With luxury condos and apartment complexes springing up all over Greater Orlando, there's now a high-toned habitat to suit every taste, if not every price point. Here are a few of the most "niche" operations now making waves in the waters of spacious, gracious living.
Stalag 17 West – Come live out your days in the luxury and discretion only the grandchildren of escaped Nazis can provide. Plucked directly from the jungles of South America and eager for their introduction into working society, our efficient (some would even say "friendly") staff will stop at nothing to make your every mad dream of lifestyle supremacy a reality.
It's today creature comforts, tomorrow the world as you partake of all the amenities our four-star Fourth Reich hacienda has to offer. Vaulted ceilings! Hardwood floors! A 24-hour bootblack on duty! And of course, a state-of-the-art security system with retinal-scan technology to keep snoopers at bay. Burglars, meanwhile, don't need to know about the coldly cruel starvation plan that has our canine guard team ready to chew their noses off.
Barbed wire surrounds the rooftop pool area, guaranteeing you the utmost in privacy as you lounge around in your very best black socks and suspenders, periodically applying Coppertone 45 to your pasty European flesh.
A mere $250,000 moves you in, along with a routine blood check to determine genetic purity.
Retro Towers — Everything old is new again at this kitschy conclave of swingin', space-age singles' pads. The sharp angles and glass surfaces of our units are just waiting to bring out your latent George Jetson tendencies. Call it cocktail-hour, call it hipster – whatever it is, it's your first-class ticket to Planet Cool, daddy-o!
Some of you may remember the complex from its origins in 1959, when it was known as La Moderne. But rest assured that plenty of improvements have been made since then that easily justify the current base rental of $4,000 per month. For one thing, there are slipcovers.
Destiny View – The view from the top floor of this 37-story megalith will truly be a sight to behold someday – i.e., as soon as our city fathers get around to razing the combat zone of crack dens and trilingual convenience stores that surrounds it on all four sides.
While you dream of a time when your home address will be synonymous with 1 Millionaires' Row, park your carcass on the roof and watch your neighbors go about their business of furthering the underground economy. We've even installed arcade-style laser pistols on the parapets, so you can playfully "pick off" as many 14-year-old pimps and street-corner prophets as the attached digital counter can tabulate.
Don't feel guilty that you're indulging an underlying attraction to cultural genocide; it's all in fun and nobody gets hurt. And hey, what do you think urban renewal is all about, anyway?
Palmetto Court – Bug problem? What bug problem? At Palmetto, we've realized that insectoid infestation is just a fact of Central Florida life. And we know exactly what to do about it: Shellac those suckers up and make them part of the bric-a-brac!
While other complexes waste their time with ill-conceived extermination projects, our ongoing hunt for the wee beasties ends with us petrifying them in fresh resin and fashioning them into tasteful art-deco furnishings. If you've never reclined in an easy chair made of pure cockroach, now's your chance; furthermore, you'll never forget the look on your guests' faces when they realize that the Byzantine pattern on the hall carpet is formed from actual tsetse flies.
The well-stocked rec-room wet bar helps offset the cute but constant illusion that the whole damn place is moving.
Farewell II Arms – Facilities manager Max Cleland welcomes you to this restful retreat for men and women who have literally given all to their country, only to have their patriotism impugned by chicken hawks caught up in overheated election campaigns.
The focus is on family every time your pal Max and his staff sit down to devise another month's worth of communal activities best appreciated by survivors of enemy gunfire and home-front slander. Anger-management courses and low-impact shuffleboard are just two of the fun pursuits favored by our clientele of the disabled disenfranchised; to maintain the place's standing as an oasis of sanity, Air America is pumped into every room free of charge.
Is it a handicapped-accessible environment, you ask? Well, duh. But what counts just as much is the free session with an image consultant/ depression counselor you'll receive if you move in by Memorial Day.
Chateau Nouveau Poore – Just because you lost it all in the tech-stocks bust, there's no reason you have to go back to living like garden-variety riffraff. At CNP, we treat you like the kingmaker you once were and may one day be again. OK, that last part probably won't happen in any of our lifetimes, but you're still going to get the best treatment out of us that your atrophied resources can buy.
Picture the scene: Hauling your tired bones home from a hard day of – gasp! – menial labor, you'll be greeted by one of downtown's most lovable vagrants, who's agreed to act as concierge in exchange for a simple bottle of Vicks per week. (Who knows? He may even be wearing pants this time!) Passing through a lobby decorated with the finest images from Deck the Walls' "Sports and Recreation" bin, you'll make your way to the vintage self-serve elevators, complete with a rusted sliding gate and a wildly inconsistent pull-chain action that affords all the sick-making thrills of the Tower of Terror.
Upon reaching your floor, you'll have fun navigating the crazily angled floorboards until you reach your door, upon which your very own surname has been emblazoned in Labelmaker tape. Inserting the high-tech passkey/bus pass in the airtight door lock/mail slot, you'll swing open the door to discover ... You've been jacked for everything you own. Lucky you. You get to start all over again while you're still young.
