About
The Witches of Coconut Grove are a coven who use their powers of persuasion in marketing and sales.
The Devil wore blue jeans, Birkenstocks and a polo tshirt. It was obvious he wasnt from Miami. His sentences ended like a question and his eyes squinted when he smiled. He kinda looked like a big Canadian bear. Round belly, round nose and hair peppered with grays even though he was only 36. A cashed-out entrepreneur, the dream of every Gen X kid who came of age at the dawn of the Internet. And it wasn’t porn. He was from Vancouver where skin belonged under clothes. He sold office supplies to businesses. A lot of supplies and exited to the tune of $90 million. He achieved the ubiquitous IPO before most other dot coms bombed.
And when I read his bio, it was all I needed to decide to work for a new company he was building in Coconut Grove. Well, that’s a lie. My friend read my tarot cards and said I would have more creative freedom working for The Devil’s company instead of reporting for a small newspaper covering county government. When I think about it now, I am sure either avenue would have led me in the same direction, because that’s just how life works. I mean, hello, it was illustrated for us all in Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow (except in my case I wasn’t faking a bad British accent).
When I arrived at the office on McFarlane Road, a radiant blond greeted me at the front desk. Just by the looks of her, I couldn’t imagine myself working in this place. I never worked anywhere that the front desk woman could have been a model. I was a newspaper reporter for crying out loud...Uh oh. Am I about to copy The Devil Wears Prada story?
But then I saw that article. I would be working for a dot com veteran! I would have the chance to continue the story I had begun in San Francisco at Latino.com. I never got my IPO, so maybe this would be my chance at the fortune I set out to make when I left home in 1993.
Well, no, actually, I never ventured into the world to make a fortune. When I think about it now, I’m not sure what my goal was when I left home. I’m not sure I had one. I just knew I was supposed to leave home and go do something with my life. I merely followed the signs and learned as I went. I knew at some point I had to live in San Francisco because that’s where all hippies go…just so happened that’s where all the dot com kids went in 1999. We were the Matrix kids. The founding architects of a new world.
So, I knew I was supposed to work for The Devil. He made sense…although the atmosphere was suspicious.
“Is this a Boiler Room?” I asked him point blank like a little naive suburban girl. I mean, if it was, would he have told me, “Why, yes, young investigative reporter! You are a sharp shooter, aren’t you?”
Maybe it was this naïveté that made him hire me. He needed a news editor that he could easily manipulate. I did not know that I would become his propaganda machine girl.
I’m a machine gurl
A propaganda machine gurl!!!
Yeah, I came up with a lot of songs of protest during my time in the corporate world. It was my creative outlet, although I didn’t realize it. Before going down into corporate underworld my mind was whole, not split into the half that works for money and the half that is truly me, the human that was born on a 22. That’s the interesting thing about The Devil. He, too, was born on a 22, except in June. My first day at work was his birthday. I had no idea this was astrologically significant. Apparently The Devil metaphorically impregnated me with the seed of a new entrepreneurial endeavor, and I would give birth to it 9 months later.
