will be celebrating its 50th birthday the weekend of October 17, 2008. If you attended Palmetto or are a current student, save the date and please update your information so the alumni committee can keep you informed of all of the upcoming events and special dedications.
I wrote a blog the other day about walkable neighborhoods in Miami-Dade County and decided to blog about each neighborhood in more detail. The first neighborhood on my list was Coral Gables, also known as the City Beautiful.
The Gables, as it is known to most residents, stretches into south Miami-Dade County and runs parallel to 
the village limits of Pinecrest and Palmetto Bay, so not all parts are convenient to walk to shops, restaurants, entertainment and work, if you happen to work in the Gables. However, using a combination of the City’s hybrid-electric trolley, which runs along Ponce de Leon between the Douglas Metro Rail station and 8th Street, Metro Rail and bus routes you can get to downtown Coral Gables, the University of Miami and downtown Miami from just about anywhere in the Gables using public transportation.
According to a study by the University of Florida about consumer confidence, gas prices are a big reason that consumer confidence has hit a 16-year low. Should you be considering a move, think about where most of your driving takes place (to and from work, children’s activities, pursuing hobbies and interests) and take this into consideration when you look at different neighborhoods and homes within them.
Do you live in an area of Coral Gables and walk or use public transportation? If so, please share your commuting experience.
Surprise! This is not going to be a negative blog about how depressing the real estate market is.
Instead, this is literally about real estate going to the dogs!
There are doggie bars, doggie parks, doggie spas, doggie accessory stores and doggie day cares. This is in addition to the standard groomers, vets, boarders and large pet store chains.
The pet industry is estimated to hit $40.8 billion this year and all of these dog related businesses require space, be it land, industrial or retail!
Additional resources: Dog Park Etiquette
Pet Industry Trends & Statistics
I attended the champagne and caviar tasting at the Whole Foods in Coral Gables last night and learned a lot! I already knew I love caviar and am extremely picky about my champagne, so I was thinking I would just go and have fun.
Little did I know I would actually learn that champagne has 56 million bubbles per bottle, that the reason for checking the cork from a champagne bottle is to make sure it matches the label, and that proper champagne opening etiquette is to make the cork “kiss” instead of “pop”!
Well, I went to my first event at the Coral Gables Whole Foods since the grand opening last week. On Thursday they had a sangria tasting and it was a good excuse to hang out in their Whole Lifestyle Center (LC) and chat with friends and neighbors who stopped by. The Tarantas Sangria, an organic bottled sangria, was the better of the two and could serve as a starting point to doctor your own, but nothing beats homemade sangria.
Patrick, one of the sommeliers at Whole Foods, was extremely friendly and helpful, and took time out to chat about wines and sangria. I an organic wine tasting on
Friday, but will be there tonight for a champagne and caviar tasting.
My only critique of the store is that the LC is inconveniently located on the opposite side of the store and can only be accessed from the outside. This was poor planning since it discourages shoppers from meandering through the store prior to an event or from returning to the store to purchase items after an event. I am sure they will be working on fixing this oversight so they can maximize the marketing potential of their tastings, cooking classes, and demonstrations.
Gotta admit that I am a food geek who has been anxiously awaiting the opening of Whole Foods in Coral Gables. I loved shopping at Whole Foods in California and though I wouldn’t trek to the Aventura store, I did trek all the way to Fairfax, Virginia to visit the store there. Actually, I was visiting family and we just made this a side trip to plan dinner.
Geek that I am I signed up for the pre-opening behind the scenes tour today and enjoyed eating my way through the isles. In addition to fresh squeezed orange juice, bananas, cookies, cake, a turkey empanada with mango chutney, and Parmesan cheese, we were treated to a wine tasting in their Whole Lifestyle Center, a community-hall style room for cooking demonstrations and wine tastings.
They have several tastings coming up: Sangria on Thursday, September 27 from 7-8:30, Intro to Organic Wined Friday, September 28 from 7-8:30, Caviar and Moet Champagne Tasting on Saturday, September 29 from 7-8 and a Cheese and Wine Pairing on Sunday, September 30 from 4-5. The Cheese and Wine Pairing is a fundraiser for The Pet Project, which helps individuals with disabling illnesses keep their pets.
I am looking forward to the lifestyle center offerings as much as I am to the store opening. I don’t like to shop and find grocery shopping especially tedious, but I like cruising (and tasting my way) through the isles at Whole Foods. It can bring out the cook in anyone. And if you don’t like to cook, take home their delicious meals. A nice change from rotisserie chicken!
No, this is not an early Halloween blog but rather one about Books and Books, our Manhattan-style bookstore. Mitch Kaplan, Books and Books owner and a co-founder of Miami Book Fair International, has done an incredible job bringing distinguished authors to speak, read, and sign books over the years, but none got my teen daughter’s attention until Stephenie Meyer showed up on September 15 to talk about Eclipse, the latest in the Twilight Series.
I was lucky, or crazy, enough to attend the Books and Books 
sponsored Vampire Ball, guest starring Stephenie Meyer, with my 13 year old daughter and hundreds of other fans. The Coral Gables War Memorial was packed but the event was extremely well organized. Fans waited in line for asked questions of the author and then waited to get their books signed.
It was wonderful to see so many young readers and would-be authors enjoying a Saturday afternoon with their parents, friends, and books. Thanks, Mitch!
The Alternative Minimum Tax is basically a parallel tax system that runs in conjunction with the regular tax system. You may not have heard of it before now because it was originally only directed at individuals with extremely high incomes. However, since it was never indexed to inflation it will be affecting the middle class as of this year.
The regular tax system currently encourages home ownership by allowing deduction on mortgage interest, property taxes, home equity interest and not recognizing gain on the sale of a primary residence, up to $500,000 for a married couple and $250,000 for an individual.
The regular tax system also promotes real estate investing by allowing depreciation to be taken on a straight-line basis over a 27.5 year recovery period for residential income property and a 39 year recovery for commercial property.
The AMT as it currently stands, does away with a lot of these incentives to owning a home or investing in real estate.
Miami-Palmetto Senior High School is celebrating its Golden Anniversary and the PTSA is having a special membership drive to commemorate it.
Ranked in the top 100 public schools in the country by Newsweek Magazine, the school is one of the reasons so many families move to Pinecrest. I remember the first time I attended a new student orientation with my now senior student. The principal asked all of the parents who had graduated from Palmetto High to stand up and an extremely large percentage of the people in the auditorium stood up.
I wouldn’t have been surprised at the numbers if we were in a small town, but Miami has a very large and transient population. I was thrilled that so many adults felt the school and Pinecrest community had been such a positive experience in their upbringing that they chose to return and raise their families here.
The school will be holding their open house on Tuesday, September 18 at 7:00 p.m. 
First, a disclaimer. I am not a CPA nor accountant and I don’t play one on t.v. To find out whether you are subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) contact your accountant or CPA.
The AMT was originally enacted in 1969 in order to make sure that high income individuals paid income tax. Over the years, inflation has gone up resulting in more people’s income becoming subject to the AMT, which is not indexed to inflation.
In 1995 only 414,000 individuals paid AMT. By 2001 1.3 million people were subject to the tax. This year, 23.4 million people will be subject to it.
Why is this scary? You could be one of the 23.4 million! This tax is now affecting the middle class.
preparing your tax returns to determine whether you are subject to the AMT. Under the AMT rules, if the amount you owe under the AMT tax schedule is higher that on your regular tax schedule, you must pay the difference in addition to your regular taxes.The AMT disallows a lot of popular deductions, such as those for dependants, State and Local taxes, some medical and dental expenses.
So, families with children are more likely to fall under the AMT than those without children, and married couples are 12 times more likely to fall under the AMT than singles.
The good news is we are coming up on an election year and Congress should address the AMT or there are going to be a lot of unhappy voters in 2008 after having had to pay the AMT.
Unless Congress comes up with a fix for the AMT, I would suggest the following: Stay single, don’t have children and live in Florida!