South Beach in Miami is another world, a world that contains mysteries, a tangled mashup of opulence and seediness, of beautiful young people just starting out and old folks barely holding on. Teenage models saunter to their next shoot, oblivious of the crazy old ‘Nam vet staggering along Ocean Drive muttering to himself. Overweight tourists from the midwest gape in confusion as two beautiful young men share a passionate embrace on their way home from the Palace bar. The lovely Casa Casuarina (the former Versace mansion) is only steps away from sad little old boarded up Deco-style hotels awaiting their final doom. Here everything seems to find its opposite.
Looking at the rows of boarded up buildings, I sense an uneasy turmoil lurking just behind the image of happy sun kissed throngs sipping their afternoon drinks by the ocean. The recent real estate crash is turning things upside down, the reality of the approaching recession starting to creep into a place that prides itself on being disconnected from anything as mundane as mere reality.
South Beach has become such a jewel ever since Michael Mann’s TV fantasy of Sonny Crockett’s world caused the real place to become revitalized, transformed into its own fabulous television image. A dream brought to life. I hope South Beach manages to hold on to that dream.
We passed through South Beach the other day as well, having five hours to kill waiting for a flight out. We would rather be MIA than stuck in MIA.
Hooray. I’ve been waiting for just the right place to say that.
I stopped in to four or five of the aging art deco hotels, only to find that their facades, though fading, were in much better shape than their lobbies and the people that staffed them.
Interestingly, the restaurants along the strip were eager to negotiate prices for lunch. As we walked down the sidewalk past each, their attractive young spokesmodel hostesses would eagerly talk up their menu of fresh seafood delights, all marked down 50% from the printed prices. As we would pass on, they’d throw in offers of a free bottle of wine, Boss sparkling water or calamari as enticements to get us to stay. Apparently, the menus are as much a facade there as the faces of the buildings.