The Villages in Florida: friendliest retirement hometown.
Finally I am back to my motto: I travel to see how people live around the world. And here more than 50000 people live their life after 55. It is a reality but surreal…
They built village after village surrounded by golf courses for people only allowed over the age of 55. To visit Dave’s dad we have to register and we get IDs. Since 2000 the population of this place has grown by around 500%! The median resident age is around 68 years old.
They have their own stores, fake town centres, hospitals, cafes, more than enough restaurants, recreation centres, entertainment programmes and more than 500 holes for golfing… even the trees and the grass and the lake look fake – they are real, but it feels that they are put in a specific order…
They have the neighbour watch patrol who looks suspiciously at me (walking barefoot) and Dave strolling around at dusk to go for a walk (who the hell walks here: use your golf cart or one of your two cars!)
I am walking around in one of their artificial village centres with Starbucks cafes; they play their own radio via loudspeakers and advertise new stores and new offers on houses to rent or buy. I fear like any time a giant light might fall from the sky just as in “The Truman Show”…
America’s retirement population is active: fully booked days with golf, shopping, dance classes, swimming and going out.
And I agree that this might be a better option than sitting alone in your house all day in a big city and doing cross word puzzles. And every one of us lives in a bubble and creates a certain shelter and enjoys the comfort of safety. There is nothing wrong with enjoying life after you have worked your ass off – especially in the States with almost no holidays. It’s great for them to have the money to be active and social.
But this is bigger and greater than anything I have seen in my whole life. This is “The Truman Show” in reality: Utopia… Everything is owned by the developer so nobody tells these inhabitants in “The Village Newspaper” that they should rubber up before having sex: The Village has one of the highest HIV rates in the country…