Some people sell real estate, some spend all day on the telephone, raving at their brokers and making $1,000 a minute on the stock market, and others buy fistfuls of speedy cocaine and spend their afternoons playing frantically with each other and doing their own kind of business. Displays of naked greed are frowned on, and business is done discreetly-or, failing that, in private. Despite the town’s image of terminal leisure and luxury, the people who live here are very aware of their money, and they tend to watch it carefully. The business of Palm Beach is business, even on a rainy day in the off-season. Only servants go out in this kind of weather, and the only cars on the street are people taking care of business, for good or ill. The sea is wild, the beach is like Norway, and relentless monsoon rains lash the island day and night. But it is a nice time to be here, if you don’t mind staying inside. “It’s a very exciting scene to be part of.” “Eighty percent of the world’s wealth is here during the season,” said a local decorator one night over dinner at Dunhills in the heart of the off-season. From the Patrons Opera Guild Luncheon in November at the Colony Hotel, to the premiere of the Lannan Foundation Museum in early March, the action is almost continuous: white ties and golden slippers, charity balls at the Breakers, cotillion dances at the Bath and Tennis Club, and endless cocktail parties. That is when the season starts, the winter social calendar. The mansions along Ocean Boulevard are closed up and shuttered for the hurricane season, which ends sometime in December, when the rich come back to the island. The autumn months are slow in Palm Beach. The rich have certain rules, and these are two of the big ones: maintain the privacy and the pipeline at all costs-although not necessarily in that order-it depends on the situation, they say and everything has its price, even women. Municipal bonds and dividend checks are the life blood of this town, and the flow shall not be interrupted for any reason. That is not the kind of news these people want to hear, or even think about. Profits are down, the whole concept of personal privacy has gone up for grabs, and the president might be a fool. That is the situation in Palm Beach these days, and the natives are not happy with it. It usually means they are feeling anxious or confused about something, and when the rich feel anxious and confused, they act like wild animals. The stomping of the rich is not a noise to be ignored in troubled times. Which is heard all over the country, or at least felt. The smart say they can’t understand it, and the dumb snort cocaine in rich discos and stomp to a feverish beat. Not even the rich feel safe from it, and people are looking for reasons. THERE IS A LOT OF WRECKAGE in the fast lane these days. “I couldn’t believe it,” one said afterward. The decision was so aggressively harsh that even veteran courthouse reporters were shocked. Judge Harper’s ruling came after an eighteen-day trial in which there had been testimony about cocaine abuse, extramarital affairs, incest, lesbianism, and late-night séances. Pulitzer to move out of the couple’s lakefront home in Palm Beach, where she had maintained custody of the children since the separation. Judge Carl Harper, citing “flagrant acts of adultery and other gross marital misconduct,” ordered the thirty-one-year-old Mrs. 28, 1982 (AP) - Herbert Pulitzer Jr., the millionaire publishing heir, won custody of his twin five-year-old sons today as a Circuit Court judge awarded less than $50,000 in alimony to Mr. This story was originally published in RS 400, July 21/Augissue and an adapted version is also included in ‘ Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential Writing of Hunter S.
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