Don’t-Miss Events

FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS, March 3 to 12, Mizner Park Amphitheater, 590 Plaza Real, Boca Raton, 561/757-4762. It’s Season 17 for Boca’s highly anticipated annual Festival of the Arts, with a wide-ranging array of artists and speakers—from the animated classic “Fantasia” remastered with a live orchestra, to the iconic wit Fran Lebowitz. Other highlights include dance icons Melanie Hamrick, Joanna DeFelice, and Christine Shevchenko; acclaimed author Charles Fishman; jazz performer Nicole Henry; and Brazilian musician Sergio Mendes.

BOATING & BEACH BASH, March 4, Spanish River Park, 3001 N. Ocean Blvd. (State Road A1A.) The Boating & Beach Bash for People with Disabilities is America’s largest, free funfest for people with disabilities—including their families and caregivers—in the nation. Now in its 14th year, the Bash features a myriad of activities, from boat rides to a complimentary lunch, a live concert and more—and is free to all. Visit boatingbeachbash. com for more information.

Locals sound off on issues affecting our community.

“I wish I could go back to Alexandria, Virginia and meet my husband Knox then. (We lived a mile apart from each other a decade before we actually met.) If I’d known he was there, I could have married him earlier. It would have been fun to have known Knox in my 20s.”

—Carolyn North, Psychotherapist, LCSW, LMFT

PALM BEACH INTERNATIONAL BOAT SHOW, March 23 to 26, 101 S. Flagler Drive, West Palm Beach, pbboatshow.com. The sparkling and massive Palm Beach International Boat Show is certainly one of the most scenic boat shows, stretching all along Flagler Drive on the Intracoastal and featuring more than $1.2 billion worth of yachts and accessories, including hundreds of boats ranging from 8-foot inflatables to superyachts nearly 300 feet in length. It’s one of our favorite South Florida events, whether you are in the market or not—and comes complete with floating barge bars.

BOCA BACCHANAL, March 31 and April 1, various locations, Boca Raton, 561/395-6766, ext. 101. This homegrown but sophisticated wine and food event is presented by acclaimed chefs throughout Boca Raton and beyond, and is known for its Grand Tasting as well as its array of elegant private vintner dinners held at estates and over-the-top venues in Boca Raton. All proceeds benefit the Boca Raton Historical Society.

“I would spend more time with family and friends. My family lives in other states, and I would make it more of a priority to spend time with them, either by them coming here or me going to visit them.”

—Geri Penniman, Estate Agent, Premier Estate Properties

“If I had a spring do-over, I would want the beginning of the baseball season to be a national holiday. Spring is always better at the ballpark!”

—Aaron Henderson, graphic designer, JES Media

Men’s Kicks

We are not sure why tennis/running/walking shoes for both men and women are so big right now. But big does not begin to describe the way men’s tennies have gone completely off the rails in terms of embellishment and design. We love it, though; here are some of the winners.

Spring Rituals

Long-held spring rituals—most related to the spring equinox—are apparently all dedicated to well-being and enlightenment and purity. Things like putting rocks in the sun to purify negative energies (this is a real thing), lighting a white candle and buying a plant to facilitate prosperity.

SPRING CLEANING: This generally means airing out everything, hosing down the screens, mopping floors, thinning out closets and dusting those top shelves no one has seen in seven years. I know people who do this.

$1.9 billion

Lost wages during March Madness

6

How many weeks in Lent

15

My spring rituals, on the other hand, have less to do with lighting white candles and more to do with keeping spring fever at a manageable and fully conscious level. Real-life spring rituals include, but are not limited to, the following: —Marie Speed

BOOKING YOUR SUMMER VACATION: If people did this during work hours, which of course they would not, it would involve logging onto a wide variety of websites to compare the relative advantages of Tuscany over Iceland, or which cruise line stops in St. Maarten. Then these very same people would drift over to their favorite clothing websites to look at hats and espadrilles, or maybe they would find themselves looking at Stars With Botched Plastic Surgeries or any number of other related travel-planning resources.

PLAYING HOOKY TO GO TO A MARLINS SPRING TRAINING GAME:

This ritual involves elaborate planning with trusted friends who share a deep-seated appreciation of hot dogs, cold beer and the last nice days before summer swoops in like a dragon. People apparently even take sick days to do this.

ST PADDY’S DAY:

This, too, involves thoughtful planning. The ritual starts with assembling five of your closest friends and deciding how to make it to Delray in time to secure a good spot from which to watch the St. Patrick’s Day Parade—While secreting adequate refreshments in nondescript containers to combat the heat. The ritual also entails wardrobe planning (green everything), parking access, where to go for lunch and determining how early is too early for a Bloody Mary.

MELTDOWN: This process generally refers to the inevitable prospect of buying a new bathing suit within the next six weeks, looking at oneself in the mirror, and contemplating the notion that life as you once knew it is now over.

“DEFACING MICHAEL JACKSON”

WHEN:

March 9-April 2

WHERE:

The Colony Theatre, 1040 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach

COST:

$46.50-$76.50

CONTACT:

305/674-1040, Playwright and screenwriter

Aurin Squire’s most familiar credit may be as story editor and writer on NBC’s “This Is Us,” but his most personal work literally hits close to home. In “Defacing Michael Jackson,” the Opa-Locka native explores a coming-of-age story of sexual discovery set in his own hardscrabble Miami neighborhood circa 1984. The play is about an age of innocence, or perhaps innocence lost: The title subject reigns over popular culture, and he may as well be a deity to a group of young Opa-Locka locals. But it’s also a time of incipient gentrification and drug trafficking. As the cocaine cowboys ride into town and a white family moves into the protagonists’ Black neighborhood, Squire’s play captures a moment in history that continues to resonate.

They Might Be Giants

WHEN: March 15-16, 7:30 p.m.

WHERE: Culture Room, 3045 N. Federal Highway, Fort Lauderdale

COST: $32

CONTACT: 954/564-1074, cultureroom.net

Twenty-three full-length albums into their career, They Might Be Giants remain one of alternative rock’s rainy-day staples, a group whose central duo, singer-songwriters John Flansburgh and John Linnell, have been making music together since 1982. Unapologetically geeky and forthrightly literate, the two Johns are essentially a “Jeopardy!” board in the form of music, performing catchy and arcane tunes about obscure Belgian painters, marginal presidents, Hollywood costume designers and astral bodies. This tour, a long-anticipated COVID postponement, will honor the 30th anniversary of They Might Be Giants’ landmark 1990 album Flood group will perform all 19 of its tracks, including hit single “Birdhouse in your Soul” (the best song ever written about a night light), the jaunty “Particle Man” and the rousing history lesson “Istanbul (Not Constantinople).”

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC LIVE: DR. KARA COONEY

WHEN: March 11, 7:30 p.m.

WHERE: Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach

COST: $35-$45

CONTACT: 561/832-7469, kravis.org

There are few American professionals better equipped to present on ancient Egypt than Dr. Kara Cooney, archaeologist and professor of Egyptology at UCLA, whose desire to uncover the intricacies of the country’s ancient past is both vocation and passion project. She has hosted two Egypt specials on the Discovery Channel, and she co-curated the famous “Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” exhibition, whose tour in the 2000s renewed interest in Egyptian royalty for generations. In this multimedia TED-style presentation, Cooney will lecture on her 2018 book When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt, in which she explores how rulers such as Hatshepsut, Nefertiti and Cleopatra were able to wield immense power at a time when other empires, before and since, treated women as second-class citizens.

“AT THE DAWN OF A NEW AGE: EARLY 20TH CENTURY MODERNISM”

WHEN: March 18-July 16

WHERE: Norton Museum of Art, 1450 S. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach

COST: $15-$18

CONTACT: 561/832-5196, norton.org

The first 30 years of the 1900s were a watershed period in American art, as traditional notions of realism in painting and sculpture gave way to an increasing embrace of experimentation and abstraction of color, form and subject matter that would forecast contemporary art movements for decades. Drawing from the Whitney Museum of American Art’s extensive collection from this era,“At the Dawn of a New Age” captures the artists responsible for these changes, whose work is as strikingly original today as it was 90 years ago. Several pieces by Georgia O’Keeffe and other blue-chip notables are featured, but the most important aspect of the exhibition is its inclusion of more-obscure figures—especially women and artists of color—whose works were largely ignored in the patriarchal art market of the early 20th century.

Women love clothes down here, and they love to dress. It’s a great climate to dress. And they entertain so much, they go out so much, that thank god, after a very dismal part of our careers, fashion came back strong....

—Mark Badgley