| Phil Sheridan: With the bond of misery now broken, Philly ponders: Why ...
Jimmy, the shuckah at the bah at the Union Oystah House, eyeballed the woman who asked for a glass of water. "Championship watah?" Jimmy said with a glint in his eye. "Drink this, and you'll win a championship." He swiveled toward the visitors from Philadelphia, who were in town for the Eagles' November game against the New England Patriots. "Hey," Jimmy said, "there's something in the watah heah. Everybody wins championships heah." Let's just say the oysters in Boston go down a little easier than the attitude. The day of that game, which A.J. Feeley nearly won and then suddenly lost for the Eagles, my column was about the gap that had grown between two cities with so much in common. Philadelphia and Boston had been joined since Colonial times, and our histories remained oddly similar through a 20th century filled with sporting misery.
Coming Soon: SR to Release E-mail Exchanges ... (Not so fast...)
Update: After reviewing the messages and our options (none good), we've decided not to post the messages. Here's the situation: Of the 50 messages, a few have explicit photos embedded in the message. We can't publish those photos (one shows a toddler's penis). We also have a strong ethical policy against blurring or otherwise manipulating photos. Some of the messages are completely innocuous. The rest of the messages only refer to attachments. Those attachments are explicit, so we can't publish them. We've also gone through each message to blur e-mail addresses for privacy reasons. So, if we don't publish any of the explicit images, and we refuse to blur, crop or otherwise alter them, all we're left with is a bunch of forwarded messages that say things like "take a look at this!" We decided that did not advance the story in any significant way.
In Southwest Florida, an eerie sense of emptiness
However universal the decline, this isn't bad news for everyone. It means a half-empty glass for sellers. But it may also mean a half-full glass for buyers. For about $800,000, for instance, it is possible to buy a large and essentially new house with a pool in a gated community with deeded boat dockage and direct access to the Caloosahatchee River and the Gulf of Mexico. That's about $275 a square foot. In another gated development, a three-bedroom home with a courtyard pool, boat dockage, and lovely canal views is available for less than $400,000 - about $185 a square foot. According to realtor.com there are more than 12,000 listings in Fort Myers alone, with nearly 2,000 available at $125,000 to $175,000. Many cost less than $100 a square foot. Will prices go yet lower? No one knows.
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