Let’s Rent a Catering Hall in Palm Beach.

When I first went to Palm Beach, which was the early 1970’s, I had the distinct impression that New York Jews (like me) were not particularly welcome in the town. Florida was still a place where rich, white people who weren’t ethnics had an ocean view from Delray Beach north, and everyone else who wanted to see the Atlantic Ocean from their condo lived from Boca Raton south.

The alternative was to drive 70 miles across Alligator Alley and take a place on the Gulf Coast. But everybody knew that the Gulf was second-class and basically the locale favored by white trash.

Of course, all of this has now changed. Towns like Naples on the Gulf are as fancy-schmancy as anything on the Ocean side of the state, and buying a ocean view apartment on the East Coast requires only that you come up with the cash.

But there’s still something unique about a Palm Beach address. And I’m not talking about West Palm Breach across the causeway. That’s the commercial mess and trailer parks on Route 1. There’s still something of an exclusive aura surrounding Palm Beach, which I hate to say it has been punctured by none other than a New York hotelkeeper named Donald Trump.

I was reminded of how his presence in Palm Beach has changed things when I happened to see a brief video of Trump in the entrance to the Mar-a-Lago…