The Florida Club: An Inside Look at Gated Golf Country Club Life in Florida

By Ray Brown

Have you ever driven by a classy, gated community and wondered what the hell is going on in there? Perfect for fans of the Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, which gave the reader a behind-the-scenes view of the inner workings of the New York City restaurant scene, The Florida Club offers an inside look at country club living in a gated Florida community.
In 2019, with his partners mired in legal trouble and danger closing in, New York businessman Ray Brown decided on a major life change, trading the frenzied world of New York real estate for a relaxed life of leisure in Southwest Florida. The Florida Club follows Ray's story as he acclimates to his new environment and learns about the golf, socializing—and partying—that goes on inside the Florida club.
The gated communities in the Sunshine State are full of more than just bunch of stuffy old blue-hairs sitting around playing bridge and waiting for a dirt nap. Others are playing golf, drinking everything they can get their grubby little hands on, and doing pretty much anything and everything to offend the snooty members without getting bounced from the club. Their exploits will amuse, inform, appall, and make you wish you could be one of them.
Even if you're skeptical, please buy the book anyhow. It won't take too long to read, and we could really use the money; our bar tab has gotten out of control.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: May 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9781662943126

Book preview

Chapter 1

Out of the Bunker

Shaking off the wounds of the spring of 2019 might never happen, but my comeback has already begun. It’s mid-June, and I am packing up the apartment, a penthouse on the ocean where I’d lived during the week for the past three years. One of my business partners, Jack Gruenfeld, is picking me up to drive me back to my weekend home in Connecticut. Jack had told me that our partner, Mike Ashley, wanted to see me before I left Long Island for Connecticut.

Mike is the big partner in our company. Mike is a very wealthy and successful former race car driver. A day earlier, I had packed up my office that was in Mike’s building. In a few weeks, I will be saying goodbye to my home in Connecticut as well. On the ride to Mike’s office, Jack and I discussed the great run we’d had and why and how things went so bad. Our business was foreclosures and short sales, and we were very good at what we did.

Mike Ashley is a year younger than I am. At the time, I was fifty-five and he was fifty-four. In 2017, Mike came to my office on Long Island to move Jack, me, and everyone who worked for us to his building out on Long Island.

At a meeting in his office at 4:00 a.m., Mike, his general manager Darren, Jack, and I went over twenty deals that I was working on at the time. Mike was so impressed with my current deals that he told people in his operation that I was bringing in more deals than another team of eight in his office. Mike offered me a partnership, which included $14,000-per-month office space in his building in addition to a salary base of $20,000 a month. The monthly base would increase to $30,000 with a long-term goal of $100,000 per month. That deal almost didn’t happened when Jack and I didn’t get back to him quickly enough.

This move was a smart, bold step for us. Mike works every day from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Over seventy people in his office are presenting and working on deals. At that time, Mike had the largest by-volume short sale business in the country.

While welcoming Jack, me, and our team to the new office, Mike and some of his managers gave us a tour of the building. Mike took me aside to make it clear to me that he never would have gone into business with Jack unless I was involved. Even though Jack was offended by that, I told him to brush it off and think of the benefits of working with Mike.

Another component to this deal was Mitch Cohen. Mitch had served forty-three months in jail for mortgage fraud. I was instrumental in getting Mitch released from jail. Then I personally protected him for a year from former business partners, ex-wives, and other powerful enemies. In addition, I hired back all of his former employees and put his whole operation back together under my supervision. Mitch had people on the streets in New York—Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, and Long Island—who were bringing him multiple deals for $5,000 a deal.

At the height of his successful run, Mitch was closing fifty deals per month. His business model was to purchase run-down properties, then rehab them and sell them to first-time homebuyers. Not only were Mitch and Mike Ashley two of the biggest fish in New York City and its boroughs’ real estate pond, they were also lifelong rivals. So here I was sitting right in the middle of the two. Mitch is the only guy I know who had more money when he got out of jail than when he went into jail.

A week after Mitch got out of jail, police from a town on Long Island tried to pick him up on a parole violation, which I promptly took care of. A short time later, there was also a problem with one of my office tenants, Marlin Crawford Jr., who was 6 feet 5 inches and 280 pounds and had just served 10 years in jail. I also took care of that problem, although my back and neck hurt me for several days after that. LOL!

I’d put Mitch’s desk next to mine while I took phone calls with clients in foreclosure. Mitch would hear an address, pull it up on the Internet, then tap me on the shoulder and whisper, I’ll buy it. We were closing deals like this left and right.

When Mitch heard I was going to close the office and become a partner with Mike Ashley, he did everything he could to get me to stay. In the end, Mitch wasn’t willing to go as far as Mike. Jack and I worked out a deal with Mitch to take over our office, and we went east to work with Mike. Jack and I and our smaller team went on a successful run. I was making it happen and living up to my end of the deal.

The first chink in the armor was back in December 2018, when Mike came into my office to meet with Jack and me in the conference room to let us know he was in trouble with some previous bank mortgages from ten years ago. Mike was potentially facing thirty years in prison. The bottom line was that he was not going to be able