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‘Night Out’ Is Palm Beach Social Highlight

By Joyce Reingold | Wednesday, August 6, 2008, 09:11 AM

Balloon Guy’s pièce de résistance, the police motorcycle

For we happy band of brave year-rounders, Palm Beach Crime Watch’s Night Out Against Crime is the social event of the summer.

It’s all educational and informational, but staged like a small-town fair. The Royal Poinciana Chapel parking lot serves as the midway, with all the shiny, high-tech police vehicles taking the place of thrill rides.

Longest lines last night? For touring the town’s speedy Island Runner, and for a heat-vanquishing cup of Maria’s Italian Ice.

If you didn’t make it, you missed the:

1) Swag: Creative, useful, irresistible. My takeaway this year was a small green notebook with pen attached. Let others snatch up the handy “comfort kits,” pens, pencils, keychains, etc. A fine little note-taking device is just trumps for me.

2) Socializing: Mayor Jack MacDonald, who always manages to look cool regardless of the temperature; former, current and would-be Town Council members; banker Jean Deyermond (who says she’s going to Italy next summer regardless of how the dollar stacks up against the euro); Realtor Clare O’Keeffe, in her police volunteer role; proud mom and grandmother Ann Small…

3) Concealed weapons: This display is always creepily fascinating — the knife inside a Montblanc-lookalike pen; the “pen” that transforms into a tiny pistol, the cane that’s really a gun. It was a bit disturbing when my kids recognized something called “the bloody knuckles.”

4) Bobby the Balloon Guy: There are balloon animals and hats, and then there’s the police motorcycle BTBG crafted from blue, black and white balloons. A masterpiece in colored latex.

5) Palm Beach’s finest: One of my co-workers (not revealing my source here) jokes that to get a job on the force, you have to meet the “hottie” requirement. Now, if you think that’s sexist, that would only be because you haven’t seen the men and women of our police force.

Just the facts, ma’am. I swear it.

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