The Promenade.

We love to look down on other people, and we love it even more when they look up at us. The architect Morris Lapidus understood this when he designed the grand staircase of the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. He called it the “Stairs to Nowhere” because they led only to a coat closet, where the beautiful people could leave their jackets and then swan down the stairs, catching the eye of everyone below.

Sixty-five years later, the new stairs-to-nowhere are “stepped seating” — though it may look like the thing in high school you called “bleachers” — and it’s become one of the most Instagrammable and possibly the most overused architectural features of the decade.

(Maura Judkis, writing in the Washington Post)

"This Promenade doesn't go anywhere" the man next to me complained, as we walked past a field of young tea bushes on fire but never being consumed. The smell was very pleasant. 

"Why should it go anywhere at all?" I asked languidly. I enjoyed strolling on the Promenade; I had been doing it for many years.  "We're all here just to see and be seen. And you, my good man, are not quite the thing -- not with your mussed hair, rumpled yellow shirt, fanny pack, and brown shoes!"

He gazed at me in alarm, then dropped behind me -- muttering, no doubt, so I wouldn't hear him: "He looks like butter but tastes like margarine."

I continued to walk at a leisurely pace, unperturbed at the man's lack of dash and form. You meet many kinds on the Promenade, and not all of them are of a glamorous or interesting nature. 

Just ahead of me I spotted an old man, very distinguished looking. His hoary locks and furrowed brow told me of a great intellect long at work on some worthy project, so I nimbly came up to his right side and told him good day.

"Good day to you, as well" he replied, chewing on his lower lip.

"May I inquire what you are thinking about?" I asked him after a while.

"Not at all. I am a sculptor who has ransacked the worlds, looking for just the right substance in which to carve my first work" he replied pleasantly, readjusting his maroon beret.

"Ah, an artist! How I honor the creation of beauty" I told him sincerely. We stopped briefly to watch an iceberg sail majestically overhead.

"You do not wish to use marble or some other noble stone?" I quizzed him.

"No. I must have an unconditionally unique medium to carve -- one that has never been used before" he told me firmly. "I am waiting for scientists to create an absolutely brand new element, one that I can carve into a vision of esteemed elegance. Until then, I walk on the Promenade. Just walk and plan . . . "

I bowed to him slightly, then sped up to overtake a group of women blowing on cardboard tubes. They pursed their lips as they blew to simulate some kind of musical sound -- the result was not repulsive, especially since they dressed in blue culotte pants with loose white blouses tied at the waist. I stayed with them for a long time, learning their strange language and teaching them how to whistle. 

At the fifth crumbling of the moon we ran across a troupe of acrobats. My girls, as I thought of them by then, immediately abandoned their cardboard tubes and began learning to tumble and leap high in the air. I saw there was no longer any place for me in their lives, so whistling a gay tune I strolled away from them down the wide Promenade and then stopped to admire myself in a looking glass mounted on the backs of armadillos. That is when a young man on a skateboard crashed into me, causing my Malacca walking stick to snap in half.

"Help, police!" I cried desperately. "There's a madman on a skateboard over here!" No form of transportation other than shanks mare is allowed on the Promenade. Ever. 

The Promenade Police did their usual admirable job of nabbing the culprit immediately, and I had the pleasure of watching them escort the defiantly grinning malefactor off to the Manufactory -- where he would be turned into a wind chime.

Adjusting my cravat, I continued on my eternal round to nowhere with the comely and divine crowd . . .