobody gets dropped.

    3. Tuesday - 6pm | Sunset Yoga with Las Olas Yoga Studio, Huizenga Park.

    4. Wednesday Night - 6:30pm | Think and Drink Trivia at Huizenga Park. Free trivia outdoors downtown. Teams form on the spot if you show up alone.

    5. Thursdays - 5:30 to 7:30pm | Yappy Hour at The Dog Spot, Huizenga Park. Dogs, drinks, downtown.

    6. Friday - 6:30pm | Zumba by Domingo, Huizenga Park. Free class outdoors, 12 and up.

    7. Sunday Morning - 9am | Pilates in the Park with Doug Banker, Huizenga Park.

26. SAVE THESE DATES:

    1. Thursday, Aug 27 · 10am to 2pm | Job News South Florida Job Fair at Amerant Bank Arena. Multi-industry hiring event with the Miami Dolphins, City of Sunrise, CareerSource Broward, Boca Raton Police and the armed services in the room. Free, but register.

    2. Friday, Aug 28 · 6 to 8pm | Riverwalk Chocolate & Whiskey Tasting at the Fort Lauderdale Woman’s Club. Six whiskeys, six chocolate pairings from Kilwins Las Olas, a gift bag, and somebody explaining why any of it works. $60 in advance, $75 at the door if there is a door. 21 and up.

    3. Friday, Aug 28 | Fort Lauderdale United FC v Brooklyn FC at Beyond Bancard Field. The second home match of the season for South Florida’s only pro women’s club. The stadium is small enough that you can actually hear the bench banter.

    4. Friday, Aug 28 · 5 to 10pm | Party in Paradise, Delray’s tribute to Jimmy Buffett at Old School Square. Florida’s official Jimmy Buffett Day, done properly: two tribute acts, a limbo contest, a costume contest, and margaritas. Free if you bring a lawn chair, $50 for the VIP tent.

    5. Island Time:

       1. Friday, Aug 28 · 5 to 8pm | A Taste of Trinidad & Tobago at the Inverrary Community Center, Lauderhill. Roti from Joy’s, Tabanka, Singh’s and King’s, steelpan, tassa drumming, and soca from Shelly Sweetshells. Free.

       2. Saturday, Aug 29 · 6 to 10pm | Trinidad & Tobago Independence Celebration at Vizcaya Park, Miramar. The bigger of the two independence events this weekend, on the Saturday, in Miramar.

    6. Saturday, Aug 29 · 6 to 9pm | Art Fest at Thrive Art District. Last Saturday of the month, every month, in the arts district on the northwest side. Original work, small vendors, and the artists standing next to what they made.

Featured Fort Lauderdale

Sixty-Four Baby Turtles Went the Wrong Way

A nest hatched on Fort Lauderdale beach last Friday. Sixty-four hatchlings dug their way up through the sand, got their bearings, and set off away from the water.

They were heading for a hotel.

A volunteer filmed it. The video went around, people got loud about it, and the Beach House Fort Lauderdale at 505 North Fort Lauderdale Beach Boulevard spent the weekend as the least popular building in the city. All sixty-four turtles were collected by hand and carried to the ocean. The resort has since reached out to the group that rescued them.

Here is the part worth understanding, because it is not really about one hotel.

A hatchling has exactly one instinct when it reaches the surface: go toward the brightest horizon. That rule worked for as long as there have been turtles and beaches, because the brightest thing on a dark beach is the open sky over the water. It is not a decision the turtle makes. It is closer to a reflex.

Then we built a wall of light behind them, and the rule stopped working.

Fort Lauderdale has an ordinance about this. No lights visible from the beach between March and October, fines up to $500 a day. About 35% of city businesses actually comply. County-wide it is worse. The volunteer group that runs the night patrols puts roughly two thirds of coastal properties out of compliance, with Hallandale Beach the worst of them, averaging 17 visible lights per property.

So the county built a workaround.

Nova Southeastern has run Broward’s sea turtle program for more than thirty years, on contract, across 24 miles of beach. Every morning from March through October, before sunrise, staff ride the sand on ATVs reading the previous night’s tracks. They can tell a real nest from a false crawl. They stake it, log it, sweep the crawl marks away so nothing else follows them in, and come back to it for the next two months.

On the stretches where the lighting is worst, they put a cage over it.

That is the thing almost nobody knows. A restraining cage goes over the nest before the eggs are due. Its ocean-facing door is opened at dawn and shut again at dusk. Somebody checks it through the night. When the hatchlings come up, the cage holds them, so instead of setting off toward A1A they wait in a box on the beach until a person with a permit walks them down to the waterline and lets them go.

That is the hatchling release. The one you can book at Anne Kolb. The one that sells out. The one that is, genuinely, lovely to watch.

It is a rescue operation with tickets.

None of that is an argument against going. Go. It costs very little, there are only a few nights left in the season, and watching something that small make a run at the Atlantic will fix your whole week. Only about one in a thousand of them lives to grow up, which makes it feel less like a photo opportunity and more like seeing someone off at the airport.

Just know what you are looking at. The cage is not part of the plan. It is a patch. The actual fix is a light switch, on a building, belonging to somebody who has not flipped it.

Broward County Sea Turtle Conservation Program · releases run at Anne Kolb Nature Center, Hollywood, on set nights through the end of August. Pre-registration and a ticket required: (954) 357-5161.

So... You Think You Know South Florida

You probably already know… Chase Stadium as the place the soccer team played until this year, before they moved down to the new place in Miami.

What you might not know is… what used to stand on that exact patch of ground. It was Lockhart Stadium, and from 1977 it was home to the Fort Lauderdale Strikers, and the roster reads like somebody made it up.

Gerd Müller played there. The man who scored the winning goal in the 1974 World Cup final. So did George Best. So did Gordon Banks, the England goalkeeper who made what people still call the greatest save in the history of the sport, off a Pelé header in 1970.

And here is the part that should stop you.

Banks was playing with one eye.

He lost the sight in his right eye in a car crash in 1972. It ended his career in England. He came to Fort Lauderdale in 1977, played 26 games, let in 29 goals, which was the best defensive record in the entire league, and was voted Goalkeeper of the Year.

Half blind. In a car park off Commercial Boulevard. Best in the country.

More Treats To Try

We don’t let just anyone sponsor this newsletter. Here’s who “made the cut” this week:

• The Florida Renaissance Festival is once again hosting its Acting & Dance Workshops. You can attend as a Member or just $5 per workshop if you want to try it out. Classes from now until October. Use this page to register

• The new school year is starting up. Lots of excitement for the first days of school. But if it is not feeling right for your family, you might want to look at something very different and totally worth it.

• SAVE THE DATE. Founding Families Fall Festival. Stranahan House. September 25th. Email director@stranahanhouse.org for sponsorship opportunities.

• 👉 Buy YOUR OWN Classified Ad Here 👈

Just hit reply to this email to get started. Work with us to reach over 1500+ Greater Fort Lauderdale families.

Quote Of The Week

“If more information was the answer, then we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs.” ~ Derek Sivers

Derek Sivers is an author of philosophy and entrepreneurship (founding CD Baby in the early days of internet sales), known for his surprising quotable insights and pithy succinct writing style. Formerly a musician, programmer, TED speaker, and circus clown.

Flotsam & Jetsam

This section of the newsletter (Flotsam & Jetsam being a nautical term) always covers something interesting found from the world-wide webs, but not necessarily local.

The rest of the newsletter is local by nature. We talk about what’s happening downtown, in Fort Lauderdale, the Greater Fort Lauderdale area, and South Florida. Here’s a story that isn’t local in origin… until it is.

Sugata Mitra is famous for his “hole in the wall” experiments where he placed a computer in some of the poorest communities, and then observed what children did together as they got access to unlimited learning.

It also happens that Sugata’s work (including his “grannies in the cloud”) experiments were a major inspiration for the start of the Acton Network over 15 years ago. We (Acton Fort Lauderdale and the purveyors of this newsletter) are part of that Network, so this article hit differently for us.

It also happens that Sugata is talking about one of the topics that seems to be in the news and on peoples’ minds these days - and that is what is going to happen in a world where AI is easily available to anyone, anywhere, and anytime.

AI is not replacing teachers. It is exposing what schools forgot to teach

The argument that Mitra is making, is one that is central to what we do each day at Acton. He says “Artificial intelligence is not destroying education. It is revealing a problem education has managed to ignore for decades: too many schools still confuse the delivery of information with the cultivation of thought.”

You can read more from the full article here. I’m curious. What do you think the future holds in a world of AI? Are you feeling hopeful or guarded?

Word Play Of The Week

“Damn The Torpedoes.”

In the Civil War, floating naval mines were known as “torpedoes” and the famous phrase meant to go forth, with courage.

Admiral David Farragut, Battle of Mobile Bay, August 5, 1864. His lead monitor Tecumseh hit a mine and sank in minutes, and he ordered the fleet straight through the minefield anyway. ~ ​Source

‘Under-The-Radar’ Openings Job Board

Lots of folks offering cool positions here locally. Maybe there’s one for you or a friend?

• Divers for underwater boat bottom cleaning, Broward County. You scrub hulls. Underwater. All day. In a city with 300 miles of canals, somebody has to, and it is a real trade with real hours.

• Senior Custom Millwork Cabinetmaker, Coconut Creek. Senior level, which means somebody wants a person who has done this for twenty years and is willing to pay for it.

• Locksmith and locksmith apprentice, Broward. The apprentice half is the interesting half. A licensed trade you can still get into without a degree, and almost nobody advertises the entry point.

• Dance teachers, Pompano Beach. Hip hop, ballet, tap, jazz, musical theatre and cheer, all at once. If you have one of those in your history and have wondered what to do with it on a Tuesday night, this is it.

• Marine manufacturing helper, entry level, Dania Beach. No experience asked for. Dania Beach is where a surprising amount of the boat industry actually gets built, and this is the door into it.

• Job News South Florida Job Fair, Thursday Aug 27, 10am to 2pm, Amerant Bank Arena. The Miami Dolphins, City of Sunrise, CareerSource Broward, Boca Raton Police, the Army and the Navy, all in one room. Free, but register.

• Visitor Services Associate, Bonnet House Museum & Gardens. First face anyone sees at the 1920s beachfront estate with the monkeys and the orchid house. If you have ever wanted a reason to be there on a weekday, this is it.

Do you have a listing you would like to place here for next week? Hit reply and let us know.

Lastly… One Big Idea For Your Week

Every week, we reach out and deliver our basket of goodies. Our way of showing our love. Who needs that bridge from you this week? One small effort might make a huge difference for someone you care about.

Tell Us How We Are Doing

Every week we are working to make #H!L better for you and to provide a cutting-edge media apprenticeship opportunity for our learners.

Please share your feedback. What do you love? What could we do better FOR YOU? What FTL businesses and experiences should we be highlighting?

Stuff You Won’t Want To Miss This Week:

1. ★ TOP PICK THIS WEEK: Saturday Night - 7:30pm | USA Men’s Eagles v Argentina XV at Chase Stadium. The US national rugby team is playing a full international in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday night, which is not a sentence anyone expected to write. Argentina’s XV is the sparring partner, tickets start around $40, and the whole thing is over in 80 minutes plus a halftime. You do not need to know the rules. Go for the noise, the hits, and the novelty of a test match happening 15 minutes from your house. Insider Tip: Fort Lauderdale United’s home opener kicks off at the exact same time on the field next door, so the complex will be busy. Park once, pick your sport, and give yourself the extra twenty minutes.

2. TONIGHT - 7–9pm | Live Music at Hollywood Beach Theatre. Free live music in an open-air beachside theater with room to dance, right on the Broadwalk. No ticket, no cover, no reason not to. Insider Tip: It runs Thursday, Friday AND Saturday this week, so if tonight does not work you have two more shots.

3. TONIGHT | A Taste of Jazz at Bailey Contemporary Arts, Pompano. Live jazz inside a small arts center on Pompano’s old downtown strip, which is a very different room than a big theater. The kind of night where you end up talking to the musicians.

4. Ends TODAY at noon | Pianos, online and absentee bidding only. An entire auction of nothing but pianos, closing at lunchtime today. If you have been telling yourself you will learn one day, this is the cheapest that day will ever be.

5. TODAY through Saturday - 10am–4pm | Antiques and Art Plus estate sale, Fort Lauderdale. Three days of antiques with an Erté bronze on the listing at $1,500, which tells you what kind of house this was. Go today for the pick, Saturday for the markdowns.

6. TODAY and Friday - 8am–1pm | Moving Sale, Great Items, Wilton Manors. Somebody is leaving town and the whole house is priced to go. Two mornings only.

7. TONIGHT | Dine Out Lauderdale Downtown Dinner & Drinks Tour. A guided walk through downtown’s food and drink scene with a local telling you the Prohibition-era backstory between stops. Dine Out ends this month, so the tour calendar thins out fast after this.

8. TONIGHT | Oldies Music Singo at the Herb Skolnick Center, Pompano. Bingo, except you win by recognizing the song. Exactly as silly as it sounds and the regulars take it seriously.

9. TONIGHT - 6–9pm | Food Truck Night at TY Park, Hollywood. A dozen trucks parked in a county park with a lake in front of them, no cover, bring a blanket.

10. TONIGHT - 6–9pm | Food Truck Night at Tree Tops Park, Davie. Same idea, west side, under the oaks. Tree Tops is one of the few genuinely shady parks in the county.

11. Ends Sunday | Popcorn Frights Film Festival at Savor Cinema. Florida’s biggest horror festival is in its final four days. If you skipped it last week, the closing weekend is when the crowd is loudest and the programmers stop being polite. Insider Tip: Screenings split between Savor Cinema and the Classic Gateway Theater, so check the venue before you drive.

12. Friday Night - 7–10pm | Starlight Musicals at Holiday Park. The last one. Forty-six summers of free Friday concerts on the football field and this is the final night until next June, with the Shane Duncan Band closing it out. Bring a lawn chair, a cooler and a picnic, and go be a person who has done this once. Insider Tip: Canopies and umbrellas are only allowed along the back and sides of the field, so if you want shade, get there early and go wide. Weather line is 954-828-5363.

13. Friday Night - 8–10pm | ArtsPark Movie Night: Field of Dreams at Young Circle, Hollywood. A free outdoor screening of the baseball one, in an amphitheater in the middle of a traffic circle, which is a very Hollywood thing to do. Get there before eight for a decent patch of grass.

14. Friday Night - 5–10pm | Night Market at Dania Pointe. Vendors, food and music strung along the open-air promenade on a Friday evening. Free to walk through, which makes it an easy default when nobody can decide.

15. Friday through Sunday - 10am–5pm | Obon Weekend at the Morikami, Delray Beach. The Japanese festival for honoring ancestors, done properly: taiko, dance, lanterns, and sixteen acres of garden. Worth the drive north, and genuinely unlike anything happening in Broward this weekend.

16. Friday through Sunday - 9am–4pm | Garage, Craftsman Tools, Quality Furnishings, Home Treasures, Fort Lauderdale. A full garage of Craftsman tools going at once. If you moved into a house here and own one screwdriver, this is your Friday morning.

17. Friday and Saturday - 8am–2pm | Man Cave Meets Mom, Coral Springs. Best-named estate sale of the week and probably the most honest description of a garage in Broward County.

18. Friday Night - 6:30pm | Plunge into the Arts at Plunge Beach Resort, Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. Five local artists rotate through the lobby gallery every thirty days and the unveiling nights are open to anyone who walks in. Free, oceanfront, and you get to talk to the person who made the thing.

19. Saturday Night - 7:30pm | Fort Lauderdale United FC home opener v Sporting JAX. South Florida’s only professional women’s soccer club opens its season at home, and the season runs all the way to May, so this is the one where you find out whether it becomes your thing. Insider Tip: Kickoff is the same 7:30 as the rugby next door. If you want a quieter parking lot, get there early.

20. Saturday Night - from 5pm | National Rum Day Festival at The Wharf. More than a hundred rums, six bars built for the occasion and a menu cooked with the stuff, on the river downtown. Fort Lauderdale spent the 1920s being called Fort Liquordale, so consider it a heritage event.

21. Saturday Night - 6–10pm | Downtown Hollywood ArtWalk. Galleries and studios open late along Harrison Street with live music between them. Free, walkable, and one of the few genuine art nights in the county that is not tied to a museum.

22. Saturday | After Work Players: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at the Broward Center. Adults who take classes at the Broward Center put on a full show once a year. It is the opposite of a touring production, which is exactly why it is worth a ticket.

23. Saturday | Doris Italian Market Wine Night. A wine tasting in a grocery store, which sounds wrong and is in fact excellent. Doris is a South Florida institution and the pours are not stingy.

24. Saturday | Ceramic Workshop: Pottery & Propagations. Make a planter, leave with a cutting to put in it. Two hobbies for the price of one afternoon.

25. Saturday | Saturday Morning Legos and Estate Finds, Hollywood. Somebody’s Lego collection is going to a stranger this weekend and it might as well be you.

26. Saturday Morning - 9–10am | FTL Free Workout Saturdays, Huizenga Park. Free group workout in the rebuilt downtown park. Show up, no signup.

27. Sunday - 11:30am–4pm | India Independence Day Festival at the Broward Center. Food, dance and music for India’s Independence Day, put on by the Association of Indians in America, in the middle of downtown. One of the bigger cultural festivals of the Broward summer and almost nobody outside the community knows it happens.

28. Saturday and Sunday - 12–8pm | Smorgasburg South Florida, Flagler Village. Forty-plus food vendors in an open lot, every Saturday and Sunday. The default answer to “we cannot decide where to eat.”

29. Saturdays and Sundays - 1-4pm | Build & Talk Legos at MODS. Children and caregivers together for hands-on building challenges and fun conversations about digital gaming.

30. Tuesday and Wednesday | The Invite and I Want Your Sex at Savor Cinema. Popcorn Frights clears out and the art-house calendar restarts, with both films running the rest of the week. Savor is a 200-seat independent house downtown, which is the whole point of going.

31. Wednesday Night - 6:30–8pm | Think and Drink Trivia, Huizenga Park. Outdoor trivia downtown. Low stakes, easy to bring a stranger to.

32. Wednesday | Lyrics Lab Open Mic at The Hive, Pompano. An open mic run inside a real black box theater rather than the back of a bar, which changes the whole room.

33. Did you see the Fort Lauderdale Parks & Rec Playbook is out? This is the annual program to all activities, including aquatics, athletics, classes, and more.

34. SAVE THE DATES for Next Week

    1. Saturday, Aug 22 and Sunday, Aug 23 | Monster Jam at Amerant Bank Arena. Trucks the size of a garage, indoors, very loud. Tickets move for this one and the good seats go first.

    2. Saturday, Aug 22 | Pompano Beach Fire Rescue 100 Year Anniversary at the Sample-McDougald House. A century of the city’s fire department, marked at Pompano’s 1916 house museum. The kind of local anniversary that only happens once and that nobody outside city hall hears about.

    3. Friday, Aug 21 | Old Town’s Backyard Jam, Pompano. The monthly outdoor concert series in Pompano’s old downtown.

    4. Saturday, Aug 22 · 7pm | STILL ALIVE, a Pearl Jam tribute at Revolution Live, with a Foo Fighters tribute opening.

    5. Saturday, Aug 22 · 4–9pm | Ukrainian Cultural Fest, West Palm Beach. Food, music and dance on the Great Lawn downtown. Out of county, but there is nothing else like it in South Florida this month.

    6. Wednesday and Thursday, Aug 19–20 | New City Hall and Parking Garage Job Fair, Pompano Beach. Two days of hiring and info sessions tied to the new civic build.

Friday is the last Starlight Musicals until next June. What’s the one free thing in Broward you tell every new arrival about? Reply with it and I’ll credit you when I run the list.

Featured Fort Lauderdale

Mangos Isn’t Coming Back. Something Else Is Taking That Corner.

If you moved here in the last few years, you have probably heard someone say Las Olas used to be different. Here is the specific thing most of them mean.

Mangos opened in December 1992 at 904 East Las Olas, on the corner of Southeast 9th Avenue. Restaurant during the day, live music at night, bands playing most nights, the kind of bar people walked into on a Tuesday for no particular reason. It ran like that for 25 years. In January 2017 the owner sold the business and the liquor license, and it closed.

Then for most of this year, people said it was coming back. Back in January, Miami New Times listed a Mangos revival among the year’s most anticipated openings, with a late-summer date on it. That is the version still going around town. It is also the version I nearly printed here.

It is not happening. In May, The Restaurant People confirmed they are opening something new on that corner instead. It is called NAIA, it lands in October, and it is Mediterranean food with Asian influences and a big indoor-outdoor bar. Their CEO Tim Petrillo called it “the next evolution of how we think about dining on Las Olas,” which is a polite way of saying the old thing is not returning.

The building is gone too, by the way. That corner was rebuilt from scratch: about 5,700 square feet of restaurant on the west end, retail on the east, new live oaks along 9th Avenue.

And it is not one restaurant. As of last week the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance counts 11 new restaurants opening on or near Las Olas over the coming months. Foot traffic on the boulevard is up 19% since 2021 and now runs past five million visits a year. The city is planning wider sidewalks and more than 90 new trees.

So when somebody tells you Las Olas used to be different, they are right. It also happens to be changing again, right now, while you live here. That part you get to watch.

So... You Think You Know South Florida

You probably already know... Fort Lauderdale is home to some of the world’s longest stretches of sandy beaches. People come from all over the world to stick their toes in the sand.

What you might not know is... this past week, Fort Lauderdale also played host to the 2026 National Lifeguard Championships. From high-intensity surfboat races and paddleboard rescues to lightning-fast beach flag sprints, the nation’s most skilled first responders went head-to-head right here on Fort Lauderdale Beach.

And our own Deerfield Beach Ocean Rescue Team from right here in the Greater Fort Lauderdale region captured their fifth straight National Championship!

While the talent gathering from coast to coast is world-class, the biggest story of the championship hits right in our own backyard.

Dominating the competition year after year takes far more than luck. It demands endless early-morning training sessions, flawless teamwork in rough surf, and an unrelenting commitment to athletic excellence. Seeing our local squad cement their dynasty on home turf makes this victory even sweeter.

Beyond the medals and bragging rights, these championships showcase the razor-sharp skills, stamina, and quick thinking these men and women use every day to keep beachgoers safe.

So next time you’re soaking up the sun in South Florida, give a tip of your hat to our local heroes. Not only do they keep our shorelines secure year-round, they also happen to be the undisputed best in the nation!

More Treats To Try

We don’t let just anyone sponsor this newsletter. Here’s who “made the cut” this week:

👉 Buy YOUR OWN Classified Ad Here 👈

• The new school year is starting up. Lots of excitement for the first days of school. But if it is not feeling right for your family, you might want to look at something very different and totally worth it.

• Make your morning feel like a getaway with Fort Lauderdale’s Hollywood Early-Bird Cruise. Fort Lauderdale's Hollywood Early-Bird Cruise departs daily at 9 AM from Stop F4 – Hilton Marina & Convention Center, and is $20 roundtrip. Lot’s to do in Hollywood.

• The Jury Experience: The Deadly Boat Ride. An immersive courtroom drama where you're the jury, staged at Savor Cinema. A boat crime, in this town — on the nose and kind of perfect. From $48.50.

• 🎶 Music lessons for your child. Start building confidence on day one. See our special promotion for an extra 15-minute personalized onboarding session. Voice. Piano. And combo lessons. Text Shontel at 516-945-9742.

• SAVE THE DATE. Founding Families Fall Festival. Stranahan House. September 25th. Email director@stranahanhouse.org for sponsorship opportunities.

Just hit reply to this email to get started. Work with us to reach over 1500+ Greater Fort Lauderdale families.

Quote Of The Week

Mary Kay Ash on the power of listening:

“Many of the problems I hear don’t require me to offer solutions. I solve most of them by just listening and letting the involved party do the talking.”

Mary Kay Ash was an American businesswoman and founder of direct sales company Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc. At the time of her death, she had a fortune of $98 million, and her company had more than $1.2 billion in sales with a sales force of more than 800,000 in at least three dozen countries.

Flotsam & Jetsam

This one will definitely fit the “cool thing found on the web and definitely not local to Florida” - which is kind of the definition we gave to this Flotsam and Jetsam section.

This week families are returning from summer explorations for the start of the new school year. And one of the things several families reported was they saw castles!

Now to be clear… the word “Coral Castle” shows up several places (Homestead being the most well known) in Florida (we even have a tiny one here in Fort Lauderdale). But what we do have… is a bunch of historical Forts that will rival any of the European castles. Like Forts Jefferson or Zachary Taylor down in the Keys, or Castillo de San Marcos up in Saint Augustine.

But if you really want to see castles (lots of them), look at this map! It’s cool to see the clusters, as you can zoom in on Europe or even the many locations in Japan.

Which one is most surprising to you? Fort Conger (furthest north) up in Canada? There is even a fun “Surprise Me” or a “CastleGuesser” for those who want to test their knowledge.

Word Play Of The Week

“Groggy.”

In 1740 Admiral Edward Vernon ordered the Royal Navy’s daily rum ration watered down. Vernon wore a coat of grogram cloth, so sailors called him Old Grog, and the watered rum became “grog.” Feeling rough the next morning was feeling groggy. The word for your hangover is named after the man who tried to prevent it. ~ ​Source

‘Under-The-Radar’ Openings Job Board

Lot’s of folks offering cool positions here locally. Maybe there’s one for you or a friend?

• Shoe Cobbler / Repairman in Margate. Somebody in Broward is still resoling shoes by hand and needs help doing it. If you have ever wondered where that skill goes when the last shop closes, here is the answer. Listing

• Marine Gelcoat Technician at a Dania Beach boat manufacturer. Gelcoat is the finish that makes a hull look like glass, and it is a genuine craft. A job that only exists because of where we live. Listing

• Aircraft Detailing Technician in Dania Beach. Cleaning private jets at the executive airport, which is a real industry here and completely invisible unless you work in it. Listing

• Bird Care and Bug Zoo Department Management at Butterfly World, Coconut Creek. Running the breeding programs and habitats for the birds and the insects. Outdoors, weekends included. Listing

• New City Hall and Parking Garage Job Fair, Pompano Beach, Wed-Thu Aug 19-20. Two days of hiring and info sessions tied to the new civic build. This one is dated, so it can run in the roundup instead (std11). Listing

• Director of Business Development at the Museum of Discovery and Science. The person who goes and gets the sponsors and partnerships that keep a downtown science museum running. Listing

• Do you have a listing you would like to place here for next week? Hit reply and let us know.

Lastly… One Big Idea For Your Week

Are you moving towards what you want, or away from what you are hoping to avoid? Your answer matters more than what you might think.

Tell Us How We Are Doing

Every week we are working to make #H!L better for you and to provide a cutting-edge media apprenticeship opportunity for our learners.

Please share your feedback. What do you love? What could we do better FOR YOU? What FTL businesses and experiences should we be highlighting?

Dine Out Lauderdale is underway from now until September. 140+ restaurants feels like a list that is too long to be useful. If you could only pick ONE to send your friends to… which one are you picking?

For this week, a scary movies film festival, lighthouse tours and sunken ships to explore. Don’t miss the Price Is Right auditions. All of that and more👇👇👇

Stuff You Won’t Want To Miss This Week:

1. ★ TOP PICK THIS WEEK: Starts TONIGHT, runs through Aug 16 | Popcorn Frights Film Festival at Savor Cinema. Florida's biggest horror festival takes over two Fort Lauderdale theaters for eleven straight days, and this is its twelfth year. 116 films, 19 of them world premieres. Opening night is a zombie double bill: the Florida premiere of Yeon Sang-ho's Colony, paired with a 4K restoration of Train to Busan for its tenth anniversary. If you only go once, make it the world premiere of Gator Face, a creature feature shot in the Florida swamps with real alligators, practical effects and zero CGI. You live here now. Go watch someone get eaten by a local. Insider Tip: Screenings split between Savor Cinema and the Classic Gateway Theater, so check the venue before you drive. All-Access Badges are limited.

2. TODAY - 11am–7pm | Free First Thursday at NSU Art Museum. Free admission all day, no card and no catch, right on Las Olas. There is a VR pigment-history piece running until 5, drop-in Mini Muse art-making, and short films by the Close to Home artists screening at 5 and 6. Ninety minutes here is the cheapest way to feel like you did something with your Thursday.

3. TONIGHT - 7pm | Hadestown: Teen Edition at the Broward Center. The final two nights of a summer camp production of the Tony winner, staged in the Amaturo by teenagers who have been rehearsing all summer. Tonight or tomorrow, then it is gone.

4. TONIGHT | Oldies Music Singo at the Herb Skolnick Center, Pompano. Bingo, except you win by recognizing the song. It is exactly as silly as it sounds and the crowd takes it seriously.

5. Friday - 2-3pm | Lego Club at the Main Library. Is there anything better that offering your lego-maniac a big box of blocks, and a new set of friends to built with?

6. Friday | Dine Out Lauderdale Cake Decorating Class. Dine Out is not only prix fixe menus this year. There is a whole run of hands-on classes attached to it, and this is the one where you leave holding something. Or… Saturday | Dine Out Lauderdale Ramen & Pottery Class. You make the bowl, then you fill the bowl. Runs again Aug 15 if this Saturday is spoken for.

7. Friday Night - 7–10pm | Starlight Musicals at Holiday Park. Free live music on the football field, and this Friday it is Mischief playing pop covers. Bring a lawn chair, a cooler and a picnic. There are only two Fridays left in the whole season.

8. Friday Night - 6–11pm | Food in Motion at 511 Bar & Lounge, Flagler Village. Food trucks, street eats, art and shopping in the parking lot on NE 3rd Ave. It is the Flagler Village version of a night out: loud, casual, and you can leave whenever.

9. Friday Night | Ode to Tomato: An Immersive Dinner Experience in Dania Beach. A whole dinner built around one ingredient, at peak tomato. This is the kind of thing you tell people about later.

10. Friday Night - 7pm | Completely Unchained at Revolution Live. A Van Halen tribute with a Ratt tribute opening. No irony required, the musicianship is the point. Or… (also Friday night) | Living the '80s in Pompano Beach. A full '80s tribute night at the Pompano Beach Cultural Center.

11. Friday - 6:30pm | Zumba by Domingo at Huizenga Park. An hour of dance-fitness outdoors downtown, open to anyone twelve and up.

12. Friday through Sunday | Professional Bull Riders at Amerant Bank Arena. Freedom Days, three nights of bull riding in Sunrise. Genuinely a spectacle if you have never seen one live, and eight seconds is a very long time.

13. Saturday Morning - 8:30am | Plantation Acres Estate Sale. John Deere equipment, tools and whatever else comes out of a Plantation acreage property. This is the good kind of estate sale, the one where somebody actually used the stuff. Insider Tip: 8:30am start, and the tools go first.

14. Saturday Morning | North Grove Estate Sale, Coconut Grove. 938 photos in the listing, which is either a warning or an invitation. Worth the drive if you are furnishing a place.

15. Saturday Night | "Presidential Palate" Chef Experience Dinner in Sunrise. A themed tasting dinner built around dishes served to US presidents. Odd premise, but real cooking.

16. Saturday | Clay Open Studio at Bailey Contemporary Arts, Pompano. Second Saturday of the month, the clay studio opens to anyone who wants to get their hands in it.

17. Saturday | U-Ball Beach Basketball Tournament, Dania Beach. Basketball in the sand, with former pros on hand. Free to watch.

18. Sunday - 7pm | Deep Purple at Hard Rock Live. Still touring, still loud, still the band that wrote the riff every guitar shop bans. A legacy act if that’s your schtick.

19. Sunday | The XXXI International Ballet Festival of Miami at the Broward Center. Thirty-one years old and it still only comes north for one night. Dancers from companies around the world on one bill.

20. Monday - 6-7:30pm | Play AND Singalong with Ukulele Fun at the Main Library. We stopped by one day because I was curious. Not only is it fun to see a bunch of folks (all abilities) playing together, but you won’t be able help yourself from singing along as they play many popular songs.

21. Tuesday | Wine Wise Fine Wine & Maine Oyster Cruise. Same boat, oysters added. Maine oysters (flown in for the event) on the Intracoastal feels a very fun Fort Lauderdale contradiction.

22. SAVE THE DATES for Next Week

    1. Saturday, Aug 15 · 7:30pm | USA Rugby v Argentina XV at Chase Stadium. The USA Eagles host Argentina in a full international test match, in Fort Lauderdale, in a 20,000-seat stadium fifteen minutes from downtown. Tickets start around $48.

    2. Saturday, Aug 15 · 7:30pm | Fort Lauderdale United FC home opener vs Sporting JAX. South Florida's only pro women's soccer club opens its third season at Beyond Bancard Field. Same night, same 7:30 kickoff, roughly the same corner of town as the rugby. Pick a side or do a very ambitious doubleheader.

    3. Saturday, Aug 15 · boats 9am–3pm | Hillsboro Lighthouse Tour, Pompano Beach. Once a month a boat runs out to the lighthouse, and you can climb it. Not a view from the water, actually up the tower. Insider Tip: Boats leave hourly from South Florida Diving HQ, 125 N Riverside Dr, seating is first come first served, so show up 15 to 20 minutes before the hour you want. Your ticket is a Hillsboro Lighthouse Preservation Society membership, which you can buy on the dock that morning.

Hey - quick question. Did we miss anything? Each week we do our research but you might know of an event, an organization, or a local business that deserves some love here in our weekly basket of goodies. Just hit reply to this email and let us know!

Featured Fort Lauderdale

Keeping up with several recent features about the fun (conservation and snorkeling) up at Wahoo Bay, today’s focus is on Ship Wreck Park in Pompano Beach.

Ten years ago, a retired vessel embarked on an extraordinary new journey. Sunk intentionally to give back to the ocean, the Lady Luck transformed into one of South Florida’s most iconic and vibrant artificial reefs.

Fast forward over the last decade, and what was once an empty hull is now a bustling underwater metropolis!

Over the last 10 years, the Lady Luck has achieved incredible milestones:

• A Marine Sanctuary: Home to thriving coral growth and countless marine species.

• A Diver’s Paradise: A bucket-list destination attracting underwater adventurers from all over the globe.

• A Community Triumph: A shining symbol of what’s possible when conservation, collaboration, and community come together for our oceans.

Her legacy stretches far beyond the ocean floor, sparking education, protecting our local marine life, and inspiring thousands of unforgettable dives. This is what the shipwreck looked like 9 years ago:

So... You Think You Know South Florida

You probably already know... there are lots of fun (and free) things to do all around the Greater Fort Lauderdale area.

What you might not know is... that one of those free (and fun) things is stargazing at the Fox Observatory at Markham Park every Saturday night, from sunset to midnight.

They have a members program (exclusive events for members) and public viewings take place every Saturday night (weather permitting), allowing visitors to view planets, the moon, and distant nebulas.

The primary telescope at the observatory is a 14 inch Schmidt-Cassegrain F/10 and several Dobsonian reflecting telescopes. The observatory also houses a 6-inch f/15 Brandon refractor donated in 1965 by the observatory’s namesake, Dr. Joseph Dennison Fox.

What to Expect

• Telescopes: Access to large association telescopes and setup views from local hobbyists who share their personal scopes on the grounds.

• Viewing Tips: Bring your patience, as lines for popular telescopes can form.

• Weather Dependency: Sessions depend entirely on clear skies; check updates via the SFAAA Official Site or their social pages before heading out.

  

More Treats To Try

We don’t let just anyone sponsor this newsletter. Here’s who “made the cut” this week:

(Hit reply to this email if you want to reach over 1400+ local families for just $100)

👉 Buy YOUR OWN Classified Ad Here 👈

• Make your morning feel like a getaway with Fort Lauderdale’s Hollywood Early-Bird Cruise. Fort Lauderdale's Hollywood Early-Bird Cruise departs daily at 9 AM from Stop F4 – Hilton Marina & Convention Center, and is $20 roundtrip. Lot’s to do in Hollywood.

• The Jury Experience: The Deadly Boat Ride. An immersive courtroom drama where you're the jury, staged at Savor Cinema. A boat crime, in this town — on the nose and kind of perfect. From $48.50.

• This Weekend check out Smorgasburg South Florida. Over 40 vendors slinging global street food in Flagler Village, free to walk in. Go hungry and graze your way down the row instead of committing to one thing.

• 🎶 Music lessons for your child. Start building confidence on day one. See our special promotion for an extra 15-minute personalized onboarding session. Voice. Piano. And combo lessons. Text Shontel at 516-945-9742.

• Ditch the endless swiping and meet real Fort Lauderdale singles in person at Jigsaw’s curated August lineup of speed dating, trivia nights, and happy hours across local hotspots. Complete with host-led icebreakers, interactive games, and post-event match codes.

Just hit reply to this email to get started. Work with us to reach over 1300+ Greater Fort Lauderdale families.

Quote Of The Week

“...much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.” ~ Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs needs no explanation or link to understand his background. But this works words jumped out at me because I just finished reading “Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned” which is a counter-intuitive look at how setting goals can actually work against us. The solution? Seek our the curious and interesting options in life, because our greatest discoveries and breakthrough moments all came from an unexpected leap.

Flotsam & Jetsam

Remember during the COVID shutdowns when people were stuck and home and the began to connect and explore in the most unique ways? I remember seeing folks singing and playing music between balconies in Italy.

This “flotsam find” reminds me a bit of that playful peacefulness.

It is called WindowSwap and it is about seeing the world through the eyes (and the windows) of a stranger half a world away. There is also an Instagram feed showing more portals into someone else’s every day scenes.

Their stated mission is: WindowSwap is here to fill that deep void in our wanderlust hearts by allowing us to look through someone else’s window, somewhere in the world.

Word Play Of The Week

“Nightmares”

We THOUGHT it had to do with scary black horses trampling through our dreams. Turns out, the “mare” part actually is Old English for a demon that sits on our chest and terrifies us in our sleep. Who knew? ~ ​Source

‘Under-The-Radar’ Openings Job Board

Lot’s of folks offering cool positions here locally. Maybe there’s one for you or a friend?

• Did you know about the Broward Center Teen Ambassador program? The deadline to apply is September 8th. What a great way to build skills and connections.

• Want to be an extra on RJ Becker (the TV series set in Fort Lauderdale)? Casting TaylorMade is looking for extras for shooting that will take place next week.

• This looks like an interesting one. Barry University is looking for someone to run their Simulation Learning Center. Extra bonus, your dependents get free tuition.

• Animal Care / Lorikeet Attendant at Butterfly World (Coconut Creek) — $15/hr+ to wrangle lorikeets at the world's largest butterfly park. ALSO… Retail Sales / Tour Guide at Butterfly World. Part time. Hour-long tours through the largest butterfly park in the world.

• Sea Turtle Overnight Monitoring (temp) at NSU Halmos College, Dania. Overnight surveys and nest relocation. Yes, this is a job where you walk the beach at night counting turtle nests.

• Integrated Communications Assistant Manager at MODS. Run the science museum's voice. ALSO… Afterschool and Camp Manager at the Museum of Discovery and Science, downtown FTL. Run the programs that fill MODS with kids all summer.

• Do you have a listing you would like to place here for next week? Hit reply and let us know.

Lastly… One Big Idea For Your Week

We all know a gratitude practice is a good thing. It is the antidote to victimhood. But what is your practice? Do you write it down? Do you drift off to sleep counting your blessings?

Tell Us How We Are Doing

Every week we are working to make #H!L better for you and to provide a cutting-edge media apprenticeship opportunity for our learners.

Please share your feedback. What do you love? What could we do better FOR YOU? What FTL businesses and experiences should we be highlighting?

Also - a quick request: Any of you really good shoppers at the local thrift shops? Not really my thing, but I think it would be cool to get some insider tips if you are willing to share. Hit reply, and I will give you credit in an upcoming newsletter.

Stuff You Won’t Want To Miss This Week:

1. ★ TOP PICK THIS WEEK: Sunday - 11am–2pm | Sunday Jazz Brunch. Free live jazz along the New River, and the only Sunday in August you can catch it. The city runs this on the first Sunday of the month and it is the single easiest way to feel like you actually live here. Bring a chair, buy a coffee downtown, stay longer than you planned.

2. TODAY - 5:30pm | Once Upon a Time in a Cinema. Savor Cinema is the FLIFF-run indie house on SE 6th Street and it programs the stuff the multiplex never will.

3. TONIGHT - 7pm | Hadestown: Teen Edition. A summer theater camp production of the Tony winner, staged in the Amaturo. Four nights total, so if tonight doesn't work you have Friday, then Aug 6 and Aug 7.

4. TONIGHT | Old School Vinyl at Revolution Live. Records played front to back on a real system, not a playlist and not a club night. Two nights, tonight and tomorrow.

5. Friday Night - 7–10pm | Starlight Musicals: Shaw Davis & The Black Ties. Free high-energy blues on the football field at Holiday Park, 47 years running. Insider Tip: Bring a lawn chair, a picnic and a cooler, all allowed. No pets, and the main field is a tent-free zone so everyone can see.

6. Friday Night - 8pm | BIG3 Basketball. Ice Cube's 3-on-3 league, with All-Stars and Hall of Famers playing a format that's genuinely faster and weirder than the NBA. Insider Tip: Doors open 60 to 90 minutes before tip.

7. Friday Night - 8pm | Alan Cavé. One of the biggest names in Haitian konpa, playing a room this size. If you've never been to a konpa show, this is the one.

8. Friday Night - 6:30–7:30pm | Zumba by Domingo. Free outdoor Zumba in Huizenga Park before you go anywhere else. Did we say it’s free. The Huizenga events (yoga, pilates, zumba, run club, trivia night) have been fabulous! Shoutout to the Huizenga team for all they are providing each week.

9. Ongoing - Mon–Sat 10–5, Sun 12–5 | The Science of Guinness World Records. A hands-on arena with live leaderboards where you test your own strength, reflexes and endurance against record-setters. Runs through Sep 7, so no rush, but it's the best rainy-afternoon answer in town right now. Insider Tip: It's included with regular museum admission, no separate exhibit ticket.

10. Friday through Sunday - $12/day | Antiques Festival. Three days of dealers in West Palm. Worth the drive if you're furnishing a place and refuse to buy everything new.

11. Friday Night - 5–10pm, $10 | Art After Dark: Improv Night. The museum stays open late and hands the room to improv. Ten dollars for a night out that isn't a bar.

12. Saturday Morning - 9–10am | FTL Free Workout Saturdays. Free group workout in Huizenga Park before the heat wins. I’ve been going the last couple of weekend. Folks are super welcoming and all range of abilities. Just give it your best shot and someone will encourage you to push that little extra.

13. Saturday - 1–4pm | Emancipation Day: Freedom Across the Anglo-Caribbean. August 1, 1834 is the day slavery ended across the English-speaking Caribbean, and this is Broward marking it with music, storytelling, food and consuls general from a dozen island nations. Free, and the kind of afternoon that explains the county you moved to. Insider Tip: Free, but register first at islandspacefl.org/EmancipationDay26.

14. Saturday Afternoon - 3–7pm | FTL Beach Market. Flamingo Flea's beachside market with a food hall, a DJ, and the double-decker boat bar at The Shorely for the view.

15. Saturday Night - 5–10pm | South Florida Italian Festival. Live music, food trucks, artisan vendors and a Best Italian Dish contest at the Margate Sports Complex. Insider Tip: Free parking, and dogs are welcome.

16. Saturday Night - 7pm | Zendatta, a Tribute to The Police, with Touch & Go. Two tribute bands, one bill, at Revolution Live. Lower stakes and lower cost than the arena shows this week.

17. Saturday and Sunday | Horsegirls. Two-day run at the indie house downtown.

18. Saturday and Sunday | Museums on Us at NSU Art Museum. Free admission all weekend if you carry a Bank of America card. If you don't, Aug 6 is free for everyone anyway.

19. Saturday and Sunday - 10am–4pm | Oceanside Markets at Las Olas Oceanside Park. Weekend markets across the road from the beach, so you can make a morning of it and end up in the water.

20. Starts Saturday, runs through September | Dine Out Lauderdale. Three-course prix fixe at 140-plus restaurants for two months. Lunch is $35, dinner runs $45, $60 or $75. Insider Tip: No ticket, no signup, no pass. You just walk in during August or September and ask for the menu.

21. Sunday | Unspoken Bond. A Sunday screening at Savor Cinema.

22. Also Sunday - 9:30–10:30am | Music and Movement with Miss Tracy Sings. Free morning music in Huizenga Park.

23. Sunday - 9am–3pm | Coco Market. A wellness market in Delray if you want to make a drive out of Sunday.

24. Monday Night - 7–11pm | Monster Jam. Trucks the size of a studio apartment, on a Monday, because why not.

25. Tuesday - 7am and 6pm | Yoga in Huizenga Park with Las Olas Yoga Studio. Two sessions, both outdoors, pick your hour.

26. Tuesday - 6:30–8pm | Granite Rapids Moon. A Tuesday-night screening at Savor Cinema.

27. SAVE THE DATES for Next Week

    1. Next Thursday - 6–9pm | Clematis by Night. Free weekly music on the Great Lawn. Worth the drive once, to see how another downtown does it.

    2. Next Thursday | Oldies Music Singo & Dance Show. Bingo, but you win by recognizing the song. Pompano Beach.

    3. Next Thursday | Introduction to Colored Pencil Drawing and Painting. Bailey is Pompano's downtown art space and it runs classes most people never hear about.

    4. Friday, Aug 7 | Ode to Tomato at MAD Arts. A six-course dinner staged inside an animated projection about the years Dania Beach called itself the Tomato Capital of the World. Two nights only this season, Aug 7 and Aug 21, so book it now or miss it.

    5. Friday, Aug 7 · 7pm | Completely Unchained, a Van Halen tribute. Tribute night at Revolution Live.

    6. Friday, Aug 7 through Sunday, Aug 9 | Professional Bull Riders: Freedom Days. Three days of PBR in Sunrise. Tickets move for this one, so decide early.

    7. Saturday, Aug 8 · 8:30am | Plantation Acres Estate Sale. John Deere equipment, tools, and whatever else a Plantation Acres property has been holding onto. Get there at open.

    8. Sunday, Aug 9 · 7pm | Deep Purple. A legacy act at Hard Rock Live on a Sunday night.

    9. Sunday, Aug 9 | The XXXI Annual International Ballet Festival of Miami. Thirty-one years running, and this is the Broward night of it.

Hey - quick question. Did we miss anything? Each week we do our research but you might know of an event, an organization, or a local business that deserves some love here in our weekly basket of goodies. Just hit reply to this email and let us know!

Featured Fort Lauderdale

Did you know this iconic Fort Lauderdale attraction changed hands this spring?

You’ve driven past it a thousand times at Bahia Mar. Maybe you took it on a 5th-grade field trip, or dragged your visiting relatives on it once, then forgot it existed.

The Jungle Queen just sold this spring.

After almost 70 years with the same family, Fort Lauderdale’s longest-running tourist attraction has a new owner. The buyer is local hospitality operator Bill Fuller, the guy currently restoring the Mai-Kai and running Ball & Chain in Little Havana.

The boat isn’t going anywhere, and the famous island barbecue dinner cruise stays.

When a landmark that’s been cruising the New River since 1935 gets fresh backing from someone who specializes in historic South Florida spots, it’s worth a second look. Next time you’re planning a weekend on the water, skip the usual spots and go rediscover the classic right in your backyard.

So... You Think You Know South Florida

You probably already know... there’s reef off our beach. You’ve seen the dive flags bobbing past Anglin’s Pier and the charter boats heading out before the sun’s all the way up.

What you might not know is... the oldest and largest coral colony anyone has found in Broward County started growing in 1694. Fifteen feet long, nine feet tall, and still out there.

Sit with that year for a second. In 1694 Florida was Spanish. The United States was 82 years from existing.

Here’s the part that got me. Stony coral grows somewhere between a fifth of an inch and eight tenths of an inch a year. Do the math on fifteen feet and you land at about half an inch a year for three hundred and thirty years. That thing built itself out of seawater at the pace of a fingernail, through every hurricane that has crossed this coast since the 1600s.

And we know the year because coral keeps its own records. Drill out a core, x-ray it, and you get bands. One light layer plus one dark layer is a year, same idea as tree rings. Somebody counted back to 1694.

The reef is also closer than most people assume. Broward has three tracts running the length of our 24 miles of coast, and the inner one sits in only 20 to 30 feet of water. Off Datura Avenue in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea you can walk in from the sand and swim to it. The first reef is about a hundred feet out.

You live on top of the third largest barrier reef system on the planet. Go put your face in the water and look at it. ~ Source

More Treats To Try

We don’t let just anyone sponsor this newsletter. Here’s who “made the cut” this week:

(Hit reply to this email if you want to reach over 1400+ local families for just $100)

👉 Buy YOUR OWN Classified Ad Here 👈

• Make your morning feel like a getaway with Fort Lauderdale’s Hollywood Early-Bird Cruise. Fort Lauderdale's Hollywood Early-Bird Cruise departs daily at 9 AM from Stop F4 – Hilton Marina & Convention Center, and is $20 roundtrip. Lot’s to do in Hollywood.

• The Jury Experience: The Deadly Boat Ride. An immersive courtroom drama where you're the jury, staged at Savor Cinema. A boat crime, in this town — on the nose and kind of perfect. From $48.50.

• This Weekend check out Smorgasburg South Florida. Over 40 vendors slinging global street food in Flagler Village, free to walk in. Go hungry and graze your way down the row instead of committing to one thing.

• 🎶 Music lessons for your child. Start building confidence on day one. See our special promotion for an extra 15-minute personalized onboarding session. Voice. Piano. And combo lessons. Text Shontel at 516-945-9742.

• SAVE THE DATE. Founding Families Fall Festival. Stranahan House. September 25th. Email director@stranahanhouse.org for sponsorship opportunities.

Just hit reply to this email to get started. Work with us to reach over 1300+ Greater Fort Lauderdale families.

Quote Of The Week

“Plenty of growth can be found in removing your vices, but the real leaps are unlocked when you stop clinging to your comforts.”

~ James Clear

James Clear is an American writer best known for his 2018 self-help book Atomic Habits.

Flotsam & Jetsam

Art can be beautiful. And depending on who you were cheering for last week in the World Cup final, the beautiful game might also produce the most beautiful art.

This week I came across a fun data visualization tool that plots every World Cup game, including those just down the road in Miami. If you went to match watch party (or three) do these views capture the ups and downs when a late stage shot hit the crossbar?

Each data “portrait” is an impression, but one built entirely from the data. Nothing is staged or dressed up to make it look better. Each match is reconstructed from roughly 1,500 recorded events, including every touch, pass, shot and yellow (or red) card issued.

This is what the final game looked like, and it pretty much matches the feeling to me. Dominated by Spain’s control of the ball, with too little, too late from Argentina.

The France/England game is also interesting to look at because it was a tale of two halves, dominated by the Englishmen to start, but the French showed up in the second half.

This concludes our World Cup coverage for another four years. It was fun to see the host cities show off their best. And the stories of fans traveling the states to see such wonders of the world as Buc-ee’s Travel Centers was priceless.

Word Play Of The Week

“Salad Days”

The idiom “salad days” means a bright, carefree time of youth, happiness, and innocence. It often describes a period when a person was young, full of life, and lacking deep responsibilities, though it can also point to a peak “heyday” of success.

First coined by William Shakespeare in his play Antony and Cleopatra (around 1606). ~ ​Source

‘Under-The-Radar’ Openings Job Board

Lot’s of folks offering cool positions here locally. Maybe there’s one for you or a friend?

• TOMORROW (Friday, the 31st) - come out to the YMCA Job Fair. Positions for life guards, swim instructors, after-school, and family services positions.

• Hard Rock Stadium is hiring for their PT Food & Beverage Team. Come out to the hiring event on Wednesday, August 5th.

• Apprentice Luthier (Violin Maker) at The Fiddlershop in Pompano. Maybe our most unique job posting of the week.

• This looks like an interesting one. Barry University is looking for someone to run their Simulation Learning Center. Extra bonus, your dependents get free tuition.

• Animal Care / Lorikeet Attendant at Butterfly World (Coconut Creek) — $15/hr+ to wrangle lorikeets at the world's largest butterfly park. ALSO… Retail Sales / Tour Guide at Butterfly World. Part time. Hour-long tours through the largest butterfly park in the world.

• Sea Turtle Overnight Monitoring (temp) at NSU Halmos College, Dania. Overnight surveys and nest relocation. Yes, this is a job where you walk the beach at night counting turtle nests.

• Integrated Communications Assistant Manager at MODS. Run the science museum's voice. ALSO… Afterschool and Camp Manager at the Museum of Discovery and Science, downtown FTL. Run the programs that fill MODS with kids all summer.

• Marine Canvas Sewer in Fort Lauderdale. Peak yachting-capital job, sewing canvas for boats is a real, paying craft here.

• Do you have a listing you would like to place here for next week? Hit reply and let us know.

Lastly… One Big Idea For Your Week

Are you ready to hear what they are actually saying? Sometimes our expectations and reality don’t exactly match up. So what can you do to take in the beauty that is all around us?

Tell Us How We Are Doing

Every week we are working to make #H!L better for you and to provide a cutting-edge media apprenticeship opportunity for our learners.

Please share your feedback. What do you love? What could we do better FOR YOU? What FTL businesses and experiences should we be highlighting?

Stuff You Won’t Want To Miss This Week:

1. ★ TOP PICK THIS WEEK: Sat 9–5; Sun 9–3 | Card Party South Florida. Pokémon cards take over the Convention Center: 250+ vendor tables, artists, creators, and a crowd that treats a Charizard like a Basquiat. First time in Fort Lauderdale, tickets from $26. Insider Tip: it's built for trading, not just buying, so bring your binder.

2. TODAY - 11am–3pm | VR Immersive Art at NSU Art Museum. Make art in VR/AR at the museum. Experimental, drop-in, and air-conditioned at high noon.

3. TONIGHT - 6:30pm | Our Hero, Balthazar at Savor Cinema. An indie you won't catch at the multiplex, in our favorite little cinema on SE 6th Street.

4. Ends TODAY | 500+ lots of comics, figures, diecast & Funko. An online auction out of Pembroke Pines wrapping Thursday at 1pm.

5. TODAY - 12pm | The “Fiesta” estate sale in Sunrise. Odd inventory that makes these worth the trip, including a vintage gold-plated S.T. Dupont lighter.

6. Friday Night - 7–10pm | Starlight Musicals: Brass Evolution. Rock with a full horn section, free, on the Holiday Park lawn. Chairs and coolers aren't just allowed, they're the whole move. Insider tip: they take non-perishables for local food banks at the gate.

7. Friday Night 5–9pm | Food Truck Fridays in Tamarac. Second-and-fourth-Friday truck rally at the Village Amphitheater. A low-lift dinner plan out west.

8. Friday Night 7:30pm | Pour Minds Podcast: Still Sippin' Tour. The unfiltered podcast live will be a different kind of experience for The Parker stage.

9. Friday and Saturday | Jewelry & silver from a Long Island dealer's estate. A dealer's own stash hitting estate-sale prices in Fort Lauderdale. Go Friday if you're serious. The good pieces won't be there on Saturday.

10. Saturday Morning | House Pilates Society at the beach. A free, high-energy mat Pilates class set to house music at Las Olas Oceanside Park.

11. Saturday Afternoon - 3pm | A.U.X Fest x Relief Alliance. A local music-and-cause fest at Club Vault in Hollywood.

12. Saturday Night - 7–8pm | Pop-up performance by Kirk Zieser. A free hour of live music downtown as the heat breaks.

13. Saturday Night - 7:30pm | Sunset Kundalini Yoga + Sound Bath on the sand. Moonlight breathwork and a sound bath two blocks south of Sunrise, ocean as the backing track.

14. Saturday Night | The Chili Poppers + American Idiots. RHCP and Green Day tribute double bill at Revolution. Sweaty, loud, and fun for real fans of either band.

15. Saturday Night - 8pm | Disturbed at Hard Rock Live. Full-throttle arena metal if your week needs volume. Tickets still available last we checked.

16. Saturday and Sunday - 3–8pm | Fast & Flavorful: Asian-Latino Street Food & Car Fest. Lowriders and lumpia in the same Flagler Village lot. Free entry.

17. Sunday Afternoon - 1pm | Mahjong at the Center. Beginner and open tables at the Hollywood Art & Culture Center. Learn the click of the tiles in an actual art center.

18. Sunday - 4–8pm | Flamingo Flea at Tarpon River Brewing. Vintage and maker vendors with a craft beer in hand, for the good kind of Sunday scavenging.

19. Also Sunday - 12–4pm | Sunny Side Up Market at Huizenga Park. Curated local makers, farmers, and a live DJ in the middle of downtown. Dogs celebrated, not just tolerated.

20. Sunday - 4–9pm | Christmas in July Block Party at Fishtales. Santa hats in 90-degree heat in the NE 33rd Street bar pocket.

21. SAVE THE DATES for Next Week

    1. Thursday, Jul 30 | Once Upon a Time in a Cinema at Savor. A love letter to moviegoing, plus Sugar Island screening the same night. Pick your ticket; times on the site.

    2. Friday, Jul 31 · 8pm | BIG3 Basketball at Amerant Bank Arena. Ice Cube's 3-on-3 league rolls into Sunrise. Ex-NBA names, real chippiness, and don’t you think 3v3 is actually the pure form of basketball? Said by a former hoops coach 😉 Tickets start about $33.

    3. Saturday, Aug 1 | Zendatta + Touch & Go at Revolution. Police and Cars tributes on one bill for that generation.

    4. Aug 1 → Sep 30 | Dine Out Lauderdale kicks off. 140+ restaurants run three-course prix fixe menus: $35 lunch, $45/$60/$75 dinner for two full months. Hit the places you've been meaning to try, at their best math. Insider Tip: not every spot volunteers it, so ask your server for the Dine Out menu.

Hey - quick question. Did we miss anything? Each week we do our research but you might know of an event, an organization, or a local business that deserves some love here in our weekly basket of goodies. Just hit reply to this email and let us know!

Featured Fort Lauderdale

August is right around the corner. New school year. New after-school activities.

Have you ever thought about getting your younglings interested in music?

We are getting ready to restart our local podcast. The last time we were running under the Family Friendly Fort Lauderdale banner, and we talked to two different guests who might have options, depending on your taste for rock or classical.

1. FYO - Florida Youth Orchestra (Episode 36): Since 1988, over 20,000 children have been educated and inspired by their participation in the Florida Youth Orchestra. In this episode we talked with Myra Weaver, the Chief Executive Officer of the 501(c)3. https://www.floridayouthorchestra.org/index.html

2. School of Rock (Episode 2): Seems like in forever since we talked to Burny Pelsmajer of School of Rock Broward. We talked about how the movie inspired the growth of a network of schools across the country, and how the students grow their passion with music they love. You can learn more about our local musicians at https://www.schoolofrock.com/locations/fortlauderdale

Also, make sure you check out the Apprentice Luthier posting in the job board below. That is not something you see every day. A bit of a lost art and they are willing to train.

So... You Think You Know South Florida

You probably already know... they do BIG in Texas and we do WATER here in So Flo.

What you might not know is... apparently, we do BIG too.

The giant bronze horse off US-1 at Gulfstream Park. You’ve driven past it. You may have even said “what is that” out loud to yourself in your car.

It’s Pegasus and Dragon, it stands 110 feet tall, and only two statues in America stand taller. One of them is the Statue of Liberty. It took more than 700 tons of steel and bronze, cast at a foundry in Germany and shipped here in pieces, to put the country’s third-tallest statue next to a racetrack parking lot in Hallandale Beach.

And the horse is only half the act. At night the plaza turns into a full show: fog, lights, music, and the dragon breathing 20 feet of real fire.

A statue taller than most buildings around it, and the rest of the country mostly shrugged. Very Florida.

More Treats To Try

We don’t let just anyone sponsor this newsletter. Here’s who “made the cut” this week:

(Hit reply to this email if you want to reach over 1400+ local families for just $100)

👉 Buy YOUR OWN Classified Ad Here 👈

• The Jury Experience: The Deadly Boat Ride. An immersive courtroom drama where you're the jury, staged at Savor Cinema. A boat crime, in this town — on the nose and kind of perfect. From $48.50.

• This Weekend check out Smorgasburg South Florida. Over 40 vendors slinging global street food in Flagler Village, free to walk in. Go hungry and graze your way down the row instead of committing to one thing.

• 🎶 Summer music lessons for your child. Start building confidence on day one. See our special promotion for an extra 15-minute personalized onboarding session. Voice. Piano. And combo lessons. Text Shontel at 516-945-9742.

• Mermaid Tails & Cocktails at the Wreck Bar (Tuesdays thru Aug 25). Live mermaids swim behind the porthole windows of a 1958 hotel bar while you sip something cold.

• SAVE THE DATE. Founding Families Fall Festival. Stranahan House. September 25th. Email director@stranahanhouse.org for sponsorship opportunities.

Just hit reply to this email to get started. Work with us to reach over 1300+ Greater Fort Lauderdale families.

Quote Of The Week

“Adlerian psychology is a psychology of courage. Your unhappiness cannot be blamed on your past or your environment. And it isn’t that you lack competence. You just lack courage. One might say you are lacking in the courage to be happy.”

I just finished the two books The Courage to Be Disliked and The Courage to Be Happy by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. I particularly like the Audible versions. Read once (I am on my second reading) and there are definitely a nuggets of wisdom that will stick with your lifetime.

Flotsam & Jetsam

What if there was a map with the whole universe on it?

Turns out… there is. It is called Universe Atlas.

Most astronomy diagrams lie to you. They have to. If you drew the Earth the size of a marble, Jupiter would sit hundreds of feet away, and the nearest star would be thousands of miles off in another state. True scale is usually impossible to show on a flat screen.

Until now.

Imagine an interactive canvas that lets you scroll continuously from the vast edge of the observable universe all the way down to the heart of a single atom—with zero shortcuts.

Every size, distance, and cosmic leap in this map is 100% true to scale.

Why You Need To Try It

• 6.8 Million Celestial Objects: You aren’t just scrolling through generic space art. The map renders millions of real cataloged stars, exoplanets, and galaxies, complete with their actual dynamic orbits.

• The Reality of Space: As you zoom out past our solar system, the immediate takeaway is how empty the universe actually is. You will spend genuine time scrolling through vast, quiet voids before stumbling onto the next solar system.

• The Microscopic Descent: Once you pull back from the cosmic web, the zoom doesn’t stop at human scale. It punches right through cells, molecules, and electrons, taking you straight into the quantum realm.

Word Play Of The Week

“More Than One Way to Skin a Cat”

The phrase “more than one way to skin a cat” is a proverbial expression meaning there are multiple ways to accomplish a task or achieve a goal.

The saying came from a book by Seba Smith (1854), in which he wrote, "This is a money digging world of ours; and, as it is said, 'there are more ways than one to skin a cat,' so are there more ways than one of digging for money” ~ ​Source

‘Under-The-Radar’ Openings Job Board

Lot’s of folks offering cool positions here locally. Maybe there’s one for you or a friend?

• Apprentice Luthier (Violin Maker) at The Fiddlershop in Pompano. Maybe our most unique job posting of the week.

• This looks like an interesting one. Barry University is looking for someone to run their Simulation Learning Center. Extra bonus, your dependents get free tuition.

• President & CEO at Visit Lauderdale — $155,771–$248,612 to be the person who sells the world on Fort Lauderdale. Yes, the tourism-boss job is now open.

• Animal Care / Lorikeet Attendant at Butterfly World (Coconut Creek) — $15/hr+ to wrangle lorikeets at the world's largest butterfly park.

• Integrated Communications Assistant Manager at MODS. Run the science museum's voice.

• Marine Canvas Sewer in Fort Lauderdale. Peak yachting-capital job, sewing canvas for boats is a real, paying craft here.

• Do you have a listing you would like to place here for next week? Hit reply and let us know.

Lastly… One Big Idea For Your Week

Do you feel stuck this week? I bet there is someone reading this same newsletter who could help you get unstuck. How can we help? Hit reply and let us see if we can connect you.

Tell Us How We Are Doing

Every week we are working to make #H!L better for you and to provide a cutting-edge media apprenticeship opportunity for our learners.

Please share your feedback. What do you love? What could we do better FOR YOU? What FTL businesses and experiences should we be highlighting?

Stuff You Won’t Want To Miss This Week:

1. TOP PICK THIS WEEK: Saturday - 2–6pm | Riverwalk Tacos & Tequila Festival (4th Annual). Free to walk into and built for grazing: taco vendors from carne asada to seafood, five tequila brands pouring, lawn games on the grass by the river. The $30 VIP ticket (21+) adds tequila and margarita samples plus bites from Epazote and La Mexicana.

2. TONIGHT - 5:30–7:30pm | Yappy Hour at The Dog Spot. The downtown park's dog social runs the night this issue lands, with Barkyard N' Brews pouring. Free, and the dog watching costs nothing either.

3. ALSO TONIGHT - 7pm | Men At Work + Toad the Wet Sprocket + Shonen Knife. “Down Under,” “All I Want,” and Japanese punk legends Shonen Knife on one open-air bill. The kind of weeknight nostalgia show you plan the next week around.

4. Or… Opens TONIGHT | The Odyssey opens in 15/70mm IMAX. Christopher Nolan's Odyssey lands on the five-story downtown screen in true 15/70mm film, a format only a few theaters in the world can run.

5. Starting Tonight thru Wed, Jul 16–22 | National Theatre Live: All My Sons. Sally Field and Bill Pullman in the National Theatre's Arthur Miller revival, captured live and running on the Savor screen through Wednesday. Box office: (954) 525-FILM.

6. Friday Night - 6:15pm | Candlelight debuts at Savor Cinema: Bad Bunny + Vivaldi. The candlelit string-quartet series lands at the art-house with two programs in one night: a Bad Bunny tribute (from $41) and Vivaldi's Four Seasons at 6:15. Sixty minutes, hundreds of candles, ages 8 and up.

7. Friday Night 7–10pm | Starlight Musicals: ReaXtion Band. Free live music on the Holiday Park field, year 47 of the series, with ReaXtion Band covering the hits. No ticket, no cover; lawn chairs and coolers both welcome.

8. Friday in West Palm - 6:30pm | Lynyrd Skynyrd + Loverboy. Skynyrd and Loverboy share an amphitheater bill up in West Palm. If “Free Bird” still lights you up, here's your shot.

9. Friday 8pm | Dive-in Film: Space Jam at the Pompano pool. Space Jam on a screen at the Pompano pool, watched from the water. It's free; bring a float.

10. Friday - 6pm-9pm | Pompano’s Backyard Jam Convert. This month features Scorpio Rising (good for dancing).

11. This Weekend (Fri/Sat 8am–2pm, Sun 10am–2pm) | Pompano estate sale with a boat and a street-legal golf cart. One estate sale holding a 21-foot Robalo with a Yamaha four-stroke, a street-legal golf cart with a new lithium battery, a pool table, a pinball machine, comic books, and albums. The address posts at midnight tonight; the good stuff will not survive Friday morning.

12. Saturday - 2–9pm | Bahamas Goombay Broward (first ever). Broward's first Goombay festival: Junkanoo parades, a Battle of the Conch Fritters, a Bahamian village, and a lineup topped by founding Baha Men member Isiah “Bahamen” Taylor. General admission is listed free; $100 VIP puts you at the front of the parade with rum in hand.

13. Saturday - 3–7pm | Flamingo Flea at Marina Village. The curated market sets up by the marina, 3 to 7. Every vendor sells handmade, upcycled, vintage, or locally sourced; no mass-produced anything.

14. Saturday - 6–10pm (mural tour 6pm) | Downtown Hollywood ArtWalk. Downtown Hollywood's third-Saturday ArtWalk: an artisan market on 20th Avenue, a free guided mural tour at 6, and a free champagne gallery tour at 5 if you get there early.

15. This Weekend | Bluey's Big Play. The theatrical version of the show half the country has memorized, with full-size puppets, two days downtown. If there's a Bluey household in your life, this is the week's marquee ticket.

16. Auctions this weekend:

    1. Saturday - online bidding | “Road to the Final” World Cup memorabilia auction. The Hollywood auction house runs a World Cup exclusives sale the day before the final.

    2. Saturday - 1pm start (online) | Antiques, Artifacts & Taxidermy auction. An antiques, artifacts, and taxidermy catalog out of Tamarac, with online bidding. You will not open a stranger tab this week.

17. Jul 18–25 · Multiple Sessions | Learn to Curl at War Memorial. The War Memorial's rink runs Learn to Curl sessions all week. Curling, in Florida, in July. Sounds cool 😉. The brooms are provided.

18. Saturday and Sunday - 9am–2pm | Wilton Manors Green Market. Produce, international baked goods, cheeses, and coffee both weekend mornings at Hagen Park. Early beats hot.

19. Saturday - 7pm | Waifus & Wet Mode rooftop pool party. An anime-themed pool party on a downtown rooftop. Cosplay by the water, with a beautiful skyline in the background.

20. Sunday - 4pm | “Bigger than Me” premiere at Savor Cinema. A local filmmaker premieres “Bigger than Me” at the art-house. Be in the room before anyone's heard of it.

21. Sunday - 9am-4pm | Coral Springs Collectorfest. What to expect: Vintage & Modern Toys, Hot Wheels, Retro Gaming, Comics, Artwork & More Pop Culture Goodness. Kids under 12 are free.

22. Huizenga Park Happenings:

    1. Tuesday Night with Lauderdale Run Club. The route will finish back at Huizenga Park and roll straight into social hour with Mr. Smash, where runners can refuel, connect, and celebrate a strong finish together.

    2. Wednesday - 6:30–8pm | Think and Drink Trivia. Outdoor trivia in the downtown park, drink in hand, no cover. Round up a few people and find out what you've retained.

Hey - quick question. Did we miss anything? Each week we do our research but you might know of an event, an organization, or a local business that deserves some love here in our weekly basket of goodies. Just hit reply to this email and let us know!

Featured Fort Lauderdale

Last week we profiled the snorkeling up at Wahoo Bay. This week… the Jelly Fish Museum in Pompano Beach.

The Only Jellyfish Museum in America Is Across From the Pompano Pier

Not a tank in a gift shop. A whole museum, almost 10,000 square feet of it, right across from the pier at 199 N Ocean Blvd.

It opened at the end of March, and the city bills it as the only one of its kind in the country. Inside are about two dozen species from oceans all over the world, drifting through glowing tanks that range from tiny nano cubes to wall-sized panoramas. You’ll find a lion’s mane, one of the largest jellyfish on earth. A flame jellyfish the color of a traffic cone. And Cassiopea, the upside-down jelly that spends its life resting on its back in warm shallows. That last one is a Florida local. You’ve probably swum past one without knowing it.

There’s also a small lab where you can see how they raise the jellies and what they eat, plus a projection room where the walls turn into slow-moving ocean. The whole place is built for lingering. There’s no time limit on your visit, and honestly, standing still is the point.

If you’ve been hunting for a date idea that isn’t another dinner on Las Olas, they also do a private evening for two among the tanks.

Straight talk on logistics: open daily 10 to 7, last entry 6:30. Tickets run about twenty bucks and change depending on which page of their site you’re reading (one says $19.50, another $23; Florida residents get a couple dollars off, kids under 2 are free, and there’s a $65 annual pass). Tickets are non-refundable, so pick your day with some confidence.

So... You Think You Know South Florida

You probably already know... July down here feels like the surface of the sun.

What you might not know is... in nearly 130 years of record-keeping, Miami has hit 100 degrees exactly once. July 21, 1942. That’s it. That’s the whole list. Fort Lauderdale’s thermometer isn’t much braver: we first touched 100 in August of 1944 and haven’t done it since June 22, 2009.

It might feel like Death Valley, but the ocean and those afternoon storms cap the actual temperature almost every day, which is why our “record heat” would be a mild afternoon in Phoenix.

So the next time someone back home asks how you survive a Florida summer, tell them the truth. The heat was never the problem. It’s the humidity that’s out to drown you.

More Treats To Try

We don’t let just anyone sponsor this newsletter. Here’s who “made the cut” this week:

(Hit reply to this email if you want to reach over 1400+ local families for just $100)

👉 Buy YOUR OWN Classified Ad Here 👈

• This Weekend check out Smorgasburg South Florida. Over 40 vendors slinging global street food in Flagler Village, free to walk in. Go hungry and graze your way down the row instead of committing to one thing.

• 🎶 Summer music lessons for your child. Start building confidence on day one. See our special promotion for an extra 15-minute personalized onboarding session. Voice. Piano. And combo lessons. Text Shontel at 516-945-9742.

• Mermaid Tails & Cocktails at the Wreck Bar (Tuesdays thru Aug 25). Live mermaids swim behind the porthole windows of a 1958 hotel bar while you sip something cold.

• SAVE THE DATE. Founding Families Fall Festival. Stranahan House. September 25th. Email director@stranahanhouse.org for sponsorship opportunities.

Just hit reply to this email to get started. Work with us to reach over 1300+ Greater Fort Lauderdale families.

Quote Of The Week

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

— Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin is famous for her candid, multi-volume personal diaries and her pioneering erotica. Spanning over 60 years, her journals explored female desire, psychoanalysis, and the bohemian avant-garde in Paris, establishing her as an iconic figure of 20th-century feminist literature.

Flotsam & Jetsam

Okay. The World Cup games have been fun, both locally and on TV.

But imagine for a moment, if countries had to compete in the same kind of play-off bracket, but the scoring was based on GDP… or happiness levels… or life expectancy.

That’s the idea behind the Data World Cup.

You pick the measure that matters most to you, and see who comes out on top.

Sounds like fun, but I bet the don’t get the vikings rowing or the Tartan Army takeovers for these competitions.

Word Play Of The Week

‘Dog Days of Summer’

The “dog days of summer” refer to the hottest, most humid, and uncomfortable weeks of the year, spanning July 3 to August 11. So we are fully in it right now. Just walk outside to see what I mean.

The phrase traces back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. It was coined in reference to Sirius (often called the "Dog Star"), the brightest star in the night sky. Sirius is part of the constellation Canis Major (the "Greater Dog"). ~ ​Source

‘Under-The-Radar’ Openings Job Board

Lot’s of folks offering cool positions here locally. Maybe there’s one for you or a friend?

• Artis Senior Living Center is looking for a Memory Care Program Assistant. Chance to show your creativity, and with benefits.

• The Town of Davie is looking for part-time Lifeguards and also an Animal Resource Officer.

• President & CEO at Visit Lauderdale — $155,771–$248,612 to be the person who sells the world on Fort Lauderdale. Yes, the tourism-boss job is now open.

• City Photographer / Videographer at City of FTL — $76,902–$119,214 to shoot the city for a living. But act fast. Application close tomorrow (July 17th).

• Animal Care / Lorikeet Attendant at Butterfly World (Coconut Creek) — $15/hr+ to wrangle lorikeets at the world's largest butterfly park.

• Do you have a listing you would like to place here for next week? Hit reply and let us know.

Lastly… One Big Idea For Your Week

How will you show courage this week?

Tell Us How We Are Doing

Every week we are working to make #H!L better for you and to provide a cutting-edge media apprenticeship opportunity for our learners.

Please share your feedback. What do you love? What could we do better FOR YOU? What FTL businesses and experiences should we be highlighting?

And a quick question: Anyone out there interested in Futures Thinking? I’ve been reading Jane McGonigal’s book Imaginable (again) and am thinking about taking the certification course on Coursera. Thought it might be fun to create a local study group. If that sounds like you, just hit reply. I would love to connect.

Stuff You Won’t Want To Miss This Week:

1. TONIGHT | Space Jam — Cool Summer Nights. The 1996 Jordan-and-Bugs matchup on the art-house screen, part of the Cool Summer Nights series.

2. Starting TODAY at 11am | “Hot Hot Hot!” Estate Sale. A Sunrise estate sale built around Daum Nancy crystal and art glass vases. If you know what that is, you're already in the car.

   1. If Estate Sales are your jam, Thu–Fri, Jul 9–10 · 8am–1pm | “Plot Twist” Estate Sale. A boutique estate company's two-day, mornings-only sale in Hollywood. Short hours mean the good finds move fast; go at open.

   2. And this Weekend (Fri–Sun) from 9am | Elegant Global Estate Sale. A well-traveled collector’s place packed with mid-century furniture, sterling, fine art, and Asian and European finds. Sunday is half the day only, so go Friday if you want first pick.

3. Friday Night 7pm | Starlight Musicals: The Pitbull of Blues. Free live blues from The Pitbull of Blues Band on the football field, year 47 of this series. No ticket, no cover; lawn chairs and coolers are both welcome. 💡 They collect non-perishable donations for local food banks at the gate

4. Also Friday | Catch the opening of Moana on IMAX at MODS. Moana hits the five-story IMAX screen downtown. A good escape on a too-hot-to-be-outside afternoon.

5. Friday and Saturday | Florida Supercon. South Florida's biggest pop-culture convention, with Hayden Christensen and TMNT co-creator Kevin Eastman headlining the guest list. Cosplay, comics, artists' alley: if that's your lane, it's worth the drive south.

6. Saturday 8–11am | Fort Lauderdale Beach Sweep. Much needed after the big crowds from the fourth. Show up where Las Olas hits the sand and help clear the beach. A typical morning pulls 100 pounds of trash and 7,000 cigarette butts. Wear a hat and bring water.

7. Saturday | Sensory-Inclusive Shrek the Musical JR. Summer-camp kids stage Shrek with the lights and sound dialed down for sensitive audiences. A rare welcoming-by-design theater night.

8. Saturday | FIFA World Cup 2026 Quarterfinal. Yes, the USA is out but a World Cup quarterfinal just 25 minutes from downtown. If you have a ticket, skip the parking nightmare. No ticket? This is the weekend every sports bar in town goes loud.

9. Saturday 11am–4pm | FlockFest Beach Party (11th Annual). Picture the ocean dotted with hundreds of pink flamingo floats and a DJ set rolling on the sand. Free to walk up to, and the proceeds go to charity. Bring your own winged float or grab a VIP ticket that comes with one inflated and ready. 💡 VIP includes open bar, a $10 food voucher, and a pre-inflated flamingo float (flockfestevents.org).

10. Saturday 7–10pm (VIP 6pm) | Boca Burger Battle (13th Annual). Eighteen chefs cook off-menu burgers and your ticket covers unlimited food plus craft beer, wine, and spirits. It sells out every year; presale GA is $69 before it jumps to $89.

11. Saturday Night 7pm | Alice In Chains + Faith No More tribute night. Two of the 90s' heaviest catalogs back to back, played live downtown. Tickets run about $23 to $27. A solid cheap night out if the heat keeps you off the beach.

12. This Weekend (Sat-Sun) 9am | June Krauser Summer Splash. Watch Masters swimmers race a 50-meter Olympic course at the historic Aquatic Center by the beach. Free to watch from the deck, and a few hundred yards from FlockFest if you want to stack your Saturday.

13. Weekend Markets worth exploring:

    1. Saturday 9am–4pm | Saturday MKT at Las Olas Oceanside Park. The beach market’s first-ever Saturday edition, with pizza, tacos, and roughly 35 handmade vendors steps from the water. Get there early before the heat sets in.

    2. Sunday noon–4pm | Huizenga Park Community Market. Local makers and vendors set up in the redone downtown park. A low-key way to spend a Sunday afternoon and see the space that anchors the new downtown vibe.

    3. Saturday and Sunday 9am–2pm | Wilton Manors Green Market. Produce, baked goods, coffee, and local vendors every weekend morning in Hagen Park. Go early before the heat and the good stuff both run out.

    4. Daily · 8am–5pm | Fort Lauderdale Swap Shop. Eighty-eight acres of vendors, plus a free classic car museum tucked inside that most people walk right past. Go on a weekend morning before the lot bakes in the sun.

14. Every Thursday 5:30–7:30pm | Yappy Hour at Huizenga Park. The downtown park's dog social, free, with drinks on hand. Easy after-work plan.

15. Thursday Thru Sunday 6:30pm | Shakespeare by the Sea. Free Shakespeare under the stars in a beachside park, from the area's longest-running summer festival. It's a haul north, but free theater on the ocean is a rare species.

16. Mon–Fri, Jul 13–17 | APSCON 2026 (airborne public safety expo). Public-safety helicopters and drones fill the convention center for the airborne rescue industry's national event. It's listed as public but built for the trade.

17. Tue, Jul 14 (Tuesdays thru Aug 25) | Mermaid Tails & Cocktails at the Wreck Bar. Live mermaids swim behind the porthole windows of a 1950s hotel bar while you sip something cold. The single most only-in-Fort-Lauderdale item on this list.

18. SAVE THE DATE, Jul 16 · 7pm | Men At Work + Toad the Wet Sprocket + Shonen Knife. “Down Under,” “All I Want,” and Japanese punk legends Shonen Knife on one open-air bill. The kind of weeknight nostalgia show you plan the next week around.

😉​ Hey - quick question. Did we miss anything? Each week we do our research but you might know of an event, an organization, or a local business that deserves some love here in our weekly basket of goodies. Just hit reply to this email and let us know!

Featured Fort Lauderdale

Want to go snorkeling but thought you needed a boat to see the good stuff?

Dive In From the Shore & Discover Wahoo Bay

You don’t need a boat, a plane ticket, or expensive dive gear to experience a thriving marine ecosystem. Broward County’s newest underwater wonder is just a steps-from-the-sand walk away.

Located at the Hillsboro Inlet Park in Pompano Beach, Wahoo Bay is officially serving up crystal-clear waters, vibrant tropical fish, and world-class snorkeling without the offshore hassle.

What Makes Wahoo Bay Unique?

Unlike natural reefs that require a boat ride to access, Wahoo Bay is a specially designed marine conservation and educational area located right along the shoreline. It’s a living laboratory engineered to restore marine life while giving the public a front-row seat to nature.

• The SEABenches: The park features innovative, eco-friendly submerged benches designed to foster coral growth and provide a nursery habitat for local fish species.

• Real-Time Tech: It’s not just for swimming! Wahoo Bay is equipped with underwater cameras and water-monitoring technology, letting scientists (and curious locals) track the ecosystem’s health in real time.

• Family-Friendly Exploration: Because it’s sheltered and easily accessible from the park, it’s the perfect spot for mini-explorers, first-time snorkelers, and seasoned divers alike.

Pack your mask, snorkel, and fins—nature is waiting!

• Where: Hillsboro Inlet Park, Pompano Beach

• Cost: Free to park and access

• What to Look For: Keep your eyes peeled for colorful parrotfish, sergeant majors, and maybe even a passing manatee or sea turtle!

Local Tip: Check the local tide charts before you go. Snorkeling around high tide usually offers the absolute clearest visibility for spotting your new underwater neighbors.

You can even catch the live underwater camera from Wahoo Bay. Keep an eye out for Stingrays, Turtles, Manatees and some species of sharks and over 100 Species of fish!

So... You Think You Know South Florida

You probably already know... we celebrated the fourth this past weekend.

What you might not know is... Who did it better?

More Treats To Try

We don’t let just anyone sponsor this newsletter. Here’s who “made the cut” this week:

(Hit reply to this email if you want to reach over 1400+ local families for just $100)

👉 Buy YOUR OWN Classified Ad Here 👈

• This Weekend check out Smorgasburg South Florida. Over 40 vendors slinging global street food in Flagler Village, free to walk in. Go hungry and graze your way down the row instead of committing to one thing.

• 🎶 Summer music lessons for your child. Start building confidence on day one. See our special promotion for an extra 15-minute personalized onboarding session. Voice. Piano. And combo lessons. Text Shontel at 516-945-9742.

• Here’s a plug for the 14‑year‑old owner of Tater Tots Plushies, a mobile plush‑making business. She offers to bring a full bear‑stuffing experience directly to senior centers, adult day programs, birthdays, parties, school events, and so much more! Interested? Book with us here: linktr.ee/tatertotsplushies no party too big or too small!

• Well, now that Giannis is coming to town… did you know you can take off season tours of the Miami Heat All Access Arena and facilities? Minimum group of 4 required. Tell Victoria you heard about it from us.

• Urban Air Adventure Park Plantation offers the ultimate way to keep kids active all summer long and beat the heat and rain. For Summer Group Packages full of nonstop indoor adventure call or email today! Lea@elevatedvg.com or 561-831-4311 for fast turnaround.

Just hit reply to this email to get started. Work with us to reach over 1300+ Greater Fort Lauderdale families.

Quote Of The Week

“To be on a quest is nothing more and nothing less than than to be an asker if questions.” ~ Sam Keen

Sam Keen (1931–2025) was a prominent American philosopher, author, and pop psychologist. He is best remembered as a major figure in the 1960s human potential movement and the men’s movement of the 1990s. He wrote more than a dozen books and served as a longtime editor for Psychology Today.

Flotsam & Jetsam

This week’s Flotsam & Jetsam is kind of (could be) related to Fort Lauderdale and it also could fit on the ‘Under-The-radar’ Job Board too.

The “official rules” for this section (the detritus found floating in the water) is: NOT local but the most interesting thing we found on the interwebs this week.

So I think this one qualifies, but maybe… maybe the right person will see this and it WILL become a Fort Lauderdale story because, who deserves to have an on-the-water ice cream truck more than the ‘Venice of America’ - what do you think?

Because of all the Independence Day stories this past week, I came across this one of a Long Island family selling homemade ice cream out of their boat.

Any aspiring entrepreneurs out there looking for a new line of business? If you love being on the water and making people smile, this might be your ticket!

Word Play Of The Week

“Down To The Wire”

Seems appropriate as we go into the last rounds of the World Cup.

The idiom “down to the wire” comes from 19th-century horse racing. In the days before photo finishes, tracks literally stretched a wire across the finish line high above the track. When a race was extremely close, judges used the wire to see which horse crossed first. ~ ​Source

‘Under-The-Radar’ Openings Job Board

Lot’s of folks offering cool positions here locally. Maybe there’s one for you or a friend?

• TODAY 10am-Noon | Choices Job Seekers Workshop. No registration required (and no cost). E. Pat Larkins Community Center in Pompano Beach. For more information: 954-968-6777.

• Oasis Laundry is looking for an Assist. Manager. No laundry experience? No problem, they'll provide all the training you need. Send me a message or email your resume to info@oasislaundry.com.

• Full-Time Captain at Jungle Queen Riverboats. Great team. Fun environment. Not for anyone who doesn't enjoy hard work outside every day.

• Parks Naturalist at Everglades Holiday Park (Broward County). $25–40/hr to lead nature programs in gator country.

• Taproom Tour Guide at Funky Buddha Brewery. Give tours at SoFla’s largest brewery. Turn your passion for beer into the dream career.

• Do you have a listing you would like to place here for next week? Hit reply and let us know.

Lastly… One Big Idea For Your Week

What feelings will you feel this week? If you think about them as wise mentors who are on your side, what are they trying to tell you?

Tell Us How We Are Doing

Every week we are working to make #H!L better for you and to provide a cutting-edge media apprenticeship opportunity for our learners.

Please share your feedback. What do you love? What could we do better FOR YOU? What FTL businesses and experiences should we be highlighting?

Stuff You Won’t Want To Miss This Week:

1. Thursday 11am–7pm | NSU Art Museum Free First Thursday. Free admission with late hours, so you can swing by after work. Catch the VR immersive art and the new Frantz Zephirin Haitian-painting show while you’re there.

2. Thursday 6–9pm | Broward Student Film Festival. A free night of short films from South Florida high schoolers at the city's art-house theater, with food, raffles, and the filmmakers in the room. Go cheer on the next generation before they get famous.

3. Thursday 5:30–7:30pm | Yappy Hour at Huizenga Park. Bring the dog, grab a drink, meet the neighbors in the redone downtown park.

4. Thursday 6:30–9:30pm | Ladies Night Market at The Shorely. Local handmade vendors and pop-ups with a free welcome drink. Worth a look if you like shopping small without the mall.

5. Friday 6 & 8pm | Influenced. A sharp satire on the superficiality of social media and influencer culture: an Upper East Side influencer chasing online fame trips over the real thing, friendship. Ensemble cast (David Krumholtz, Justin Bartha, Christine Taylor) with cameos from Drew Barrymore, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Matt Damon.

6. Friday and Saturday 9am | Oakland Park art & Swarovski estate sale. The listing names Dali and Rembrandt artwork, boxed Swarovski crystal, and mid-century furniture. Cash or Zelle, wraps by 1pm, so go early. A genuine “didn’t know that was here” find on a holiday morning.

7. Friday and Saturday 8pm | Old School Vinyl. A late-night throwback dance party over the holiday weekend downtown. If your idea of fireworks is a packed floor and old records, this runs till 1am.

8. Trying to decide which way to go on the fourth of July? Here’s what’s happening near you (or the ones worth the drive):

   1. Fort Lauderdale Beach will be alive all afternoon and evening, with the Walker Hayes concert at 7:30pm, a Drone Show at 8:45pm, and what is promised to be a spectacular 250th-worthy fireworks at 9pm. Here’s the full schedule for the day.

   2. Before the bash on the beach, come join the ‘picnic in the park’ (at Huizenga Park). Mr. Smashburger will be offering $2.50 burgers and hotdogs to celebrate the 250th. There will be games, live music, and giveaways.

   3. Hollywood Star-Spangled Spectacular. The pick if you want toes in the sand and the Broadwalk within reach. A DJ at 5, live band at 7, offshore fireworks at 9. Pack a picnic for the marked beach zones. A1A closes to incoming cars from 8pm.

   4. Pompano Beach Fireworks Spectacular. Set up near the Fisher Family Pier; the 9pm fireworks launch from a barge offshore, so the view stays clear down the beach. A Beach Boys tribute plays from 5.

   5. Deerfield Beach 4th of July. Best if drones are your thing. Four bands play the beach from 4, then drones fly over the water at 9 instead of fireworks.

   6. Lauderdale-by-the-Sea Fourth of July. The small-town day: a morning parade down El Mar Drive, family stuff at El Prado Park till 2, then fireworks at 9.

   7. Coral Springs Fourth of July. A roomy inland park party at Mullins with the Remix Band, lawn games, and free parking. Fireworks go around 8:30, earlier than the beach shows, so you will get home sooner.

   8. Plantation 4th of July. A true all-day inland plan: a morning parade down Broward Blvd, then a kids zone, concert, and Zambelli fireworks at Central Park at night.

   9. Sunrise Fourth of July. Two parts: a Sunset Strip parade in the morning, then an evening at Amerant Bank Arena with live bands from 6 and a fireworks finale. The arena gives you an AC break from the July heat.

   10. Pembroke Pines Fourth of July. A no-fuss evening at the Pines Rec Center grounds: live band and DJ from 6, fireworks at 9. The easy choice for southwest Broward if a beach drive sounds like a headache.

   11. Miramar Independence Day. Gates open early at 4:30 for a DJ dance party leading to 9pm fireworks at Miramar Regional Park.

   12. Margate Fourth of July Extravaganza. The most packed single-town day: a 9am parade, a 1–4pm pool party at the Calypso Cove waterpark, and fireworks at 9 at Margate Blvd and 441.

   13. Tamarac All-American Celebration. A free, easygoing evening at the Sports Complex with the band Extasy, bounce houses, and a vendor hall before the fireworks.

   14. Seminole Casino Coconut Creek Fireworks & Drone Show. Food trucks and bars open at 7, then both a drone show and fireworks at 9:30, the latest start of the night. Head to the rooftop parking garage for the best view and an easy exit.

   15. Davie Fun on the 4th. Davie pairs a drone show at 9 with fireworks right after. One catch: it’s residents-only with pre-registration, so this one’s for folks who live in town, not a drop-in.

   16. Freedom Fest at Gulfstream Park. For something that isn’t a beach: horse racing, the Village shops and restaurants, family activities, and a trackside fireworks show to close the night.

   17. July 3rd · 6pm | Weston Hometown Fireworks. It runs a night early, so you can do Weston on the 3rd and still catch a beach show on the 4th. DJ and a live band from 6, fireworks to finish, with the city marking its 30th year.

   18. Another July 3rd | Oakland Park All-American Picnic. A relaxed July 3 picnic at Centennial Park with live music and a library ribbon-cutting, not a fireworks night.

   19. Wed–Sun, Jul 1–5 | Wilton Manors 4th of July Weekend. A multi-day LGBTQ-focused weekend on and around Wilton Drive (parties in the park, circuit events), not a single fireworks show. Worth flagging for readers who want the scene more than the sparklers.

9. Sunday and Monday | Frida Kahlo (documentary. A special-edition documentary on Kahlo's life and art, built with material from the Tate Modern and MFA Houston curators. A cool, air-conditioned hour-plus with one of the most magnetic artists of the last century.

10. Tuesday 11am | Showcase at Akiba Antiques. An antiques and jewelry showcase from one of Dania's go-to estate houses. Good browsing if you like to know what is out there before you buy anywhere else.

11. Tuesday 2pm | Adventures in Collectibles at Lion and Unicorn. A collectibles auction worth scrolling even from the couch. The lot list is where you find the stuff you did not know you wanted.

12. Tuesday afternoon 3pm | Press Play: Teen and Tween DJ Camp (Broward Main Library). Got a teen who loves music and dreams of DJ’ing? Join others in learning you don’t have to have all the fancy equipment.

13. Tuesday Night 5pm | Family Movie Night (also Broward Main Library). Come watch The Good Dinosaur (2015) and make a themed craft. Light refreshments will be provided.

14. Wednesday 6pm | Estate Jewelry, Fine Art & Décor at Kodner Galleries. An evening estate auction of jewelry, fine art, and home pieces. Worth a look even if you just want to see what real estate jewelry goes for.

15. Wednesday night 5–9pm | Food Truck Wednesdays at Plantation Heritage Park. A rotating lineup of trucks pulls into the park every Wednesday evening. Bring a chair, grab dinner from three different trucks, eat on the grass.

16. Daily at MODS | The Science of Guinness World Records. Test yourself against real world records at the Museum of Discovery and Science. A solid air-conditioned plan when it’s too hot to be outside.

17. SAVE for Next Weekend - Sat, Jul 11 · 11am–4pm | FlockFest Beach Party. Picture the ocean dotted with hundreds of pink flamingo floats and a DJ on the sand. Free to walk up to. Bring your own winged float or grab a VIP ticket that comes with one inflated and ready, plus a tumbler and a food voucher. Proceeds go to a local nonprofit.

😉​ Hey - quick question. Did we miss anything? Each week we do our research but you might know of an event, an organization, or a local business that deserves some love here in our weekly basket of goodies. Just hit reply to this email and let us know!

Featured Fort Lauderdale

South Florida is for foodies. We have lots of options and fan favorites to choose from. But there are exciting new venues that will soon be entering the market.

Sweetwaters will soon be coming to Huizenga Park as part of their revisioning of this popular downtown oasis. This venue is slated for a Fall 2026 opening.

And 17th Street Causeway is getting a new two-story tiki hut called Hula Kai!

Brought to life by James Flanigan (the mastermind behind the local favorite Quarterdeck restaurants), Hula Kai isn't just about the atmosphere. The treats (Crispy Duck Crab Rangoon, and Bang Bang Shrimp) plus flaming drinks is sure to make moments worth talking about after your visit.

Sounds like hanging with or entertaining friends (as well as our taste buds) is going to get even more fun later this year!

So... You Think You Know South Florida

You probably already know... 4th of July has meant fireworks for what seems like forever.

What you might not know... it now means drones, drones, and more drones lighting up the sky.

The traditional firework show is quickly becoming the encore, rather than the main event. At 8:45 PM this Saturday, before the first firework shell is even launched at Fort Lauderdale Beach, hundreds of GPS-guided drones will take flight to paint patriotic shapes across the night sky, serving as the official opening act before fireworks take over at 9:00 PM.

This shift represents a new era of Fourth of July entertainment taking over South Florida. Sunrise is deploying drones outside its arena. Miami’s Bayfront Park is hosting a massive display to celebrate the country’s 250th, and Lauderhill has completely done away with fireworks in favor of a drone-only event.

Here is the part that gets you: each of these drones acts as a single flying pixel. That’s one LED light married to a GPS unit accurate down to the centimeter, all fully choreographed using advanced animation software. Programming a single 300-drone show takes roughly 80 hours of work for just ten minutes of runtime.

Local governments love them because they are nearly silent. That makes for a show far easier on pets, local wildlife, and our veterans. They carry zero risk of causing brush fires or smoke pollution. Even better, if bad weather cancels the event, you can simply fly them again another night. While South Florida is flying “hundreds of drones,” China recently set a world record with a massive 11,198 drones in the air at once.

One twist before you completely write off traditional fireworks, though: when two California towns put the issue to a public vote, 80% of residents asked to bring the classic bang and smoke back.

More Treats To Try

We don’t let just anyone sponsor this newsletter. Here’s who “made the cut” this week:

(Hit reply to this email if you want to reach over 1400+ local families for just $100)

👉 Buy YOUR OWN Classified Ad Here 👈

• 🎶 Summer music lessons for your child. Start building confidence on day one. See our special promotion for an extra 15-minute personalized onboarding session. Voice. Piano. And combo lessons. Text Shontel at 516-945-9742.

• Here’s a plug for the 14‑year‑old owner of Tater Tots Plushies, a mobile plush‑making business. She offers to bring a full bear‑stuffing experience directly to senior centers, adult day programs, birthdays, parties, school events, and so much more! Interested? Book with us here: linktr.ee/tatertotsplushies no party too big or too small!

• Well, now that Giannis is coming to town… did you know you can take off season tours of the Miami Heat All Access Arena and facilities? Minimum group of 4 required. Tell Victoria you heard about it from us.

• Urban Air Adventure Park Plantation offers the ultimate way to keep kids active all summer long and beat the heat and rain. For Summer Group Packages full of nonstop indoor adventure call or email today! Lea@elevatedvg.com or 561-831-4311 for fast turnaround.

Just hit reply to this email to get started. Work with us to reach over 1300+ Greater Fort Lauderdale families.

Quote Of The Week

“This freedom is a funny thing,” he told them. “It ain’t something permanent like rocks and hills. It’s like manna; you just got to keep on gathering it fresh every day. If you don’t, one day you’re going to find you ain’t got none no more.” ~

From Florida-born author Zora Neal Hurston’s 1939 allegorical novel, Moses, Man of the Mountain. Seems ‘appropos’ for a 250th Independence Day holiday weekend and a global conversation about what it means to be free.

Flotsam & Jetsam

How will you spend your day today? We all are given the same 24 hours to work with. And I bet you (like all of us) enjoy the weekends for having a bit more leisure time and a lot less of what you need to do on your plate.

Well, that picture of how people use their time has changed over the decades. This fun video comes from the folks at Data is Beautiful (aren’t we all nerds each in our own way) and depicts the shifting usage of time over the last 100 years.

*only displays US adults, ages 25 to 35, and excludes sleep, work, and other activities with minimal variation.

Word Play Of The Week

“Dog Days of Summer”

The “dog days of summer” is an ancient astronomical idiom that refers to the hot, sultry, and stagnant days of mid-summer. It has absolutely nothing to do with earthbound dogs or heat-exhausted pets.

The idiom comes from Sirius (known colloquially as the Dog Star), which is the brightest star in the night sky and the eye of the constellation Canis Major (the Greater Dog).

Ancient civilizations noticed this alignment happened during the hottest weeks of the year. The Greeks and Romans falsely believed that the combined brightness and energy of the Sun and Sirius added extra heat to the Earth, bringing drought, fever, lethargy, and bad luck. ~ ​Source

‘Under-The-Radar’ Openings Job Board

Lot’s of folks offering cool positions here locally. Maybe there’s one for you or a friend?

• Science Facilitator, Sea Turtle Walks Lead at MODS. Runs the gamut from delivering high-quality educational programming that engages diverse audiences in science learning, including public engagement through exhibit interpretation, science shows, demonstrations, cart activities, ambassador animal handling, STEM classes, camps, overnights, school and group programs, tours, and community events.

• Full-Time Captain at Jungle Queen Riverboats. Great team. Fun environment. Not for anyone who doesn't enjoy hard work outside every day.

• Taproom Tour Guide at Funky Buddha Brewery. Give tours at SoFla’s largest brewery. Turn your passion for beer into the dream career.

• Do you have a listing you would like to place here for next week? Hit reply and let us know.

Lastly… One Big Idea For Your Week

What will be your worthwhile journey this week?

Tell Us How We Are Doing

Every week we are working to make #H!L better for you and to provide a cutting-edge media apprenticeship opportunity for our learners.

Please share your feedback. What do you love? What could we do better FOR YOU? What FTL businesses and experiences should we be highlighting?

Stuff You Won’t Want To Miss This Week:

1. Friday Night 8pm | Monthly Movie On Lawn at Huizenga. The live-action Lilo & Stitch will on the big screen, along with a Tiki Bar, Polynesian dancers, and face-painting. Come early. The first 100 to arrive get free popcorn for the movie.

2. Also Friday 7pm | Starlight Musicals at Holiday Park. Taking a break over the holiday weekend. But you have two great shows before and after. 6/26 Sabor Latino; 7/3 No Concert; 7/10 The Pitbull of Blues.

3. Friday 7pm | Team Boxing League: Nashville vs. Miami. The hometown Miami Assassins fight the Nashville Smash in a team-format boxing card. A cheap, loud night out if you’ve never seen live boxing.

4. Friday and Saturday 8pm | Matt Rife at Hard Rock Live. The work-the-crowd comedian has two nights in Hollywood. I’ve been seeing this guy on social media. He can get pretty crazy.

5. Friday to Sunday 9am | Southwest Ranches estate sale. Remington bronzes, a one-of-a-kind carved chair, Lladro figurines, and gently used designer bags. The kind of haul people drive across the county for. Bring cash and your own muscle.

6. Saturday 7pm | ‘Haunting On The River’ Ghost Tour Like Never Before. Join Tim Arnwine and his paranormal team at History Fort Lauderdale and discover what it takes to be a true paranormal investigator.

7. Saturday 5–10:30pm | Red, White & Booze Block Party. Kick off the holiday week early at Gulf Stream Distillery with cocktails and a street-party feel. A good way to scope out a local distillery most newcomers walk right past.

8. Saturday 5:30pm | World Cup Watch Party at Amerant Bank Arena. Watch Colombia vs. Portugal on the big screen with free admission and free parking, plus food trucks and games outside. Grab tickets ahead; the opener sold out.

9. Saturday 3–7pm | Flamingo Flea at Marina Village. Browse handmade and vintage goods on the water, then grab a drink from the two-story boat bar with a DJ going. Free to walk in.

10. Saturday and Sunday Noon–8pm | Smorgasburg South Florida. Close to 50 food vendors in one Flagler Village lot, everything from dumplings to birria. Free to walk in, so go hungry and graze.

11. Sunday Noon–5pm | NSU Art Museum Neighbor Day. Get into the city’s main art museum free for the afternoon. A no-cost way to spend a hot Sunday somewhere with good air conditioning and real art.

12. Sundays (both Jun 28 & Jul 5) Noon–4pm | Sunny Side Up Market. Every Sunday at Huizenga Plaza you’ll find local makers, farmers, and seafood with a DJ spinning. Dog-friendly and right downtown.

13. Tue Jun 30, Thu–Fri Jul 2–3 · 8pm | Ariana Grande at Amerant Bank Arena. Three nights in Sunrise on the Eternal Sunshine tour, so you have options if one date sells out. The arena show everyone will be talking about next week.

14. Wednesday 8pm | Ratones Paranoicos at Hard Rock Live. The Argentine rock legends bring their Stones-flavored sound to Hollywood on a Wednesday. Worth a midweek night out if you grew up on this stuff.

15. Thursday, Jul 2 · 11am–7pm | NSU Art Museum Free First Thursday. Free admission with late hours, so you can swing by after work. Catch the VR immersive art and the new Frantz Zephirin Haitian-painting show while you’re there.

16. Through Sun, Jul 5 · daily | FIFA Fan Festival Miami. The official World Cup fan zone at Bayfront Park is in its final days: big-screen matches, live stages, food. Worth the drive south while it’s still running.

17. Fri–Sat, Jul 3–4 · 9am | Oakland Park art & Swarovski estate sale. The listing names Dali and Rembrandt artwork, boxed Swarovski crystal, and mid-century furniture. Cash or Zelle, wraps by 1pm, so go early. A genuine "didn’t know that was here" find on a holiday morning.

18. Tuesday Evenings | Mermaid Tails & Cocktails at the Wreck Bar. Watch a retro underwater mermaid show through the portholes of a below-deck bar. One of the strangest, most "only here" nights in town.

19. Daily at MODS | The Science of Guinness World Records. Test yourself against real world records at the Museum of Discovery and Science. A solid air-conditioned plan when it’s too hot to be outside.

How Will You Celebrate Your July Fourth?

We are a little over a week out from the Independence Day Celebrations. Happy 250th birthday to the old U. S. of A. If you don’t already have plans, here’s some of the fun you can add to your holiday:

1. Fort Lauderdale Beach will be alive all afternoon and evening, with the Walker Hayes concert at 7:30pm, a Drone Show at 8:45pm, and what is promised to be a spectacular 250th-worthy fireworks at 9pm. Here’s the full schedule for the day.

2. Before the bash on the beach, come join the ‘picnic in the park’ (at Huizenga Park). Mr. Smashburger will be offering $2.50 burgers and hotdogs to celebrate the 250th. There will be games, live music, and giveaways.

3. Hollywood Star-Spangled Spectacular. The pick if you want toes in the sand and the Broadwalk within reach. A DJ at 5, live band at 7, offshore fireworks at 9. Pack a picnic for the marked beach zones. A1A closes to incoming cars from 8pm.

4. Pompano Beach Fireworks Spectacular. Set up near the Fisher Family Pier; the 9pm fireworks launch from a barge offshore, so the view stays clear down the beach. A Beach Boys tribute plays from 5.

5. Deerfield Beach 4th of July. Best if drones are your thing. Four bands play the beach from 4, then drones fly over the water at 9 instead of fireworks.

6. Lauderdale-by-the-Sea Fourth of July. The small-town day: a morning parade down El Mar Drive, family stuff at El Prado Park till 2, then fireworks at 9.

7. Coral Springs Fourth of July. A roomy inland park party at Mullins with the Remix Band, lawn games, and free parking. Fireworks go around 8:30, earlier than the beach shows, so you will get home sooner.

8. Plantation 4th of July. A true all-day inland plan: a morning parade down Broward Blvd, then a kids zone, concert, and Zambelli fireworks at Central Park at night.

9. Sunrise Fourth of July. Two parts: a Sunset Strip parade in the morning, then an evening at Amerant Bank Arena with live bands from 6 and a fireworks finale. The arena gives you an AC break from the July heat.

10. Pembroke Pines Fourth of July. A no-fuss evening at the Pines Rec Center grounds: live band and DJ from 6, fireworks at 9. The easy choice for southwest Broward if a beach drive sounds like a headache.

11. Miramar Independence Day. Gates open early at 4:30 for a DJ dance party leading to 9pm fireworks at Miramar Regional Park.

12. Margate Fourth of July Extravaganza. The most packed single-town day: a 9am parade, a 1–4pm pool party at the Calypso Cove waterpark, and fireworks at 9 at Margate Blvd and 441.

13. Tamarac All-American Celebration. A free, easygoing evening at the Sports Complex with the band Extasy, bounce houses, and a vendor hall before the fireworks.

14. Seminole Casino Coconut Creek Fireworks & Drone Show. Food trucks and bars open at 7, then both a drone show and fireworks at 9:30, the latest start of the night. Head to the rooftop parking garage for the best view and an easy exit.

15. Davie Fun on the 4th. Davie pairs a drone show at 9 with fireworks right after. One catch: it’s residents-only with pre-registration, so this one’s for folks who live in town, not a drop-in.

16. Freedom Fest at Gulfstream Park. For something that isn’t a beach: horse racing, the Village shops and restaurants, family activities, and a trackside fireworks show to close the night.

17. July 3rd · 6pm | Weston Hometown Fireworks. It runs a night early, so you can do Weston on the 3rd and still catch a beach show on the 4th. DJ and a live band from 6, fireworks to finish, with the city marking its 30th year.

18. Another July 3rd | Oakland Park All-American Picnic. A relaxed July 3 picnic at Centennial Park with live music and a library ribbon-cutting, not a fireworks night.

19. Wed–Sun, Jul 1–5 | Wilton Manors 4th of July Weekend. A multi-day LGBTQ-focused weekend on and around Wilton Drive (parties in the park, circuit events), not a single fireworks show. Worth flagging for readers who want the scene more than the sparklers.

😉​ Hey - quick question. Did we miss anything? Each week we do our research but you might know of an event, an organization, or a local business that deserves some love here in our weekly basket of goodies. Just hit reply to this email and let us know!

Featured Fort Lauderdale

Our city of Fort Lauderdale was featured in Forbes, and by our own Jenni Morejon (a regular reader of this newsletter). If you recognize the name but don’t know the background, Jenni is the President and CEO of Fort Lauderdale’s Downtown Development Authority (DDA). Among other things, they are the folks who are getting the highest accolades for the newly redeveloped Huizenga Park, which is now seeing over 25,000 visitors each month.

The basic premise of the Forbes Feature is that while Miami and West Palm Beach are getting headlines for their billionaire benefactors, the magic of Fort Lauderdale development as a city was laid out years ago by our billionaire (founder of three different publicly traded companies) H. Wayne Huizenga.

The quiet but compelling growth and development of Fort Lauderdale reminds me of the age-old aphorism, that "Confidence is silent. Insecurities are loud." And Fort Lauderdale is quietly winning.

So... You Think You Know South Florida

You probably already know... the good ‘ole U. S. of A. turns 250 years young next week.

What you might not know... Florida wasn’t one of the original 13 colonies.

It was actually invited, and said… ‘no thanks.’

While everyone up north was busy dumping tea in Boston Harbor and declaring independence, there were two more British colonies down here. East Florida, run out of St. Augustine, and West Florida, run out of Pensacola.

Britain picked them up from Spain in 1763, and both stayed loyal to King George. Both got invited to send delegates to the Continental Congress. Both passed. Must have watched the YouTube video and were won over by his winning personality.

Then it got personal. On August 11, 1776, word of the Declaration reached St. Augustine, and the locals were so steamed they built effigies of John Hancock and Samuel Adams, strung them up in the plaza, and set them on fire. Possibly that makes for the original Florida Man headline: it’s 95 degrees, let’s burn something.

This was no backwater, either. St. Augustine had the only stone fort south of the Chesapeake, the Castillo, which is still standing and waiting for you to visit today.

George Washington took the place seriously enough to write more than 80 letters about it and order five separate invasions. None of them stuck.

So this weekend, while everyone waves the flag, you can be the one at the cookout who mentions the two colonies that stayed loyal, threw a bonfire, and only became part of American later. (Spain took Florida back in 1783. The U.S. didn’t get it until 1821.)

Now you know. Happy 250th.

Source: Florida Historical Society

More Treats To Try

We don’t let just anyone sponsor this newsletter. Here’s who “made the cut” this week:

(Hit reply to this email if you want to reach over 1400+ local families for just $100)

👉 Buy YOUR OWN Classified Ad Here 👈

• Here’s a plug for the 14‑year‑old owner of Tater Tots Plushies, a mobile plush‑making business. She offers to bring a full bear‑stuffing experience directly to senior centers, adult day programs, birthdays, parties, school events, and so much more! Interested? Book with us here: linktr.ee/tatertotsplushies no party too big or too small!

• Did you know you can take off season tours of the Miami Heat All Access Arena and facilities? Minimum group of 4 required. Tell Victoria you heard about it from us.

• Urban Air Adventure Park Plantation offers the ultimate way to keep kids active all summer long and beat the heat and rain. For Summer Group Packages full of nonstop indoor adventure call or email today! Lea@elevatedvg.com or 561-831-4311 for fast turnaround.

• Summer is getting hot and Brightline is offering deals on getting families to the closest water parks (Aventura, Boca, West Palm, or Orlando).

Just hit reply to this email to get started. Work with us to reach over 1300+ Greater Fort Lauderdale families.

Quote Of The Week

“Confidence and self-belief are contagious; they are not a matter of pure arrogance or overweening egotism, they are the sense of being part of a greater story others have not yet discovered and giving off an almost physical sense of invitation to join that story, that disarms and then changes potential enemies into allies.”

Poet David Whyte on the relationship between self-belief and confidence.

Flotsam & Jetsam

This Coming Week History Is Having It’s Moment (and a 250th Birthday!)

America turns 250 this week. Funny timing, because the best way to actually see the past right now isn’t a textbook. It’s AI, and it’s all over YouTube.

Here are three channels worth your time to time travel:

• Majestic Studios rebuilds a single place in detail, so you can stand in ancient Rome or 1776 Baltimore.

• The Entire History of Paris in 37 Minutes does the opposite: it fast-forwards one city from a Roman river town in 259 BC into the Paris you know.

• And Chloe VS History sends an AI “time-traveling influencer” into the Black Death or the Titanic, reacting like she’s filming it for her followers.

Is it flawless history? No. AI fills the gaps, and sometimes fills them wrong. But for getting you to care about 1776? Hard to beat. Happy 250th. Go explore with a little time-travel adventures.

Word Play Of The Week

“The Stakes Are High”

The idiom “the stakes are high” means that a lot is at risk or there are significant consequences depending on the outcome of a situation. It implies that the potential rewards or losses are substantial, making the situation critical and the decisions or actions taken very important. Used figuratively since at least the early 19th century. ~ ​Source

‘Under-The-Radar’ Openings Job Board

Lot’s of folks offering cool positions here locally. Maybe there’s one for you or a friend?

• Brewer at Funky Buddha Brewery, Oakland Park. Hands-on brewhouse role at Broward’s best-known craft brewery.

• Social Programs Facilitator & Mentor. The Friendship Circle. A deeply rewarding community role. You will be designing dynamic social experiences, field trips, and events for children and adults with special needs, while also partnering with local businesses on Las Olas and beyond to create vocational training programs.

• Temporary Museum Preparator at NSU Art Museum - installs/de-installs exhibitions: crating, carpentry, hanging shows.

• Head Audio, Au-Rene Theater at the Broward Center. Lead sound engineer for the 2,600-seat flagship room.

• Do you have a listing you would like to place here for next week? Hit reply and let us know.

Lastly… One Big Idea For Your Week

Who will you be this week? You are not the same person now. You get to choose.

Tell Us How We Are Doing

Every week we are working to improve #H!L every week, both for your reading experience and to provide a cutting-edge media apprenticeship opportunity for our learners.

We want to hear from you. What do you love? What could we do better FOR YOU? And most importantly, what FTL businesses and experiences should we be highlighting?

Stuff You Won’t Want To Miss This Week:

1. Thursday, 6–9pm | Food Truck Night at Brian Piccolo Park. Broward’s rotating food-truck night lands in Cooper City. A low-key weeknight dinner out that doesn’t cost much.

2. Thursday evening | “FRESH SoFlo Summer Flavors” Chef Experience Dinner. A communal-table chef dinner in Sunrise built around South Florida summer produce. Around $92 a seat, so a real night out.

3. Friday, 5:30pm | Coral Springs Juneteenth Celebration & Comedy Show. A Juneteenth evening with live comedy at the Center for the Arts. An easy way to mark the day without leaving Broward.

4. Friday 7pm | Starlight Musicals at Holiday Park. Free outdoor concerts on the football field, a 46-year FTL summer tradition newcomers always miss. Bring a blanket and a cooler. (Runs again next Friday, the 26th.)

5. Saturday, 3–11pm | Wilton Manors Stonewall Pride Parade & Festival. The Drive shuts down for one of South Florida’s biggest Pride street parties. Vendors and music all afternoon, then the parade after dark. Go for the people-watching, stay for the block-party energy.

6. Saturday, 7pm | The Juneteenth Experience: MainStage. Live performance at the African American Research Library, part of the city’s bigger Juneteenth programming. Worth knowing the library doubles as a cultural venue.

7. Saturday, 8pm | Josh Groban & Jennifer Hudson at Hard Rock Live. Two huge voices on one stage in Hollywood. A bucket-list arena night if you don’t mind the casino trek.

8. Saturday, 10am–2pm | Pup Stroll on Las Olas. Bring the dog to the Riverside Hotel for a morning of vendors and very good boys. An easy, peak-Las-Olas Saturday morning.

9. Saturday | Yoga by the ocean (International Yoga Day). A yoga session at Las Olas Oceanside Park with the water right there. Outdoors, low-commitment, a good reset.

10. Saturday, 5pm | Doc Reno’s Wingsfest. A wing-eating, beer-drinking summer fest up in Margate. Go hungry; this one’s about volume.

11. Saturday, 8pm | Renata the Band at Tin Roof. Live band downtown, no cover-charge fuss. A simple Saturday-night-out option on Andrews.

12. Sunday, 2–6pm | Island SPACE Caribbean Mango Festival. Peak mango season gets its own party: tastings, Caribbean food, and vendors at the Dodge City Center. Very South Florida, very seasonal.

13. Sunday | Coca-Cola Caravan at Las Olas Oceanside Park. A pop-up at the oceanside park if you’re already down at the beach.

14. This Weekend, 12–8pm | Smorgasburg South Florida. The huge open-air food market in Flagler Village. 40-plus vendors, 15 countries, free to wander.

15. Daily · from 10am | The Science of Guinness World Records (MODS). The science museum’s summer exhibit on record-breaking. A good backup when the heat wins.

16. This week · 3pm | Mae West in “Sunset Boulevard”. A staged show at The Foundry, the intimate theater most people here don’t know about.

17. Weekdays · through Jun 30 | History Fort Lauderdale: “Three by the River” Artists-in-Residence Exhibition. A local artists-in-residence show at History Fort Lauderdale on the river. Quiet, downtown, the kind of small-museum thing locals walk right past.

Next weekend (Jun 26–28) And Worth Planning Ahead

• Fri, Jun 26 · 9am | Estate sale: art, Swarovski & decor. An Oakland Park house clearing out art, crystal, and odd decor. The estate-sale crowd shows up early for a reason.

• Fri, Jun 26 · 6–8pm | The Art of Language: opening reception. An evening reception for a new exhibit on Sunrise Blvd. Art and a wander, if that’s your speed.

• Sat, Jun 27 · 3–7pm | Flamingo Flea at Marina Village. The curated maker-and-vintage market sets up on the water. The kind of small-biz browsing where you actually find something. Go at golden hour.

• Sat, Jun 27 | House Pilates Society at the beach. A pop-up beachside pilates session at the oceanside park. A workout with a view. (confirm time)

• Sun, Jun 28 · 12–5pm | Free Neighbor Day at NSU Art Museum. The museum drops admission for locals, with two new shows just opened (Frantz Zéphirin and “Close to Home”). Cheapest culture you’ll get all month.

😉​ Hey - quick question. Did we miss anything? Each week we do our research but you might know of an event, an organization, or a local business that deserves some love here in our weekly basket of goodies. Just hit reply to this email and let us know!

Featured Fort Lauderdale

Summer is here. And its hot!!

You can go to the beach. But while they are still cleaning up the sargassum seaweed invasion of the last couple of weeks, what if you tried one of the local water parks?

In the Classifieds section below we shared a link to discounted Brightline tickets are part of their summer promotion. And that got us looking at all the fun water parks are that within riding (or driving) distance.

• Paradise Cove Waterpark - 401 SW 2nd St, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33312

  Perfect for families with toddlers and teens alike, this local favorite features a massive interactive water playground and a relaxing lazy river to drift the day away.

• Castaway Island Waterpark - Mardi Gras Park, 3800 SW 92nd Ave, Davie, FL 33328

  Offering two separate water playground structures and a lagoon-style swim area, it’s the ultimate spot for younger kiddos to splash safely while parents relax in the shade.

• Water’s Edge Park, City of Tamarac - 7500 W Oakland Park Blvd, Lauderhill, FL 33319

  This neighborhood gem boasts a modern, vibrant splash pad packed with spraying fountains that offer a quick, budget-friendly way to beat the afternoon heat.

• Splash Adventure Waterpark at Quiet Waters Park - 401 Powerline Rd, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442 (Hop off at the Brightline Boca Raton Station!)

  This zero-depth entry water playground features a massive 400-gallon tipping bucket and interactive sprayers designed to keep the little ones endlessly entertained.

• Rapids Waterpark - 6566 N Military Trl, West Palm Beach, FL 33407 (Hop off at the Brightline West Palm Beach Station!)

  As South Florida’s largest water park, it packs a punch with 40 thrilling attractions, including a giant wave pool and dueling water coasters for big-kid families seeking high-energy fun.

• Tidal Cove Miami - 19999 W Country Club Dr, Aventura, FL 33180 (Hop off at the Brightline Aventura Station!)

  This upscale, 5-acre resort-style water park features gravity-defying raft rides and a surf simulator for thrill-seekers, alongside a pristine Kids Cove for the younger crew.

Summer means slides, spray zones, and giggles at these best kid-friendly waterparks in and around Greater Fort Lauderdale.

So... You Think You Know South Florida

You probably already know... the World Cup games are underway and folks are excited.

What you might not know... not only do we have games here in Miami, but lots of venues are also hosting watch parties. You don’t need stadium tickets to feel the electricity. The Greater Lauderdale area has turned into a massive, interconnected viewing party.

No matter what kind of fan you are, Broward County has a spot with your name on it. The local scene essentially breaks down into two vibes:

Neighborhood Hangouts

If your ideal match day involves a cold pint, familiar faces, and a table of friends screaming at the top of their lungs, the local pub and sports bar scene is thriving.

• Local staples like Bokamper’s Sports Bar are hosting live watch parties for the matches, complete with massive TV setups and game-day energy.

• Neighborhood favorites like LauderAle Brewery are turning into “Summer of Soccer” hubs with big screens and rotating food trucks, while spots like Baires Grill on Las Olas are bringing massive, passionate crowds (especially when Argentina plays!).

• Over in southwest Broward, places like Agave Bandido and Twin Peaks in Pembroke Pines are keeping the energy high for every single match.

• The consensus on the local Reddit threads? Find your community, pick your local watering hole, and get there early if you want a stool!

The “Feels Like You’re at the Stadium” Experience

If you want to feel the collective roar of thousands of fans, Broward County and the Florida Panthers have you covered with some massive, stadium-scale events.

• Amerant Bank Arena (Sunrise): They are throwing four massive, official free watch parties on their giant jumbotron inside the arena! They are highlighting major match days, including Colombia vs. Portugal (June 27), the Quarterfinals (July 11), and the World Cup Final (July 19). Best of all? Admission and parking are totally free (though you need to RSVP for tickets on SeatGeek). They’re even rolling out a family-friendly fan plaza outside with food trucks, face painting, and games.

• Miramar Regional Park Amphitheater: For another massive outdoor screen vibe, Miramar is hosting six days of free watch parties covering 12 matches.

Broward County Transit (BCT) is actually running special Park & Ride shuttle services to the Amerant Arena watch parties from locations like Miramar, Sheridan Park, and Broward Boulevard, so you can skip the traffic hassle entirely.

Whether you’re squeezed into a booth at your local sports grill or high-fiving strangers in an NHL arena, there’s no excuse to miss out on the action.

Where will you be watching the next match? Use the “Say Hey! Chat” (for Members) to share and invite friends to join you.

More Treats To Try

We don’t let just anyone sponsor this newsletter. Here’s who “made the cut” this week:

(Hit reply to this email if you want to reach over 1300+ local families for just $100)

• 👉 Buy YOUR OWN Classified Ad Here 👈

• Here’s a plug for the 14‑year‑old owner of Tater Tots Plushies, a mobile plush‑making business. She offers to bring a full bear‑stuffing experience directly to senior centers, adult day programs, birthdays, parties, school events, and so much more! Interested? Book with us here: linktr.ee/tatertotsplushies no party too big or too small!

• Did you know you can take off season tours of the Miami Heat All Access Arena and facilities? Minimum group of 4 required. Tell Victoria you heard about it from us.

• Friend of the newsletter (Hey! Laura Duksta that’s you 🙂) shared this new children’s book coming out from her friend Angela Yoder. Please support her Kickstarter. Over 183 backers already!

• Urban Air Adventure Park Plantation offers the ultimate way to keep kids active all summer long and beat the heat and rain. For Summer Group Packages full of nonstop indoor adventure call or email today! Lea@elevatedvg.com or 561-831-4311 for fast turnaround.

• Summer is getting hot and Brightline is offering deals on getting families to the closest water parks (Aventura, Boca, West Palm, or Orlando).

Just hit reply to this email to get started. Work with us to reach over 1300+ Greater Fort Lauderdale families.

Quote Of The Week

“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.” ~ Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou is an American memoirist, essayist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years.

Flotsam & Jetsam

Answer ten questions and get a chance to win a million dollars?

Almost sounds too good to be true. But judge for yourself. The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is running (in true alignment with its core mission) a public awareness campaign that will challenge your assumptions… and it’s brilliant!

They are asking people to look more closely at what’s behind the affordability crisis?

Americans are working harder than ever and still can’t afford the basics. Housing, healthcare, education, and childcare; the costs keep climbing.

So their goal is to help Americans understand what’s really driving rising costs—clearly, honestly, and grounded in real economics. It’s what FEE has done for 80 years.

The 10-Question Quiz takes 3 minutes. Twelve finalists will be chosen and flown to Atlanta for a chance at the big prize (and more).

Beware - this is a creative and unique way to get folks to reexamine and maybe even challenge some of their core beliefs. Americans can’t afford healthcare. Going to college? Buying a home? But what’s really behind it? You might think you know. FEE has a million dollars that says, What if you’re wrong?

Disclosure: I am a fan of FEE’s work and a couple of years ago did some writing for their “entrepreneur-in-residence” program.

Word Play Of The Week

“Pride and joy”

Fitting, with the Drive about to throw the year’s biggest party. The phrase is centuries old and means your “pride and joy” was whatever you were proudest of. This weekend, the whole city qualifies. We support all members of our extended family. ~ ​Source

‘Under-The-Radar’ Openings Job Board

Lot’s of folks offering cool positions here locally. Maybe there’s one for you or a friend?

• Samuel shared that NYY Steakhouse is looking for bussers. Located in the Seminole casino. The pay is good for the position and opportunities are abundant once your foot is in. Must be18+

• Craft Beer Brewer. 26° Brewing Company. Pompano Beach, FL. A dream role for a beer enthusiast with a strong technical background.

• Social Programs Facilitator & Mentor. The Friendship Circle. A deeply rewarding community role. You will be designing dynamic social experiences, field trips, and events for children and adults with special needs, while also partnering with local businesses on Las Olas and beyond to create vocational training programs.

• Teaching Artist at Broward Center for the Performing Arts. The Center hires working artists to teach across its education programs. Contract and flexible, and you'd be shaping the next round of FTL theater kids.

• Do you have a listing you would like to place here for next week? Hit reply and let us know.

Lastly… One Big Idea For Your Week

Who will you be this week? We only want you to be fully yourself.

Tell Us How We Are Doing

Every week we are working to improve #H!L every week, both for your reading experience and to provide a cutting-edge media apprenticeship opportunity for our learners.

We want to hear from you. What do you love? What could we do better FOR YOU? And most importantly, what FTL businesses and experiences should we be highlighting?

Here is what we're doing differently, why we’re doing it, and your complete guide to local events this week, from outdoor orchestras to a movie at the pool.

Did you see that Disclosure Day (the new Steven Spielberg movie) is opening today at MODS. Will you see it on the big, big screen (IMAX)? 👇👇👇

Stuff You Won’t Want To Miss This Week:

1. TODAY | Apocalyptic Mayhem, Lava-Spitting Llamas, One Very Sassy Cat. New York Times bestselling author of the wildly popular (and just plain wild) Dungeon Crawler Carl series, visits the Broward Library to chat about his latest book.

2. TONIGHT thru this Weekend | Blue Man Group. The internationally acclaimed theatrical phenomenon combines music, comedy, and multimedia spectacle.

3. Friday | Tunes ’N Trucks: Old Skool Gang. Food trucks, Motown classics, and outdoor fun make for a perfect Friday evening in Sunrise.

4. Friday Wellness | Two great options: Fusion Wellness Happy Hour. Includes a 30-minute guided fitness class in a calisthenics gym, B12 injections, red light therapy, compression therapy, and wellness mocktails. Or try CALMA Wellness Club Open Doors. A free, public open-house from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM at Thrive Art District. Features red light/contrast therapy, IV therapy, chair massages, zero-proof cocktails, and a vinyl DJ in a networking-free, recovery-focused environment.

5. This Weekend | Revolution Live will be rocking with two shows you might want to see. On Friday, Electric Feels is an experiential party from Los Angeles that plays a ridiculously fun blend of Indie Rock + Indie Dance music. On Saturday, KISS America will be performing with special guests GODSMACKED.

6. Also Friday Night | Dive-In Movie in Pompano Aquatic Center. Read that again. Movie at the pool, not parked in a car. Lilo & Stitch this week.

7. Also Friday Night | Free Starlight Musicals. Valerie Tyson Band this week.

8. Saturday Morning | Fort Lauderdale Beach Sweep. And no… if you are wondering, you will not be responsible for taking care of all the seaweed this week.

9. Saturday | Bump and spike for a good cause. 40th Annual All Heart Volleyball Challenge on Pompano Beach to support the Ann Storck Center.

10. Saturday | Ready Davie! Community Expo. A family-friendly event featuring public safety demonstrations, preparedness resources, and interactive exhibits.

11. This Weekend | Trading Card Megafest Explosion. A must-visit for collectors, featuring sports cards, trading cards, memorabilia, and vendors.

12. Starting Saturday | Jagged Little Pill. The Tony Award-winning musical inspired by Alanis Morissette’s groundbreaking album arrives at the Broward Center.

13. Next Tuesday | Small Business Growth Exchange. A networking and growth event at 560 NW 27th Ave starting at 6:00 PM.

14. Also Next Tuesday | Black Health Summit 2026. Starting at 8:00 AM at the Charles F. Dodge City Center in nearby Pembroke Pines.

15. Next Wednesday | Juneteenth Jubilee: Rhythm & Runway. A cultural celebration starting at 6:30 PM at the L.A. Lee YMCA/Mizell Community Center.

16. Also Next Wednesday | Networking & Casting Meet Up (48 Hour Film Project Competition). A great event for local creatives, actors, and filmmakers at Make it Visual Creative Studio in Coral Heights, starting at 7:30 PM.

17. Wednesdays | Free Pioneer Days at the Stranahan House. Residents get free admission to the Historic Stranahan House Museum every Wednesday during operating hours.

18. Each Week at Huizenga Park | Tuesday night yoga and Lauderdale Run Club 2 Miler. Wednesday night Trivia. Zumba on Friday nights. Workouts on Saturdays and Pilates on Sundays.

19. Two Upcoming Events for Fans of Local History | June 18 - Unearth a Story - Seeing Florida Heritage through Archaeology. A cultural and educational event starting at 11:00 AM at the African-American Research Library and Cultural Center. And on June 17 - South Florida in the 18th Century. A historical seminar taking place at 6:00 PM at The Schmidt Boca Raton History Museum.

20. Last week we published a “Big Book of All The Things Happening In June” in case you missed it and want to plan ahead. We are already working on our July list.

😉​ Hey - quick question. Did we miss anything? Each week we do our research but you might know of an event, an organization, or a local business that deserves some love here in our weekly basket of goodies. Just hit reply to this email and let us know!

Featured Fort Lauderdale

This week we are taking this space to feature… us (you and “we” together).

Weird, I know. Hear me out.

When we launched Family Friendly Fort Lauderdale back in 2021, our little family was new to South Florida. Every Monday or Tuesday I felt like we were hearing about cool stuff that happened the week before. Fort Lauderdale really is an amazing place to live.

So I started researching each week and sharing the list with friends and family. The newsletter grew (as did our little school) and now goes out to over 1400+ Fort Lauderdale friends and families.

But this week, you see a new name and logo. Soon we will retire the #FFFTL to embrace our bigger mission.

Here’s the honest reason. “Family-friendly” was never really the point. It described who could read us when what we actually care about is something else entirely: the difference between living in Fort Lauderdale and belonging to it.

Most people who move here never get to know the real city underneath the postcard. We’re writing and curatingfor the ones who want to. Whether you’ve got a stroller or a surfboard or you just moved into a one-bedroom three weeks ago and still don’t know where to get the best cup of coffee.

“Hey!” is how you talk to someone you know and love. That’s the whole idea. Same newsletter, same fellow-newcomer point of view. Just a new name that finally sounds like all of us. Together. Interested → Interesting → Invited → Included.

So… Hey for now 🤗

~ Tobin

So... You Think You Know South Florida

You probably already know... each week we are sharing events, and organizations, and… estate sales, and everything else that we think is cool about our little city by the sea.

What you might not know... there are hidden gems all around us.

Here’s one resource you can use locally (Fort Lauderdale) or… use it the next time you head out of town and see what’s around you.

You might be surprised at what’s on the list. The list includes reviews and some paid adventures if you are looking to entertain with family or friends.

More Treats To Try

We don’t let just anyone sponsor this newsletter. Here’s who “made the cut” this week:

(Hit reply to this email if you want to reach over 1300+ local families for just $100)

• 👉 Buy YOUR OWN Classified Ad Here 👈

• Fridays until the end of August. Sunset Music Cruise with the Water Taxi. Leave the stresses of the week behind as you sip cocktails and sway to the rhythm of great music, all while watching the sunset from a view you won’t find on land.

• Did you know you can take off season tours of the Miami Heat All Access Arena and facilities? Minimum group of 4 required. Tell Victoria you heard about it from us.

• Friend of the newsletter (Hey! Laura Duksta that’s you 🙂) shared this new children’s book coming out from her friend Angela Yoder. Please support her Kickstarter. Over 183 backers already!

• Urban Air Adventure Park Plantation offers the ultimate way to keep kids active all summer long and beat the heat and rain. For Summer Group Packages full of nonstop indoor adventure call or email today! Lea@elevatedvg.com or 561-831-4311 for fast turnaround.

Just hit reply to this email to get started. Work with us to reach over 1300+ Greater Fort Lauderdale families.

Quote Of The Week

“It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.” ~ Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, and science communicator who advocated for science and pioneered the search for extraterrestrial life.

Flotsam & Jetsam

Here’s a useful (not local) post if you are thinking to yourself (who hasn’t been lately), can I actually trust this?

We live in a fraught (and often false) world of half-baked truths and sometimes intentional fake news meant to knock us off balance.

We’ve all been there: you open your feed, spot a headline that makes your blood boil, and feel the immediate urge to smash the share button. But before you feed the outrage machine, author A.J. Jacobs has a lifeline for us.

Jacobs recently laid out “Ten Strong Suggestions for Surviving Misinformation,” and it is hands-down the best modern toolkit we’ve seen for keeping your sanity intact online. It’s essentially the anti-fake-news playbook.

Here are three of our favorite takeaways you can use today:

• Puzzles, Not Battles: Next time you disagree with someone online, don’t treat it as a war to be won. Frame it as a puzzle to solve. It shifts your brain from fury to curiosity.

• Assign Percentages to Your Beliefs: Stop treating opinions as 100% right or 0% wrong. Saying “I’m 70% sure about this candidate” leaves healthy room for your mind to evolve when new facts drop.

• Trust Those Who Admit Mistakes: The most reliable sources aren’t the ones claiming to be infallible—it’s the creators, journalists, and scientists who openly say, “Hey, we got this wrong yesterday, here is the correction.”

At its core, Jacobs’ guide reminds us to choose curiosity over fury, to be wary of our own shaky human memories, and to question individual “gurus” while respecting scientific consensus.

The next time a headline triggers you, take a breath, channel your inner detective, and remember that truth is usually a slow-burn puzzle.

Word Play Of The Week

“Every cloud has a silver lining”

This expression means that difficult, dark, or unpleasant situations almost always have a positive aspect or an unexpected benefit hidden within them. It serves as a gentle reminder to look for the good, even when things seem gloomy.

The phrase traces its roots all the way back to 1634, originating from John Milton’s famous poem Comus. Milton wrote about a traveler seeing a glimmer of hope in the night sky, describing a “silver lining” cast by the moon behind a dark cloud. By the Victorian era, the phrase evolved into a popular proverb to help people get through hard times. ~ ​Source

‘Under-The-Radar’ Openings Job Board

Lot’s of folks offering cool positions here locally. Maybe there’s one for you or a friend?

• Craft Beer Brewer. 26° Brewing Company. Pompano Beach, FL. A dream role for a beer enthusiast with a strong technical background.

• Social Programs Facilitator & Mentor. The Friendship Circle. A deeply rewarding community role. You will be designing dynamic social experiences, field trips, and events for children and adults with special needs, while also partnering with local businesses on Las Olas and beyond to create vocational training programs.

• Do you have a listing you would like to place here for next week? Hit reply and let us know.

Lastly… One Big Idea For Your Week

Who will you be helping this week?

Tell Us How We Are Doing

Every week we are working to improve #H!L every week, both for your reading experience and to provide a cutting-edge media apprenticeship opportunity for our learners.

We want to hear from you. What do you love? What could we do better FOR YOU? And most importantly, what FTL businesses and experiences should we be highlighting?

Summer is here. And that means there’s A LOT going on in the Greater Fort Lauderdale area. So we created a full recap for the month of June so you can plan ahead for the next couple of weeks!

To make room, we had to drop some of our favorite sections. But those will be back next week, alongside some new and exciting additions ramping up for the summer.

Here’s what we will be sharing between now and the start of July:

1. A new logo (Hey! Lauderdale) and the back story on how that change came about - but more importantly, what it means for YOU!

2. New IRL events, perks for paid subscribers, and relaunching our podcast!

3. Local guides. Are you a foodie? Prefer hidden treasures more than Las Olas? We’ve got several local guides coming, each written just for you… (not the tourists, but the folks who live here but are still discovering all the cool adventures to be had). Lauderdale is so much cooler than just the postcard…

For now, let’s get into our big board of what’s happening in June!

JUNE EDITION - Stuff You Won’t Want To Miss:

1. June 5 | Old Town Untapped. Downtown Pompano Beach comes alive with live music, local artists, craft vendors, and a vibrant street festival atmosphere.

2. June 5 | Starlight Musicals. Enjoy a free outdoor concert under the stars as part of Fort Lauderdale’s beloved summer music series.

3. June 6 | Caribbean American Heritage Festival. Experience Caribbean culture through music, dance, food, and community celebration in Sunrise.

4. June 6 | Global Africa Symposium. An engaging event exploring African culture, innovation, leadership, and global connections.

5. June 6 | Venezuela vs. Turkey. Men’s National Teams friendly at Chase Stadium. If either country has a strong local community turnout, the atmosphere can feel like a mini World Cup.

6. June 6 | Pokemon Club at the Broward Libary. Bring your Pokémon cards, make a craft or bring a device to play. Recommended for ages 5-14.

7. June 7 | The Little Mermaid Jr. A little out of the Greater Fort Lauderdale area but they have a great event center down in Aventura that is worth watching.

8. June 7 | Sunday Jazz Brunch. Spend a relaxing afternoon along Riverwalk Fort Lauderdale enjoying free live jazz performances.

9. June 7 | Story Time at Flamingo Gardens. Family-focused literacy event in the Everglades Outdoor Classroom.

10. June 7 | Frantz Zéphirin: The Messenger. A major new exhibition opens at NSU Art Museum featuring the internationally recognized Haitian artist.

11. June 8 | Play & Sing Along with Ukulele FUN. A strumming good time. Best part is, you don’t even need to play the Uke. Just come and sing your favorites.

12. Until June 10 | Masters of the Universe on IMAX. See how He-Man becomes the most powerful man in the universe! On the biggest screen available.

13. June 11 | Apocalyptic Mayhem, Lava-Spitting Llamas, One Very Sassy Cat. New York Times bestselling author of the wildly popular (and just plain wild) Dungeon Crawler Carl series, visits the Broward Library to chat about his latest book.

14. June 11-14 | Blue Man Group. The internationally acclaimed theatrical phenomenon combines music, comedy, and multimedia spectacle.

15. June 12 | Tunes ’N Trucks: Old Skool Gang. Food trucks, Motown classics, and outdoor fun make for a perfect Friday evening in Sunrise.

16. June 13 | Ready Davie! Community Expo. A family-friendly event featuring public safety demonstrations, preparedness resources, and interactive exhibits.

17. June 13 | The Acacia Strain. Heavy music fans can catch the influential metalcore band live at Culture Room.

18. June 13-14 | Trading Card Megafest Explosion. A must-visit for collectors, featuring sports cards, trading cards, memorabilia, and vendors.

19. June 13-28 | Jagged Little Pill. The Tony Award-winning musical inspired by Alanis Morissette’s groundbreaking album arrives at the Broward Center.

20. June 19 | Gay Men’s Chorus of South Florida: Invincible. An inspiring musical celebration of resilience, community, and pride.

21. June 19-21 | Otakufest in West Palm Beach. There’s a big cosplay event (Supercon) coming to Miami in July. But if you can’t wait, this one up at the Palm Beach Convention Center looks fun.

22. June 20 | Fort Lauderdale Juneteenth Celebration. Honor freedom, culture, and history through live performances, food, and community gathering.

23. June 20 | Stonewall Pride Parade & Street Festival. South Florida’s largest Pride celebration fills Wilton Manors with parades, entertainment, vendors, and energy.

24. June 20 | Vince Gill: 50 Years From Home. One of country music’s most respected performers celebrates an extraordinary career.

25. June 21 | Sound Bath Healing Experience. Start your Sunday with a restorative wellness session designed to promote relaxation and mindfulness.

26. June 22 | Pentagram. The pioneering doom metal band brings decades of heavy music history to Culture Room.

27. June 23 | Todd Rundgren. The legendary singer-songwriter and producer performs hits spanning his remarkable career.

28. June 27 | American Orchid Society Judging. Watch expert orchid judges evaluate rare and exotic plants. Surprisingly fascinating if you enjoy seeing obsessive enthusiasts in their natural habitat.

29. June 30 | Ariana Grande. One of pop music’s biggest stars launches her South Florida tour stop at Amerant Bank Arena.

30. June 30-July 15 | Alice in Wonderland Jr. Follow Alice down the rabbit hole in this whimsical youth theater production at the Broward Center.

31. Wednesdays-Saturdays | Hollywood Beach Theatre Concert Series. Live music just steps from the ocean on the Hollywood Broadwalk.

32. Fridays All Summer | Starlight Musicals. Bring a lawn chair and enjoy free outdoor concerts across Fort Lauderdale parks.

33. First Sunday of the Month | Sunday Jazz Brunch. Free live jazz performances along Fort Lauderdale’s scenic Riverwalk.

34. Through June 24 | Figure Drawing Classes. Sharpen your artistic skills through guided figure drawing sessions.

35. June 4-August 13 | Take PRIDE! Coming Out of the Shadows. A powerful exhibition celebrating LGBTQ+ stories, history, and culture.

36. June 11-August 29 | Where We Stay: A Juneteenth Experience. An immersive exhibition exploring Black history, identity, and community.

37. All Month | Lauderdale-by-the-Sea Community Programs. Fitness classes, social gatherings, educational programs, and activities for all ages.

38. SAVE THIS EVENT FOR JULY | Daddy/Daughter Dance. Dads and their daughters, ages 6-12 years old enjoy the evening with a Hollywood theme at Plantation Community Center.

😉​ Hey - quick question. What did we miss? Each week we do our research but you might know of an event, an organization, or a local business that deserves some love here in our weekly basket of goodies. Just hit reply to this email and let us know!

Quote Of the Week

Some days does it feel like you have bad luck? Consider this…

“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”

~ Cormac McCarthy

From: No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

More Treats To Try

We don’t let just anyone sponsor this newsletter. Here’s who “made the cut” this week:

(Hit reply to this email if you want to reach over 1400+ local families for just $100)

• 👉 Buy YOUR OWN Classified Ad Here 👈

• Our list is growing. 1400+ Fort Lauderdale families. Over 100 in the last 2 weeks. Do you have a product, a service, or an event that they need to know about? We will work with you on a unique package (multiple weeks, giveaways, etc) to make sure you get the results you are looking for!

• Got your summer camp registrations done? If not, make sure you look at Camp Live Oak! Right here in town (Birch Taylor State Park) and run by wonderful people (we know and love them too!

Just hit reply to this email to get started. Work with us to reach over 1300+ Greater Fort Lauderdale families.

Lastly… One Big Idea For Your Week

Interested → Interesting → Invited → Included.

That’s the promise we developed for this newsletter.

Spend five minutes. Walk into the week knowing something worth knowing, worth sharing with others, and one step closer down the path. That’s who you are.

So that’s what we will deliver. Thanks for joining us!

Tell Us How We Are Doing

Every week we are working to improve #FFFTL every week, both for your reading experience and to provide a cutting-edge media apprenticeship opportunity for our learners.

We want to hear from you. What do you love? What could we do better FOR YOU? And most importantly, what FTL businesses and experiences should we be highlighting?

Stuff You Won’t Want To Miss:

1. TONIGHT | Paint and Sip with Constance Ivana. A fun workshop that will bring out the artist in you.

2. Friday Night | Movie On The Lawn at Huizenga Park. See the live action version of Lilo & Stitch. There will also be a performance from Polynesian Proud Productions and a hula hoop party.

3. Saturday Morning | Yoga and The Market at Fort Lauderdale Beach. An eclectic array of homemade & handmade fare ranging from fresh produce and fruit to global flavors, made-to-order foods, and unique items to wear and decorate your home.

4. Saturday | Sound Bath Meditation at Huizenga Park. A calming experience with soothing sounds and frequencies of crystal singing bowls and other therapeutic instruments.

5. Saturday | Fort Lauderdale Fire & Safety Museum. Open the second and last Saturdays of each month. You can also sign up for private tours to bring your class, scout troop, or community group for a hands-on learning experience at historic Fire Station No. 3.

6. Sunday | Fort Lauderdale Neighbor Day at the NSU Art Museum. Every LAST Sunday of every month, Fort Lauderdale residents receive FREE admission to NSU Art Museum as part of Fort Lauderdale Neighbor Days.

7. Sunday Afternoon | Flamingo Flea at Tarpon River Brewing. Craft beer, vendors, brunch and live music at Tarpon River Brewing.

8. Weekend | Want something a bit more eclectic to do? There are two massive Estate Sales happening in both Hollywood and Boca. The Hollywood sale is a massive local estate featuring art, vintage electronics, and unique home goods. Just a few minutes north in Boca, there is a massive three-day estate sale running through May 31 packed with vintage Weller, McCoy, and Robinson Ransbottom pottery, old-school artwork, and collectibles. For security reasons, the exact street addresses for these private homes aren't published until the morning of Thursday, May 28th on EstateSales.net.

9. Tuesday and Thursdays | Quill and Quest After School Club at Colossal Academy. A place of adventure where storytelling, D&D, creativity, and collaboration come alive.

10. Tuesday (June 2) | MindTravel Live-to-Headphones Silent Piano Concert in Fort Lauderdale. Composer and pianist Murray Hidary creates an unforgettable evening of soothing, improvisational music designed to quiet the mind, open the heart, and connect you more deeply to yourself and those around you.

11. Wednesdays | Trivia Night at Huizenga Park. Described as Think & Drink Trivia, a midweek mix of brainpower, fresh air, and a little friendly competition.

😉​ Hey - quick question. Did we miss anything? Each week we do our research but you might know of an event, an organization, or a local business that deserves some love here in our weekly basket of goodies. Just hit reply to this email and let us know!

Featured Fort Lauderdale

Have you been watching ABC’s new series RJ Decker, set in Fort Lauderdale?

As the Miami Herald put it, the show is promoting a ‘Magnum PI’ style detective show along with Fort Lauderdale’s own unique kind of weird. Hey Miami… who you calling weird? 🙃

Whether you first saw the big promotional billboards along 95 or noticed production trucks, street closures, or a sudden influx of Hollywood star power around Fort Lauderdale and Broward County recently, you aren’t imagining things. Hollywood has officially rolled into town, and they are bringing a classic piece of homegrown Florida literature with them.

ABC’s highly anticipated midseason drama has officially made its debut, cementing Broward County’s growing reputation as a premier backdrop for major television and film productions.

The series is deeply rooted in local lore. It is adapted from Double Whammy, the 1987 satirical crime novel by legendary former Miami Herald investigative reporter and columnist Carl Hiaasen. Raised in Plantation, Hiaasen has spent decades capturing the bizarre, sun-soaked, and crime-riddled eccentricities of South Florida.

Now, showrunner Rob Doherty (the mastermind behind CBS’s Elementary) is bringing that specific brand of “Florida Gothic” to life. The series stars Scott Speedman (Grey’s Anatomy, Felicity) as R.J. Decker, a disgraced former newspaper photographer and ex-con trying to rebuild his life as a private investigator. Instead of straightforward cases, Decker finds himself navigating a maze of South Florida’s strangest crimes, corrupt local politics, and a highly unconventional web of personal relationships.

RJ Decker airs Tuesday nights at 10 p.m. EST on ABC, right after Will Trent and High Potential. If you miss the live broadcast, episodes are available for streaming the next day on Hulu.

Did You Know? Author Carl Hiaasen, whose book Double Whammy inspired the show, was born and raised right here in Broward County (Plantation) and graduated from Plantation High School in 1970 before his award-winning journalism career at the Miami Herald. He serves as an Executive Producer on the show to ensure the series keeps its authentic, hilariously chaotic Florida roots!

So... You Think You Know South Florida

You probably already know... Fort Lauderdale is warm and tropical, with many different species of plants and animals.

What you might not know... South Florida is a literal paradise for butterfly espionage?

Beyond the world-class, immersive experience at Butterfly World (Coconut Creek), families can go on a free scavenger hunt at Snyder Park’s 'Circle of Life' garden or Hugh Taylor Birch State Park.

🦋 South Florida Has Butterfly Bragging Rights

We are Home to America’s Only “Social” Butterfly. Most butterflies are solitary loners, but Florida’s official state butterfly, the Zebra Longwing is incredibly social. They actually gather in groups at night to sleep together in the exact same branches of trees (called “communal roosting”). Older butterflies even “wake up” the younger ones in the morning by fluttering over them! Kids love looking for these butterfly slumber parties in local hardwood hammocks.

While most butterflies only live for a few weeks, the Zebra Longwing can live for up to six months! Their secret? Unlike other butterflies that only drink nectar, they can actually eat and digest pollen, giving them a massive protein boost.

The World’s smallest butterfly is also right here. Keep your eyes peeled at Snyder Park for the Eastern Pygmy-Blue. It is one of the smallest butterflies in the entire world, with a wingspan that is barely the size of a thumbnail (less than half an inch!). It’s a fun “I Spy” game for kids to play while exploring the gardens.

The caterpillar of the Giant Swallowtail (frequently seen fluttering around South Florida’s citrus trees) has a hilarious defense mechanism. When threatened, it sticks out two bright orange, antenna-like horns called an osmeterium that emit a foul odor resembling rancid butter. To top it off, the caterpillar is completely camouflaged to look exactly like bird droppings so predators leave it alone!

More Treats To Try

We don’t let just anyone sponsor this newsletter. Here’s who “made the cut” this week:

(Hit reply to this email if you want to reach over 1300+ local families for just $100)

• 👉 Buy YOUR OWN Classified Ad Here 👈

• The Opulent Reset. For the woman who built it all, and forgot herself inside of it. A private four-day return to yourself on the white-sand shores of Turks & Caicos.

• Did you know the business of travel agents is making a resurgence? And you have local options for the experience of a lifetime. Visit R_N_R_Vacations and ask for Fanya.

• Children heading off unhappily to school for another dreary day? Have you looked at Acton? The model is pretty different from a traditional school, and it seems to click for many who are not thriving in a standard classroom. Book a visit to see for yourself.

Just hit reply to this email to get started. Work with us to reach over 1300+ Greater Fort Lauderdale families.

Quote Of The Week

“In a world of change, the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned shall find themselves perfectly suited for a world that no longer exists.” ~ Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author

This one seems especially relevant to our fast changing times in today’s world. And I love that he used the word “learners” which is what we used to describe a young person at Acton. We do not have students (or teachers, or homework) at Acton.

Flotsam & Jetsam

This week’s ‘floating debris’ falls in the category of “was this will power over the body, or pure patriotism?”

Want a mind-blowing fact for your next happy hour? Two of America’s greatest frenemies, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, literally willed themselves to stay alive for the country’s 50th birthday.

On July 4, 1826, both men passed away within hours of each other. They were old, frail, and holding on by a thread, but their shared obsession with reaching the Golden Jubilee kept them breathing.

While it’s a myth that people only lived to 44 back then (high infant mortality rates skew that average—if you survived childhood, living into your 70s or 80s was totally normal!), making it to 90 like Adams did was still a massive feat.

Adams’ last words were “Thomas Jefferson survives” - not knowing Jefferson had actually died five hours earlier. Now that is poetic timing.

Word Play Of The Week

“Under The Weather”

This week I was feeling a bit “under the weather” - which made me wonder about where that saying originated.

The idiom comes from 19th-century nautical slang. When sailors or passengers on old wooden ships felt seasick or ill, they would go below deck to escape the harsh elements and rest, placing themselves literally “under the weather”. ~ ​Source

‘Under-The-Radar’ Openings Job Board

Here’s a new section that we are debuting this week with our transition to Substack.

• EcoExplorers Internship Program in Environmental Education and Workforce Training at MODS. A yearlong paid internship for students entering grades 10-12 at eligible Broward County public high schools in environmental education and workforce development.

• Do you love animals? And you have leadership skills? Pet Alliance - the leading animal welfare organization is looking for a new CEO.

• Museum of Discovery and Science (MODS). Science Facilitator: Sea Turtle Walks Lead (Full-Time).

• Boat Canvas Person. Sam’s Canvas and Upholstery Inc. Top pay for the right person.

• NSU Athletics is looking for a Strength & Conditioning Coach. Extensive knowledge of individual and team skills with the ability to teach these skills.

Lastly… One Big Idea For Your Week

Is there something you’ve been avoiding?

Tell Us How We Are Doing

Every week we are working to improve #FFFTL every week, both for your reading experience and to provide a cutting-edge media apprenticeship opportunity for our learners.

We want to hear from you. What do you love? What could we do better FOR YOU? And most importantly, what FTL businesses and experiences should we be highlighting?

And save the date next Wednesday. Port Everglades is hosting a career fair at the Convention Center with jobs in maritime, aviation, and hospitality.

Stuff You Won’t Want To Miss:

1. TONIGHT | Downtown Scavenger Hunt. It’s not too late to join United Way Broward’s Las Olas Odyssey. Explore downtown Fort Lauderdale through an interactive scavenger hunt designed to spark connection, friendly competition, and community impact.

2. Also TONIGHT | Equality Park After Dark’s Funky Fun Market. Eat, shop, and socialize from 6 PM to 9 PM with incredible food trucks, vendors, artists, authors, local businesses, and craftspeople.

3. This Weekend | The Heart of Rock and Roll JR. MTI Pilot Production. Student production by Broward Center\ Rose Miniaci Arts Education Students. Three-night run. Check Ticketmaster for times and pricing. Family-friendly youth performance.

4. Saturday | Great American Beach Party. Fort Lauderdale’s signature Memorial Day Weekend beach bash returns. Live bands, SOCOM Para-Commando parachute team landing on the beach, giant water slides, classic car show, sand sculpting contest, kids zone, art show, military tribute, and the Fort Lauderdale Walk of Fame ceremony. Parking downtown and Water Taxi recommended.

5. Monday | Memorial Day Observance. Fort Lauderdale might be famous for its Great American Beach Party, but let’s not forget the real meaning behind Memorial Day Observances. Come out and show your appreciation for those families who sacrificed the most, to preserve our freedoms.

6. Huizenga Events | Tuesdays nights at Huizenga includes a two-miler with the Lauderdale Run Club and yoga. But did you know that on Wednesdays they have also kicked off a Trivia Night? I will be running, so if you are laced up say hello!

7. Wednesday (May 27) | Port Everglades Career Fair & Expo. Port Everglades hosts its career fair. Employers include Broward Sheriff’s Office, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, maritime and construction firms. Hospitality, maritime, government, security, aviation, logistics. Port Everglades supports 12,000+ local jobs and generates $28.1 billion annually. Free event but registration recommended.

8. Next Friday (29th) | Movie On The Lawn. Save this date. Bring your lawn chair or blankets for a Lilo & Stitch (the live action movie) in the park.

😉​ Hey - quick question. Did we miss anything? Each week we do our research but you might know of an event, an organization, or a local business that deserves some love here in our weekly basket of goodies. Just hit reply to this email and let us know!

Featured Fort Lauderdale

Hidden Wilderness Next Door: Why You Need to Discover Secret Woods

We’ve all driven past it. In the middle of Broward County’s bustling grid, just off the roar of State Road 84, lies a literal portal to old Florida. It’s a place that feels less like a local park and more like a well-kept secret passed down among travelers.

If you are looking for an adventurer’s escape without leaving the zip code, Secret Woods Nature Center is calling.

Stepping onto the property feels like stepping backward in time. Spanning 57 acres of remarkably preserved wilderness along the New River, Secret Woods is a vibrant ecosystem thriving in quiet defiance of the surrounding urban sprawl.

The magic of this sanctuary lies in its transitions. As you walk the winding, shaded boardwalks, the landscape shifts around you:

• The Mangrove Curtains: Tidal impoundments where the roots reach into the brackish water like tangled lace, creating a sanctuary for local marine life and wading birds.

• The Monarch Canopy: Royal Roost, a famed stopover for migrating Monarch butterflies, where the air feels alive with subtle movement.

• The Oak Hammocks: Massive, moss-draped live oaks that blot out the midday sun, dropping the temperature and creating a quiet, cathedral-like stillness.

The Art of Slipping Away

What makes Secret Woods a true adventurer’s dream isn’t just the biodiversity. You can be caught in South Florida traffic one minute, and five minutes later, you’re listening to the rustle of land crabs in the undergrowth and the call of a pileated woodpecker overhead.

It is a reminder that nature doesn’t always require a three-hour road trip to find. Sometimes, the wild is just waiting quietly on the side of the highway, hidden in plain sight.

Insider Tip: Go early in the morning when the mist is still rising off the New River wetlands. Bring a notebook, a camera, or just your own thoughts and leave the digital noise behind.

So... You Think You Know South Florida

You probably already know... we are a tourist destination and that means over 32 million passengers travel through FLL (Fort Lauderdale International Airport) each year.

What you might not know... Fort Lauderdale’s Airport is Secretly a Free Art Museum

Think terminal wait times are only good for overpriced coffee and doom-scrolling?

As it turns out, FLL is quietly double-timing as one of South Florida’s most expansive public art galleries. The airport boasts a staggering collection of over 60 public art installations scattered across its terminals and baggage claims. That’s the highest concentration of public art of any Broward County agency.

A recent deep dive into the collection spotlighted some incredible hidden gems you can visit right now without buying a plane ticket:

• The Illusionary Traveler: Tucked into the Terminal 1 baggage claim area is “Vendor with a Walkman” by legendary South Florida hyper-realist sculptor Duane Hanson. Cast in bronze and meticulously painted, this life-sized sculpture of a resting worker is so lifelike that travelers regularly stop to see if he’s breathing or mistake him for a real person.

• The Three-Story Seascape: Marine conservationist and artist Guy Harvey took over Terminal 1 with “Sunken Treasure,” a massive, hand-embellished vinyl mural that plunges onlookers into a vibrant underwater world complete with a shipwreck and native sea life.

• The Sonic Landscape: If you walk past “Wavescape” by Paul DeMarinis, you are the instrument. It’s a motion-triggered audio installation that reacts directly to moving passengers.

• Sculpting the Air: In Concourse A, look up to see Emily White’s “Wavelength,” a stunning, flowing wave of painted aluminum that mimics the rhythmic motion of the Atlantic swell.

• Art by Airport employees too! There’s even a section reserved by those who work and serve at FLL each day.

  

Best Part? Because it’s a public art initiative, it’s completely free to view. Next time you’re dropping someone off, picking someone up, or bracing for a flight delay, skip the gate seating and go on a terminal gallery crawl.

Want to map out your art walk before your next flight? Check out the full breakdown of FLL’s hidden masterpieces in the Sun Sentinel’s feature here.

More Treats To Try

We don’t let just anyone sponsor this newsletter. Here’s who “made the cut” this week:

(Hit reply to this email if you want to reach over 1300+ local families for just $100)

• 👉 Buy YOUR OWN Classified Ad Here 👈

• Fridays - come enjoy a Sunset Music Cruise with Water Taxi. Happy Hour starts 5pm. Cruise sets sail at 7pm. Great music and a toast to a memorable sunset experience.

• The Opulent Reset. For the woman who built it all, and forgot herself inside of it. A private four-day return to yourself on the white-sand shores of Turks & Caicos.

• Did you know the business of travel agents is making a resurgence? And you have local options for the experience of a lifetime. Visit R_N_R_Vacations and ask for Fanya.

• Children heading off unhappily to school for another dreary day? Have you looked at Acton? The model is pretty different from a traditional school, and it seems to click for many who are not thriving in a standard classroom. Book a visit to see for yourself.

• Rhythms School of Dance is a training center for Indian Classical dance, Bharatanatyam. Promoting priceless artistic traditions of India through professional training and student performances.

• Dayshift is a party for the 30+ generation who want the unmatched energy of a club, but detest the idea of being out past midnight. Join us for the worldwide clubbing phenomenon alongside DJ's, dancers, disco balls, confetti showers and much more. Running from 5-9pm, get all the fun of a nightclub but during the daytime. Expect the biggest 80s/90s/00s tunes all day long.

Just hit reply to this email to get started. Work with us to reach over 1300+ Greater Fort Lauderdale families.

Quote Of The Week

On opportunity: “Today is cruel. Tomorrow is crueler. And the day after tomorrow is beautiful.” ~ Jack Ma

Jack Ma is a Chinese businessman and philanthropist who co-founded Alibaba, the e-commerce giant.

Flotsam & Jetsam

Ghost in the Machine: Could An App Know You Better Than You Know Yourself?

We like to think of our daily digital decisions as purely functional. You clear an email, bypass an update, skip a track, or add a specific article to a “read later” list that you’ll inevitably ignore. It feels like basic administrative maintenance.

But what if your interface is actually taking notes on your psyche?

Enter Shadow OS, a concept designed to turn your routine digital choices into deep Jungian insight.

Every time you interact with a system, you leave behind a psychological trail. Shadow OS doesn’t just track what you click; it maps the patterns of your behavior across three specific dimensions:

• What You Chose: The paths you repeatedly take, revealing your conscious desires and ego ideal.

• What You Avoid: The notifications you swipe away, the tasks you endlessly defer, and the inputs you actively ignore—the digital manifestations of your aversion and denial.

• The Shadows In Between: The hidden common denominator surfacing across both. It’s the latent friction in your routine that reveals what you are actually running toward (or away from).

Carl Jung famously wrote, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Next time you find yourself aggressively clearing a specific type of notification or falling into a predictable loop of digital procrastination, take a closer look. Your operating system might just understand your shadow self better than you do.

Word Play Of The Week

“Kill Two Birds with One Stone”

The idiom “kill two birds with one stone” means to accomplish two objectives or solve two problems with a single action or effort. It implies efficiency and effectiveness in achieving multiple goals simultaneously. This figurative expression is often used to describe situations where a single solution or action can address multiple issues, saving time, effort, or resources. ~ ​Source

‘Under-The-Radar’ Openings Job Board

Here’s a new section that we are debuting this week with our transition to Substack.

• EcoExplorers Internship Program in Environmental Education and Workforce Training at MODS. A yearlong paid internship for students entering grades 10-12 at eligible Broward County public high schools in environmental education and workforce development.

• Hiring Office Assistant- Hollywood Florida. Monday - Thursday 9am- 4 pm. $20 an hour.

• Port Everglades Career Fair & Expo (May 27). Multiple Employers. Broward County Convention Center.

• Museum of Discovery and Science (MODS). Science Facilitator: Sea Turtle Walks Lead (Full-Time).

Lastly… One Big Idea For Your Week

Tell Us How We Are Doing

Every week we are working to improve #FFFTL every week, both for your reading experience and to provide a cutting-edge media apprenticeship opportunity for our learners.

We want to hear from you. What do you love? What could we do better FOR YOU? And most importantly, what FTL businesses and experiences should we be highlighting?

What questions (about Fort Lauderdale) are you wildly curious to know about?

Asking because we are working on a new section for the newsletter, and we want to cater it to our readers. Curious about local businesses? History of the city? Hidden gems? Just hit reply. Your responses will end up in an upcoming newsletter feature.

Stuff You Won’t Want To Miss:

1. TONIGHT | Like Nastya. Global music star Like Nastya brings her live show to Fort Lauderdale. A family event from the YouTube phenomenon with millions of young fans worldwide.

2. Also Thursday Nights | Yappy Hour + DogDrop. Bring your dog for a social hour with treats, activations, and the DogDrop on-site. All dogs welcome.

   1. More from Huizenga: Thursdays | Pilates in the Park. Free pilates session in the park. Bring a mat and water. Open to all skill levels.

   2. Fridays | Zumba by Domingo. Free Zumba class in the park with instructor Domingo. All ages and fitness levels welcome.

   3. Saturday | Arts in the Park: Terrarium Workshop. Creative workshop for kids: build your own miniature terrarium to take home.

   4. Tuesdays | Lauderdale Run Club. Join over 400 runners, trotter, and walkers of all ages in a short 1.8 mile loop around the Riverwalk.

3. Friday | A Spoonful of Sugar. Several of our Acton learners will be on stage Friday night with the Miss Marie Poppinz Theatre Company. Get your tickets.

4. Also Friday | Jason Mraz: Still Yours 2026 Tour. Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Jason Mraz returns with his acclaimed Still Yours tour — an intimate evening of hits and storytelling.

5. Saturday | The Mixtape Live - Broadway Kids Studio. Two shows Saturday. Features young Broadway talent performing iconic musical theater numbers.

6. Saturday | Smoke On The Water BBQ Feast. This annual festival will bring together top pitmasters, BBQ enthusiasts, and food lovers for an assortment of smoked and grilled fare.

7. Saturday Night | Samantha Bee: How to Survive Menopause. The Full Frontal (adult themes and not for children) host brings her candid comedy to the Truist Comedy Series.

8. This Weekend | Star Wars & Pop Culture Event. Three full days at the Westin in Fort Lauderdale. Not just Star Wars, but Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Anime, Marvel, and a whole world of pop culture.

9. Sunday | Brazilian Voices: A Bossa Nova Yoga Experience. Part of the Amplify Arts Series. A wellness event combining live bossa nova music with yoga — all levels welcome.

10. Sunday | Miss Arc Broward Pageant. Annual pageant celebrating the achievements of young women with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Hosted by The Arc of Broward County.

11. Next Wednesday (May 20th) | Father Mike Schmitz: The Parables Tour. The beloved author and speaker behind Ascension Presents brings his live tour to Fort Lauderdale. A faith-filled evening for families and young people.

😉​ Hey - quick question. Did we miss anything? Each week we do our research but you might know of an event, an organization, or a local business that deserves some love here in our weekly basket of goodies. Just hit reply to this email and let us know!

Featured Fort Lauderdale

Flagler Village Becoming Part of Fort Lauderdale's Creative Heart

For decades, the area just north of downtown Fort Lauderdale was defined by the rhythmic hum of industry and rows of weathered warehouses. Today, that industrial grit has been repurposed into the city’s most vibrant cultural engine: Flagler Village. Once a neglected industrial pocket, it has evolved into a walkable, mural-clad sanctuary for artists, entrepreneurs, and young families alike.

From Concrete Roots to Canvas Walls

The transformation of Flagler Village is a masterclass in urban revitalization. The neighborhood’s history is rooted in the early 20th-century Florida land boom and the manufacturing industries, printing, railroads, and turpentine that once dominated the landscape. As these industries shifted, they left behind a vast “warehouse district” that provided the perfect, low-cost skeleton for a creative takeover.

The turning point came with the establishment of sub-districts like FATVillage (Flagler Arts and Technology) and the MASS District (Music and Arts South of Sunrise). These pockets turned industrial relics into galleries and performance spaces, fostering a community advocacy group focused on promoting the area as a dedicated arts district. The most visible sign of this shift is the street art; the neighborhood now serves as a sprawling public gallery where world-class murals greet visitors at nearly every turn.

A Day in the Village: Coffee, Curios, and Community

What makes Flagler Village distinct from the sleek skyscrapers of Las Olas is its human scale. The neighborhood is designed for the “stroll.” A typical morning might begin at an independent craft coffee shop, many of which are housed in former garage spaces before wandering through boutique stores that specialize in everything from vintage apparel to handmade home goods.

The community’s heart beats loudest during the Monthly Art Walk. On these evenings, the district transforms into a massive block party where visitors can wander through artist studios, watch puppet shows, or explore prop warehouses that have been opened to the public (Lipscomb, 2014).

Urban Living with a Family-Friendly Edge

While the “artsy” label often implies a nightlife-only vibe, Flagler Village has become a “family-friendly” hub. The influx of new residential developments has brought with it a wave of approachable dining options and green spaces. Modern placemaking efforts, including “Better Block” initiatives, have prioritized traffic-calming devices and pedestrian-friendly “shared spaces” to make the streets safer and more livable for residents.

Whether you’re visiting to photograph the latest mural, hunt for a unique gift in a local boutique, or simply enjoy a latte in the shadow of a repurposed warehouse, Flagler Village offers a glimpse into the future of Fort Lauderdale: a city that honors its industrial past while painting a bright, creative future.

FAT Village mural by Leah Brown

So... You Think You Know South Florida

You probably already know... FTL is known for its love and proximity to all things H2O.

What you might not know... Fort Lauderdale has more waterways than any other city in the world.

With over 300 miles of canals, more than Venice, Italy - Fort Lauderdale is often called the Venice of America. The Intracoastal Waterway, New River, and network of canals were largely hand-dug during the city's early development, creating a boating and waterfront lifestyle that defines the city to this day.

Fort Lauderdale ALSO holds the prestigious Blue Wave Beach certification, one of fewer than 40 beaches in the US meeting the highest international standards for water quality, environmental education, safety, and sustainability.

The Clean Beaches Coalition doesn’t just look for pretty water; they analyze the “health” of the coastline through four primary lenses:

• Water Quality: Frequent, documented testing to ensure the ocean is free from harmful levels of bacteria or pollutants.

• Habitat Conservation: Protecting the local ecosystem, including the delicate sea turtle nesting grounds that characterize the region.

• Safety Services: Ensuring the presence of professional lifeguards, clear signage, and emergency response infrastructure.

• Public Education: Providing the community with information on how to interact with the environment without damaging it.

Why It Matters for Families

For parents, the Blue Wave certification offers more than just environmental peace of mind; it’s a practical guide to safety. The designation guarantees that the water quality is monitored with a frequency that exceeds standard coastal requirements. In an era where “eco-friendly” is often used as a marketing buzzword, Fort Lauderdale’s commitment to third-party verification proves that its status as a top U.S. beach is rooted in data, not just aesthetics.

The result? A coastline that manages to be both a bustling urban hub and a pristine natural sanctuary, all at the same time.

More Treats To Try

We don’t let just anyone sponsor this newsletter. Here’s who “made the cut” this week:

(Hit reply to this email if you want to reach over 1300+ local families for just $100)

• 👉 Buy YOUR OWN Classified Ad Here 👈

• The Opulent Reset. For the woman who built it all, and forgot herself inside of it. A private four-day return to yourself on the white-sand shores of Turks & Caicos.

• NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale | One of South Florida’s premier contemporary art museums. Current exhibitions: Selma is Now (through June 27) and Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel (through June 14). Free First Thursday every first Thursday of the month, 11 AM–7 PM. 🔗 https://nsuartmuseum.org

• Children heading off unhappily to school for another dreary day? Have you looked at Acton? The model is pretty different from a traditional school, and it seems to click for many who are not thriving in a standard classroom. Book a visit to see for yourself.

• Pioneer Wednesdays is a special program designed to give back to the Fort Lauderdale community by offering residents free admission to the Historic Stranahan House Museum every Wednesday during operating hours. This initiative invites locals to explore the city’s rich history, connect with its pioneering roots, and experience one of Fort Lauderdale’s most significant landmarks at no cost.

• Rhythms School of Dance is a training center for Indian Classical dance, Bharatanatyam. Promoting priceless artistic traditions of India through professional training and student performances.

Just hit reply to this email to get started. Work with us to reach over 1300+ Greater Fort Lauderdale families.

Quote Of The Week

“Most of the work that’s done in the world gets done by people who weren’t feeling all that well at the time that they did it.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She was the longest-serving first lady of the United States, during her husband Franklin D. Roosevelt's four terms as president from 1933 to 1945. Through her travels, public engagement, and advocacy, she largely redefined the role.

Flotsam & Jetsam

Ever wondered if you are saying a word correctly? Now you will know.

Use Youglish to check your pronunciation.

Word Play Of The Week

“Raining cats and dogs”

You’ve probably heard this phrase and wondered where it comes from. It means that it is raining extremely hard and comes from 17th-century England, where heavy rain would wash dead animals through the streets. ~ ​Source

‘Under-The-Radar’ Openings Job Board

Here’s a new section that we are debuting this week with our transition to Substack.

• EcoExplorers Internship Program in Environmental Education and Workforce Training at MODS. A yearlong paid internship for students entering grades 10-12 at eligible Broward County public high schools in environmental education and workforce development.

• Part-time openings at the Broward Center. Head usher, bartenders, and event staff. Even a teaching artist position.

• Next week (May 19th) CareerSource Broward Job Fair for former Spirit Airlines workers. In response to the Spirit Airlines shutdown, FloridaCommerce and CareerSource are hosting Rapid Response events to bring career and employment resources to displaced workers.

Lastly… One Big Idea For Your Week

Tell Us How We Are Doing

Every week we are working to improve #FFFTL every week, both for your reading experience and to provide a cutting-edge media apprenticeship opportunity for our learners.

We want to hear from you. What do you love? What could we do better FOR YOU? And most importantly, what FTL businesses and experiences should we be highlighting?

Every Thursday, we send a curated list of 10 to 15 things worth doing in greater Fort Lauderdale this weekend. Events, restaurants, hidden gems, local history, the occasional weird and wonderful discovery. Scan it in ten seconds. Pick the thing that grabs you. Get your family out the door.

We added a few features, local history, and then some fun quotes and thoughts that might change the trajectory of your day.

Over 1,500+ local families already get the Thursday’s email. It’s free.

Why We Exist (and what’s in it for you)

Five years ago, our family moved to Fort Lauderdale and knew almost nobody. We started collecting a list of cool things happening around us, the stuff that doesn’t show up when you Google “things to do in Fort Lauderdale” and get the same ten tourist attractions.

We figured other families were in the same spot. Maybe you just moved here. Maybe you’ve been here for years but got stuck in the same rotation of spots. Maybe your kids are glued to screens and you need a reason to say “we’re going out, get your shoes on.”

So we started writing it down and sending it out. That was 2021. We’ve sent over 200 newsletters and recorded over 50 podcasts since.

What You Actually Get Each Week

The Thursday newsletter is a quick-hit rundown. No filler, no fluff. Each item gets a short description and a link so you can dig deeper if it catches your eye.

You’ll find things like:

• Weekend festivals and outdoor events

• Restaurants and food spots worth the drive

• Free and low-cost activities for families with young kids

• Local business spotlights

• Bits of Fort Lauderdale history and trivia you probably didn’t know

• The occasional oddball find that doesn’t fit any category but is too good to skip

We do the digging so you don’t have to. Dozens of local sources, event calendars, community pages, and word-of-mouth tips get filtered down to the stuff that’s actually worth your Saturday.

The Acton Academy Connection

Full disclosure: by day, we run Acton Academy Fort Lauderdale, a small independent school in its fourth year. Family Friendly Fort Lauderdale started as a learner-led media project, and the long-term vision is still to hand the editorial reins to our learners. Research, writing, interviews with local business owners, all of it. Real work, real audience, real stakes.

That handoff is a work in progress. Right now, the newsletter is mostly produced by our team. But the goal hasn’t changed. We want our heroes (we call our Acton learners heroes because they are on a Hero’s Journey as part of their school experience) to learn what it means to show up for a community every single week and deliver something people count on.

That said, this newsletter is ultimately for the community. It is not a school publication. You won’t find fundraising drives or classroom updates here. If you’re curious about Acton, that’s a different conversation and we’re happy to have it. But Hey! Lauderdale (formerly FFFTL) is all about the city behind the postcard - greater Fort Lauderdale we love.

Who Writes These

Tobin Slaven is the co-founder of Acton Academy Fort Lauderdale and the primary voice behind the newsletter. He moved to Fort Lauderdale in 2021 with his partner Martina, fell in love with the city, and has been cataloging its best-kept secrets ever since.

Our Big Local Event

Did you know we also host the local Children’s Business Fair? The newsletter is a gathering ground for many of the families who participate (or shop) each year. So keep an eye out for our annual updates.

Please Share (And Subscribe!)

The newsletter is free and lands in your inbox every Thursday morning. If it’s not for you, you can unsubscribe anytime with one click. No hard feelings.

But if you’ve ever opened your phone on a Friday afternoon and thought, “What should… what could we do this weekend?”... this is the answer to that question, every single week. With a little bit of entertainment and local flavor built-in. 😎

When the “experts”(meaning, those closest to the work) say something big is happening (if you haven’t seen this link, start here), my approach is to do two things:

1. Get curious and watch closely so I can gather information;

2. Step back and take it all in first, so I don’t get reactive.

A first draft of this post was originally emailed to group of fellow Acton owners after a discussion about the future of our schools and the bigger future of the Acton Network. It is a letter meant to be both a wake-up call and one full of hope.

You get to choose which will serve your family most.

“Imagine it’s 2029.

Half the parents at Acton Academy Fort Lauderdale who we used to rely on for tuition are ‘unemployed.’ But... they’re still ‘okay.’ They’re consulting, freelancing, piecing it together. Income is down 20–40%. But these families are doing better than ever.

Their child’s school choice become the solution.

At the same time that AI begins to make a lot of white-collar work cheap. Some parents ask a brutal question:

‘How can I keep paying for this school I love when our own income feels threatened?’

The fork in the road becomes real.

Learning that is basically just content delivery get priced like content.

Cheap. Replaceable.

Schools that are identity + tribe + standards + trust become priceless, because they help families stay functional and connected during chaos.

So the question for Acton isn’t ‘How do we run better schools next year?’

It’s ‘How do we become the most trusted institution in a family’s life, after church and before their bank?’

Let’s get started (if you haven’t already seen this) here’s the full Centrini Research.

Citrini Research

THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS

Preface…

Read more

7 months ago · 8764 likes · 90 comments · Citrini and Alap Shah

TL/DR: Here’s a summary of the Cintrini Research as it relates to our school and our families.

We will soon be living in a “Ghost GDP” World

The Scenario in One Line

If AI makes white-collar “thinking work” cheap, incomes compress and spending weakens. In that world, organizations competing on features get priced like content. Communities that function as tribes become essential.

1) The Two Impending Futures: Choose The Game That Will Serve Your Family Best

Future A: The “Content School”

• Parents’ income becomes volatile (down 20–40% for many).

• They ask: “What am I paying for?”

• School answers: curriculum, apps, credentials.

• Parent conclusion: “We can get this cheaper. Maybe even do it ourselves.”

• Result: slow churn, then sudden collapse.

Future B: The “Trust Engine School”

• Parents’ income becomes volatile.

• School answers: identity, community, standards, mutual aid, apprenticeship pathways.

• Parent conclusion: “This keeps our children grounded, prepared, and our family connected.”

• Result: Acton becomes the last expense they will want to cut.

Punchline: In a downturn, features get cut. Tribes don’t.

2) The One Number That Predicts Resilience

Trust Density Score (TDS)

TDS = meaningful parent-to-parent touches per family per month

Meaningful = actual help, collaboration, hiring, mentoring, buying/selling, childcare swaps, referrals.

Benchmarks

• 0–1/month = tuition is just a transaction

• 2–3/month = community-ish

• 4–6/month = a resilient community

• 7+/month = the antifragile community

Interpretation

If TDS is low, you don’t have a community. You have a customer base.

3) The 5-Minute Campus Audit (We Are Doing This Today)

Write real numbers, not vibes:

1. Tuition Fragility

2. How many families would struggle if income dropped 25% for 12 months?

3. Community Liquidity

4. How many families can offer paid services to their fellow Acton families (legal, design, marketing, childcare, coaching, wellness, trades, etc.)?

5. Trust Density

6. What’s your current TDS guess?

If we can’t answer these, we’re running today’s playbook for tomorrow’s weather.

4) The Acton Anti-fragile Next Steps (started in Spring 2026)

Increase TDS by +2 next month. One ritual, implemented immediately.

High-leverage rituals:

• Parent skill directory + “Hire Inside” pledge

• Mutual Aid Friday (needs posted, offers posted, matched live)

• Apprenticeship Exchange sourced from parent businesses

• 3-intro rule (3 useful intros per family per quarter)

• Founders’ dinner quarterly (give-first norm)

Goal: Turn every campus into a small, high-trust economic network that produces agency in learners and optionality in families.

Acton Network Resilience Report (5–25 Year Projection)

Why “Trust Engines” Matter More Than Today’s Ops Debates

1) The Scenario Everyone’s Passing Around

Citrini Research: “The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis” (this is a scenario simulation, not a prediction)

Here’s The Core Claim (in plain English)

AI and agentic automation drive white-collar displacement + wage compression, so even if productivity rises, money doesn’t circulate to humans (“Ghost GDP”), weakening consumer demand and stressing credit and asset prices.

Helpful mainstream context on how viral this became (for people who won’t read Substack):

• The Guardian explainer (Feb 24, 2026): https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/24/feedback-loop-no-brake-how-ai-doomsday-report-rattled-markets

• Barron’s pushback framing it as a recurring “doomsday memo” pattern (Feb 25, 2026): https://www.barrons.com/articles/ai-economic-collapse-citrini-stock-market-50378a1d

2) The Acton-Relevant Insight

If intelligence becomes cheap, the scarce asset is trust.

Acton is already a “trust engine” (high repetition relationships, shared norms, accountability, strong culture, parent entrepreneurs). That’s exactly what tends to hold up when large institutions wobble.

3) 5–25 Year Threats, Opportunities, Challenges

A) 0–5 years: Volatility + parent anxiety + uneven affordability

Threats

• Tuition stress + churn risk as more families face income volatility (even if unemployment stats understate it). (citriniresearch.co

• Scholarship pressure increases (more “we love you, but…” conversations).

• AI-solutionism: parents chase tools and credentials instead of culture, agency, and community.

Opportunities

• Acton’s value proposition strengthens: in an AI world, parents will pay for agency, character, self-management, leadership (uniquely human compounding).

• “Entrepreneur density” becomes a moat: families transact, hire, mentor, and stabilize each other (local circulation).

Challenges

• You must operationalize “community” as an asset, not a vibe.

• Owners burn out if they try to solve macro stress with heroic personal effort (spoiler: they can’t).

B) 5–10 years: Parallel institutions + local networks outperform generic systems

Threats

• Bifurcation across campuses: strong-trust campuses thrive; weak-trust campuses become tuition-fragile.

• Regulatory attention rises as governments scramble for levers, and education is always a lever.

Opportunities

• Acton becomes a community institution, not just a school: apprenticeships, parent talent networks, micro-enterprise, mentorship ladders.

• Network-level advantages become decisive: shared playbooks, shared leadership formation, shared “culture enforcement” patterns.

Challenges

• Maintaining decentralization while preventing “brand drift” and uneven quality.

• Creating repeatable leadership formation (owners and guides) fast enough to keep up with growth and stress.

C) 10–25 years: Trust as infrastructure (winners are networks that compound cohesion)

Threats

• Education splits into: community institutions vs luxury goods.

• If “Ghost GDP” dynamics exist, many families will need a community to stay solvent, stable, and sane. (citriniresearch.com

Opportunities

• Acton can become a centuries-long institution if we behaves like one:

  • mission clarity

  • local adaptability

  • leadership formation

  • strong norms

  • mutual aid across nodes

Challenges

• The long game is governance and formation, not “better marketing.”

• Without intentional structure, networks don’t scale trust. They scale variance.

4) The Big Takeaway

“If Citrini is even half-right, the next decade rewards trust, not content. Acton’s strategic job isn’t to optimize for today’s ops. It’s to harden each campus into a local trust engine: dense relationships, shared norms, mutual aid, and real-world apprenticeship pathways. In a ‘Ghost GDP’ world, trust is infrastructure.”

5) The 3 Moves That Will Prepare Our Acton (And Your Family) For Either Future

1. Increase Density

   1. More repeated parent-to-parent interaction, shared commitments, and community rituals. Trust compounds through repetition.

2. Increase Circulation and Connections

   1. Make it normal for families to hire each other, buy from each other, mentor each other. Build a local “marketplace” layer that keeps money and opportunity moving.

3. Increase Formation

   1. Train owners and guides like this is a 50-year mission, not a 5-year small business. Trust engines fail when standards drift.

Here’s a Bit More Detail For Parents Who Feel This Just Cannot Be Happening

We’ve spent the last few years debating when AI will “take our jobs.” According to a recent study from Anthropic, that shift isn’t a looming shadow anymore—it’s already reshaping the entry-level market. By cross-referencing Claude’s actual capabilities with real-world usage, the study reveals a workforce in transition.

The Metrics: “Observed Exposure”

Unlike theoretical studies, Anthropic used a metric called “observed exposure.” This measures the overlap between tasks AI can do and the tasks users are already asking it to automate. It’s less about what might happen and more about what is happening in the trenches of the digital economy.

Who’s at Risk (and Who Isn’t)?

The data paints a clear picture of which industries are feeling the heat:

• Computer Programmers: Topping the list with a staggering 75% task coverage.

• Customer Service & Data Entry: Not far behind at 67%.

• The “Safe” Zone: Roughly one-third of the U.S. workforce currently has zero AI exposure. These are primarily “hands-on” roles that require physical presence and manual dexterity—think bartenders, cooks, and lifeguards.

The “Silent” Impact on Gen Z

While we haven’t seen a massive, headline-grabbing spike in general unemployment since the 2022 launch of ChatGPT, the “squeeze” is happening at the bottom of the ladder.

Since late 2022, hiring for 22-to-25-year-olds in AI-exposed fields has dropped by 14%. Companies aren’t necessarily firing their veterans yet, but they are increasingly hesitant to hire the next generation for roles that an LLM can handle for a fraction of the cost.

The Bottom Line

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has been vocal about the coming disruption, and the market is listening—we’ve already seen industry stock prices dip following major Claude releases.

Despite these blinking red lights, the global economy remains drastically underprepared. We aren’t just looking at a future shift; we are witnessing the slow-motion closing of the door for entry-level white-collar workers. The question is no longer if the disruption is coming, but how we support a workforce that is already feeling the pinch.

The Generational Divide is Real

There is a growing “tech schizophrenia” in how we perceive these tools. Older generations often treat AI as a glorified search engine - Google with a personality. Meanwhile, Millennials and Gen Z are integrating it as a life partner: a companion, therapist, health coach, and tireless tutor.

This creates a massive friction point in our institutions:

• Education: Educators fear AI is dismantling the foundation of learning, while the students using it argue it’s the most powerful educational tool ever conceived.

• Corporate Policy: While companies and schools scramble to ban or block access, the individuals embracing the tech are essentially becoming superhuman, augmenting their output at a pace traditional structures can’t track.

The Great Divergence Is Already Started

The institutions haven’t caught up, and they likely won’t in time. This creates a definitive fork in the road. Over the next five years, the gap between those who leverage AI and those who resist it won’t just be a matter of preference, it will define the winners and losers of the new economy.

As Peter Diamandis keeps reminding us. Choose your side carefully.