Aliens In My Nieghborhood

Back in 1985, director Ron Howard chose my neighborhood as the setting for the movie Cocoon.

ign.com

Cocoon was a story about aliens who landed in a waterside community to retrieve fellow aliens who had been left behind in an earlier mission.

imdb.com

In the process, the movie's senior citizens discovered an energy source that made them feel younger. It was a simple story made more appealing by the cast, which included names like Don Ameche, Jessica Tandy, Hume Cronyn, Maureen Stapleton, Brian Dennehey and Gwen Verdon.

click to enlarge  |  Mark D. Ruffner © 2013

This is a view of my neighborhood as viewed from behind my house. (My back yard is directly behind and to the left of the six palms.) The water is a recently restored estuary that leads into a small bayou, which in turn is part of Tampa Bay.

From my back yard, I view a park that was filmed as part of the movie. At nighttime, the senior citizens would run through the park to a swimming pool that had restorative powers, a sci-fi Fountain of Youth. (But the pool was filmed in another part of the city.)

The movie began about two blocks from my house at these little villas, which are part of a retirement community. They look out on Tampa Bay, which you can see in the background, and they date to the 1940s, when the retirement community was a yacht club.

Of course this land is prime real estate, so these charming villas — now individual units of the retirement community — are being torn down for new housing,

This is a different type of alien in a neighborhood of one- and two-story houses. One of my city's (and state's) greatest challenges is to protect natural resources and their accessibility, including simply allowing everyone to have a view of the water! There were literally years of wrangling when these buildings were first proposed, and along the way, the builders have made numerous concessions to the neighborhood. This building, for example, would have been twice as high.

Off in the distance is a view of Tampa Bay.

.