South Florida Sun Sentinel from Fort Lauderdale, Florida • Page 72

LIFESTYLE SUN-SENTINEL, SOUTH FLORIDA 80 Saturday, august 7, 1999 MS Startup maybe Brown's greatest challenge When Brown announced last July that she would leave The New Yorker, the story was reported as if it were a crisis of state. j- v- JI i XT'1 i A I 1 i grainier paper, which allow a reader to roll up the magazine and maybe stuff it inside a back pocket more easily than a perfectly-bound glossy publication, "So the important thing was to give the readers something that felt theirs and private and easy and informal and entertaining and smart and do it in a format that made it very portable and fast tp read," Brown said after paging slowly through her premiere. loved doing The New Ybrfeer, but it was a template that was already there, so I was able to stretch that and change that and add to that and enrich that, but all I could do really was to work on it and with it." A writer for The Daily Telegraph, one of the London papers that have kept Brown in their sights, observed recently that "the American magazine world is di-, vided into two very stark camps! one which believes Brown can walk on water and one which would give up vital organs to see her fail." "I think that Talk is going to be more different than people expect," said Steven Brill, the chain man and editor in chief of Brill'i Content, the media-watchdog magazine. "I think it will look and feel like a new magazine. Tina is very good at what she does The test for anything like this is whalj the magazine will be like in its sec ond or third or fourth year.

The first issue will get a lot of momen-j tous coverage, but the question will be what the fifth or the 20th is-i sue will have in them." Then there was the promotional lift unwittingly given last month by the administration of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani when it barred Talfe from using the Brooklyn Navy Yard for the launch party following reports that Hillary Clinton, his likely opponent in next year's U.S. Senate election, would appear on the first cover. Two days of lively news coverage followed. Former Vogue publisher Ronald A. Galotti joked: "Rudy was part of the plan from the TALK Continued from page id photos, more provocative covers and an array of brand-name writers.

In the process, she was admired and reviled and though the magazine continued to gush red ink, she boosted circulation from 627,000 to 813,000. When Brown announced unexpectedly last July that she would not renew her contract with publishing mogul S.I. Newhouse Jr. and would leave The New Yorker to launch a multimedia venture with Miramax Films, the story was reported by some of the national media as if it were a crisis of state. The New York Times ran the news above the fold, alongside its lead story, on Page 1.

Time magazine went on for six pages. This time, the conventional wisdom is that Brown for all her smarts, her unparalleled ability to generate buzz for her products and her skill in attracting great talent and lavishing them with a ff ec-tion and compensation faces a much greater challenge. She must build the very platform of Talk, instead of taking over an established entity. Starting from nothing, she has raised the level of expectation much higher than it has been. After the boats left Liberty Island, crossed New York Harbor and returned the partygoers to lower Manhattan, the question remained: Does the world need another general-interest magazine, even one from Tina Brown, and especially in this increasingly wired age? Brown acknowledged the fairness of the question in an interview in Talk's temporary offices in Midtown Manhattan.

But, she said: "I had a burning desire to do another magazine, which I thought was there to be done. And that was a magazine which had intimacy and offered a direct engagement with the reader because, I think, that in an age of incredible clutter, the readers are almost more and more alienated from magazines. There are so ALL ABOARD: A tram takes passengers on a leisurely spin, staff photoLou Toman Emphasis is on education FLAMINGO Continued from page ID injured or endangered wildlife. Orchids, ferns, bromeliads, gingers and birds of paradise line the walk': ing paths and trails. Oaks more than 200 years old and 300 species of palms create a canopy of green.

Injured birds of prey make their homes here, along with native waterfowl. A half-acre aviary, opened five years ago, hosts 42 species and more than 200 birds. It includes the largest captive collection of wading birds in the United States and operates the only breeding program for the endangered wood stork. At the aviary, visitors walk through South Florida's five natural habitats with displays of coastal prairie, mangrove swamp, cypress forest, sawgrass marshlands and subtropical hardwood hammock. Nearby, river otters, pink flamingos, alligators and tortoises live in Flamingo Pond.

Peacocks display their teal and sapphire plumage as they strut near the front porch of the old Wray house, built in 1933 and registered today as a historical site. I With development effacing the natural landscape, Flamingo Gardens is "a jewel sitting in the middle of suburbia," says spokeswoman Debbie Griffin. Flamingo Gardens opened to the public in 1969, after the deaths of Floyd and Jane Wray. Today, it is owned and operated by the not-for-profit Floyd L. Wray Memorial Foundation, established by his wife.

In keeping with the Wrays' wishes, the emphasis is on education. A The Decorators' Secret Designer 5llk Plants Floral Arrangements that rival Mother Nature at manufacturer-direct savings of 30-60 Off Ledge Gardens Comp. $70.95 NOW $29.97 Hash Greenery Bskts Comp. $70.95 NOW $29.97 i' Floral Arrangements Comp. $88.95 NOW $39.97 Large Floor Plants Comp.

$137.95 NOW $59.97 many that what is going to make them become engaged?" In the 258-page premiere, which went on sale this week, Luanda Franks' intimate portrait of Hillary Clinton engaged many especially news organizations as the first lady finally bared what she calls "enormous pain, enormous anger" over her husband's fling with Monica Lewinsky. "I admire her for doing it," Brown said of the piece. "I think she's brave for doing it and, of course, we're delighted that she chose us to do it in." In photo spreads, various stars appear in roles they wish they had had, including a naughty Gwyneth Paltrow, seen as a big-haired Bar-barella and in the kind of skimpy leather worn by Charlotte Ram-pling in The Night Porter. Paltrow, Hillary Clinton and Texas Gov. George W.

Bush, the subject of a piece by Talk political writer Tucker Carlson, share the cover. In addition, there's a New York doctor's emergency-room diary; the humorous Frank DeCaro resident fat recalls trying to slim down through a combat regimen practiced by the Israeli military; playwright Tom Stoppard reflects on being Jewish, and journalist Gerald Posner, who has debunked conspiracy theories in books such as Case Closed, examines the lingering allegations of Muhammad al-Fayed over the car crash that killed his son, Dodi al-Fayed, and Princess Diana. The slightly oversized, dimensions of Talk mirror those of Stern, the German magazine, and the use of headlines and subheads give many pages the familiar format of a newspaper. Black-and-white photos are plentiful. Still, the overall look is casual, right down to the staple stitch and LIGHTHOUSE PT.3640 N.

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DIRECTIONS: Interstate 595 west to Flamingo Road. Travel south three miles. ADMISSION: $10 for adults; $5.50 for children ages 4 to 1 1 free for 3 and under. Discounts are available for seniors and members of AAA. HOURS: 9:30 a.m.

to 5:30 p.m. daily. Closed Mondays through Oct. 1 CALL: 954-473-2955 few years ago, the staff began host-ing Wildlife Encounters to give children a close-up introduction to reptiles and birds of prey. Tram tours take visitors through the remaining grove, from which fresh citrus and juice is still prepared, as well as a rain forest exhibit with exotic plants from Africa, South America and Southeast Asia.

In the early years, visitors drove for miles to buy fresh oranges and orange juice here. "Getting out here back then was like coming way, way west," Griffin says. "It changed when Flamingo Road went from a rickety two-lane country road to a major six-lane highway that connected to 1-595." With the new roads came a wave of development and the steady disappearance of farmland and trees. Today, an enclave of homes at the half-million dollar mark is being built behind a long concrete wall to make your name stand out in a sea of dots? That's the tricky part. That's why we founded Leiby.com.

We cut through all the so-called "content" to bring you a singular entrepreneurial vision: What you see is what you don't get. Many people have constructed personal "home pages" that focus on their pets, hobbies, families, ro-mantic adventures, obsessions with Hitler, etc. Some painstakingly update their cyber-diaries daily; they are truly "masters of their domains." (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) But what about those with neither the time nor the inclination to create content, or who simply don't know what to create? gan about 1996. In Batra's account, interest was budding simultaneously on both coasts; she cites a gallery exhibition of photos that brought it to New Yorkers' attention, and a stylist's discovery of Batra's salon, Ziba, outside Los Angeles. Stylist Lwren Scott wore her mehndi to Hollywood parties, the author says, then hired Ziba to paint LivTyler's hands and feet for a Vanity Fair cover shoot by Herb Ritts.

Soon other stars embraced mehndi, too. Most visible was Gwen Stefan! of the band No Doubt. In December 1997, Batra was asked to apply Madonna's mehndi for the video of Frozen, from the OPEN DAILY 'TIL OR 24 HOURS: www.silksllksilk.com AVENTURA 20633 Biscayne Blvd 682-9002 PEMBROKE PINES 12592 Pines Blvd 441-9255 DAVIE 8910 Slate Rd. 84 473-4565 FT. LAUDERDALE 2370 N.

Federal Hwy 563-6222 CORAL SPRINGS 2055 N. University Dr. 340-7881 Sun-Sentinel ONLINE Find more information about South Florida destinations at Showtime Interactive at wvvw.shovvtime interactlva.comdestinations. just north of Flamingo Gardens. Traffic rushes past its narrow driveway at 60 miles per hour.

"There's no time for them to stop," says Griffin. Since it opened to the public 30 years ago, Flamingo Gardens has weathered a shift in Florida tourism to giant attractions such as Disney World and Universal Studios. It still attracts 80,000 visitors a year, and many people still come to buy fresh juice and citrus. (There also are garden and gift shops.) "It's very hard to compete with the excitement attractions," Griffin says. "I've heard people say they think that we're a cemetery, or that we're only a juice stand.

Or people will say, 'Oh, I was there once, 10 years The Wrays' mission was to educate and build an Everglades sanctuary as well as preserve a priceless piece of Florida's past. In that, Flamingo Gardens succeeds. "This is a place for solitude and quiet," Griffin says. "A place for people who want to get away from the hustle bustle and go someplace quiet, to see the plants and wildlife. To get a feel for what Florida was like." Kathleen Kern'wky can be reached at or 954-356-4725.

dot-org Over at Network Solutions, many workers registered their own domains a free perk but the sites remain inactive. Devoid of content. Empty. "It's what my life is, so why not my Web site?" quips Agnes Tatar-ka, a Network Webmaster who owns Tatarka.com. "I keep thinking when I have a lot of free time or a great imaginative burst, something that I need to share with the world, this would be the perfect vehicle to do it.

Time and vision are two things that are missing." It's a common lament. At we offer the ultimate network solution: No pesky content whatsoever! No guilt, either. Simply link your site to my personal vision of vacuity. Ray of Light album to be released in '98, Henna paste from crushed leaves may have been used to color skin as long as 5,000 years ago, and stain-decorated skin has been found on Egyptian mummies, she says. The use of mehndi is customary in India, North Africa, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, especially in wedding rituals.

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