Currently under construction in Daytona Beach, Florida is a development called Latitude Margaritaville. When it’s finished next year, it will have about 7,000 homes available to buyers 55 or older. This isn’t a new concept; gated communities for seniors have been around for a while. What sets Margaritaville apart is that it is (to quote the press release) “an immersive brand experience.” It’s being designed and built so that fans of Jimmy Buffett (who, I regret to inform you, call themselves “parrotheads”) can live out their days as Buffett intended.
If you’re like me, news of Margaritaville results in conflicted feelings. On the one hand, you wish the future residents of this place no ill will. You don’t believe that they will be doing anything wrong by living there. You hope they’ll enjoy the sun, the shmaltz, and the presumably endless looping of Buffett’s ode to lost salt shakers. Yet, you sense that there’s something creepily dystopian about the whole enterprise.
Buffett’s song, which was recorded in the late 70’s, evoked a certain lifestyle. Indeed, it offered a vision of the good life. It painted the picture of a man who had abandoned the respectability of the American dream to become a beach bum, subsisting on sponge cake and boiled shrimp. He’s an anti-hero who by his authenticity has transcended the tourists whom he views from his front porch.
Undoubtedly, this song has provided a pleasant escape for many people. It has been the occasion for insurance adjusters in Phoenix and dental assistants in Houston to imagine themselves with sand in their toes and drinks in their hands, answering to no one but themselves. And, after a few decades of punching a clock and diverting funds to their 401Ks, they are finally ready to make their dreams a reality.
So it feels a bit mean to state the obvious. The future residents of Margaritaville are not countercultural beach bums who’ve checked out of the rat race. Instead, they are pliant consumers, signing on the dotted line in exactly the manner that Minto Communities LLC (the development company behind Margaritaville) predicted they would.
Of course, such a phenomenon is not unique to parrotheads (it is genuinely painful for me to type that word). Plenty of us express a toothless rebellion through consumption. Businesses like Hard Rock Cafe and Hot Topic have long offered counterculture as a commodity, The Ramones have sold more t-shirts than albums, and the author of this post, who will never attempt an ascent of Half Dome, is currently wearing a The North Face shirt.
The existence of Margaritaville raises a few interesting questions. For instance, what is the meaning of place in such a development? What are the pros and cons of “an immersive branding experience” as compared to a traditional community? But I’ll leave those questions to you and attempt an answer at another. What does Margaritaville tell us about the human experience?
Life can be difficult, even for people who have it relatively easy. As kids, we imagined that adulthood equaled freedom. But upon arrival we learn that there are consequences to eating too much, drinking too much, spending too much, and not exercising enough. We worry about our kids, our jobs, and that knocking sound coming from the car’s engine.
What if our interests and hobbies are, in part, ways of coping with the weight of responsibility? What if record collections, sports fanaticism, and cosplay conferences are valuable chiefly for the existential comfort they provide? Understood in this way, the differences between (for instance) the urban hipster and the resident of Margaritaville are minor. We may not identify with either one of them, but we can sympathize with them both.