Doom Boom

Hemmed in by inflation, recession, the energy crunch and rising unemployment, middle-class Americans might logically be retrenching--or even digging trenches. In fact, the economic malaise seems to have generated an extraordinary happy-woe-lucky mood. As a laid-off Manhattan construction superintendent puts it: "I could have played out my savings and played safe, but I wanted to enjoy myself. This is the last great splurge." It could be called the Doom Boom.

Over the year-end holidays, the occupancy rate of more than 27,000 rooms in hotels and motels around Florida's Disney World reached 93%--and the superamusement center was so jam-packed it had to close its gates to visitors. In California, Disneyland was also doing record business. As of this week Broadway theater ticket sales are running $6 million ahead of last year's level. Sales of costly Steinway pianos have hit a historic high C. At Stanley Korshak Inc., one of Chicago's most expensive dress shops, Vice President Stanley Korshak Jr. reports that business has been running 20% ahead of last year. "We're spending it while we have it," he says, adding: "When faced with uncertainty, we are liable to do strange things." Korshak, for one, has bought his first car in eight years and is going skiing at Vail.

Expensive Gems. In Boston, the city's only private indoor tennis club has closed its rolls, while its 1,300 members (at $100 dues and $10 per hour) fill eight courts 16 hours a day. Elegant jewelry stores in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles say that sales of expensive gems are better than ever. At the National Boat Show in Manhattan last month, sales and attendance were way up over last year. Marvelled Managing Director Frank Scalpone: "These people don't care about money."

They do, in fact. Says Mrs. John Hellstrom, a stock analyst's wife and mother of two who lives in Morristown, N.J., "I shop much more carefully for food, but my husband and I don't care if it's not fancy. Recreation is more important, particularly because my husband works so hard."

Increasingly, recreation means travel. More and more Americans are taking cruises or jetting to the Caribbean. Explains Linda Winer, a veteran Boston travel agent who says she has never experienced such a busy year: "The same people who regard tuna and Sara Lee cake as luxury items, treat travel as a necessity. They just have to get away from it all. Lying under a palm tree all day with no cousins borrowing money, no phone ringing with bad news, and no Wall Street Journal every day to tell you how badly your stocks are doing, you can act like royalty and just pretend for a week."

Travel patterns have, however, been modified by the money crunch. As one agent says: "Travel to Europe is dead, but dead--killed by the high cost of European jaunts." At Winer's agency, 60% of all bookings in the past month have been to the Caribbean--at an average cost per couple of $1,000. Jack Benjamin, a salesman in the languishing retail-garment trade, recently took his wife for a week at the Club Mediterranee in Martinique--a trip that set them back $1,400. Now they have paid for a return visit to the same resort in March. When Harry Lack, a district court judge in Everett, Mass., and his wife decided to take a golfing trip to Paradise Island, Bahamas, they could have saved $280 by booking into a charter flight and considerably more cash by staying at one of the island's pleasant smaller hotels. Instead, they flew first class and booked into the pricey Britannia Beach Hotel. "I feel inflation like everyone else," says Mrs. Lack. "With the economy tight, I'm not getting a new car this year like I usually do, but we've always taken trips, so why stop now? You can't live in fear."

Many people do, in fact. At upper Michigan's Indian Head Mountain ski resort, where business is expected to be up 5% over its best previous year, General Manager Paul Karow ruminates: "We sit around and try to figure this out. Either our skiers refuse to believe the economy, or they have a doomsday syndrome: they think that they'll be in the breadlines next year." Meanwhile, on snowy slopes and silver beaches, middle-class Americans are engaging in the pursuit of happiness more passionately than ever.

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