The Big Story

Viva Cuba!

BY RICK BOETTGER

KONK LIFE COLUMNIST

 

Ka-ching! That’s the sound of my ringing up another $100,000 increase in the value of my house due to President Obama’s opening up Cuba. I’d been beginning to wonder why I voted for him, but now I’m in love again.

In 1996 I justified to my then-wife spending a cool quarter million bucks on my first house here in Key Haven with half the square footage of our McMansion in Fort Worth by arguing how prices were going to rise a lot in Key West. For three reasons:

First, it’s a great sports town. I’d been to my 25th reunion of my MIT pledge class of my jock fraternity (just booted off campus due to drinking violations—I am actually proud of them), and these guys didn’t realize how much money they had because they still had multiple kids in expensive colleges. Some would buy in Vail, etc., but there are lots of ski communities. They and their ilk would love Key West for the same reason I did—great free diving, tennis, and any other sport you want to play instead of watch.

Second, we’re a favorite with gay couples. I learned in my San Francisco days to follow gay guys as they choose great places to live and make them better, as in the Castro district where I first lived when I moved there. I admit to having prejudice towards gay men in expecting them to have great taste and make properties more beautiful wherever they move, and improving property values with both their taste and their fortunes. Not—in the old days—having to pay to raise kids, they can afford more for fine housing.

Both of the above were certainly true, and have already paid off with realized and unrealized gains for me in the high six figures, which will make it into seven with my third reason finally coming true, the opening up of direct travel to Cuba. The Castro death watch has proven futile—at this point, I’m prepared to believe he is immortal—but finally one American leader, and only one in the last 50 years, has had the guts to slap down the biggest wing-nut whack job lobby in the history of the United States, nay, in the history of the world.

The Cuban oligarchs have successfully forced America to do what is arguably the stupidest international embargo I can think of in the history of, as above the US and world. Please, tell me if any other country has done anything so useless and harmful to both the people of the other country and ourselves, while the rest of the world has ignored us because we are so dumb-ass stupid. The Cuban oligarchs were smart—they really did have a chance of reclaiming their multimillion-dollar properties if Cuba caved. It actually did happen in Eastern Europe after communism collapsed. Large landowners got mansions back from not only the state but from successor private owners.

What has been so dumb-ass is that we have let these one-hundredth of one-percenters make the rest of us suffer on behalf of their own lottery-like fantasies. They earned it the hard way: Voting as a block, and killing offending journalists. I salute them, and boo the wussy politicians who have caved to them for half a century.

It’s fantastic! We have one of the only places arguably more magical than us a quick plane ride and pleasant boat trip away, closer than even to Miami. Economically, I think it’s better than having say, Google, move from Silicon Valley into your county. Way more valuable than monster cruise ships, and at absolutely no cost to us. The Tourist Development Council is probably hyperventilating right now.

The only down side I can see was brought up by my dainty wife Cynthia. She wanted me to point out that now we can import Cuban cigars. I know she gave up cigarettes decades ago. I had no idea she craved Cuban cigars. I guess I’m going to have to get used to keeping my mouth closed when I kiss her.

 

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