South Beach

I just spent a week or so in South Beach. I really like that place. I’ve been there plenty of times before, but this time was different. First it was February, the busiest time of the year and also the nicest to visit the place. It was remarkable how different it was to my visits in the summer during the hurricane season. There was more atmosphere, the weather was less humid and much more pleasant. The restaurants were full, there were a lot of people on the beach. Yeah, nice period to visit. But an expensive period of course. Second: I had no tourists to take care of.

South Beach is the Art Deco area of Miami, although it looks nothing like our Art Deco in Brussels. It’s Tropical Deco, like they call it. Lots of colours, but very basic buildings. The best preserved buildings are on Ocean Drive. They now almost all turned into hotels and restaurants, surrounded by tall new condominium buildings. It’s only in the evening and at night that things get beautiful. During the day, the buildings somehow lose their charm. Ocean Drive looked really cool this time with all the outside terraces filled with people. On the other side of the Drive, the Ocean side, they finally finished a boardwalk promenade. I love walking up and down on it, doing my favourite pastime: people watching.

There’s a few well known establishments on Ocean Drive, of which the most touristy one is the house in front of which Gianni Versace was murdered. I don’t really like the house, I prefer the house to the left of it, but you see a lot of people taking pictures of the gate. Whatever. Across that house on the beach side, you have the beach volley guys and the open air fitness equipment. It’s not like in Venice Beach though, it’s more natural.

I really prefer South Beach, Florida to Venice/Santa Monica, California. There’s just something much more natural in South Beach. There’s less attitude. There a lot of hot people in South Beach, hey, more than in LA, but they don’t really show off that much. It’s much less hip or alternative, but it’s somehow much more pleasant. The only thing I prefer about the LA beaches is the weirdo’s you meet on the promenade there. The skaters, the bladers, the artists. You don’t really have that in South Beach. But what I definitely prefer in South Beach are the beaches. Man, the beaches are nice! And the water is much cleaner too. It was a bit too cold to swim though, but it just feels much cleaner.

Another nice thing about South Beach is the mix of people. More than in LA, where you basically just have white folk, black folk and lots of Mexicans, you have a total different mix of people here. There’s more European tourists from all over Europe. There’s all the possible Caribbean, Central and Latin American people… It looked as if there hardly are any North Americans here. Nobody in South Beach was born in South Beach. They all come from somewhere else. You do have black people too, but the population is predominantly latin. South Beach is also much more gay than Santa Monica or Venice, but in a cool kind of way. And the models here look like they deserve to be models. In LA the models look like they’ve been fabricated at plastic surgery hospitals.

There’s three more roads that you can walk on. Collins Avenue is the one behind Ocean Drive and has all the hotels plus a lot of designer stores. Washington Avenue is the one behind Collins Avenue and has all the cool restaurants and shops and delis and stuff. And then there’s Lincoln Road, which is a pedestrian zone of ten blocks with more restaurants and shops. It beats 3^rd Street Promenade (Santa Monica) in charm and atmosphere.

I noticed something funny in the Miami fashion. A lot of shirts and t’s had huge symbols on them (inspired by death metal album covers: skulls, snakes, crosses..). Very cool, BUT they also pimp the shirts with bling bling. That is really incredibly ugly. However, it’s very Miami. I didn’t take a picture of it. There’s a lot of cool shops on Lincoln Road and Washington Avenue. On the latter avenue they have - close to Lincoln Road - lots of vintage stores, second hand clothes… and the further south you go, the more ‘independent’ the stores become. No chain stores there.

And there’s the nightlife! I love going to Twist. It’s kind of like a hook up place, but you can have fun watching people there. There’s a few rooms that play all kinds of music. As you enter you go though a mainstream (often pop rock) bar with video’s, then you get to a patio where there’s a separate bar in which gogo dancers get really trashy with stupid customers willing to put a dollar bill in their pants to get a touch or kiss maybe. If you walk up on the stairs in the patio you end up on the second level where you have a room with urban music and then a dance floor where you hear the typical Miami house (Victor Calderone, Peter Rauhofer). The dance floor is totally dark though, so just go there to dance and not to watch people, there’s plenty of places in the bar where you can do that. Twist has no cover! Most other clubs on Washington Avenue have and they are pretty expensive. Most of the clubs have daily night events. A bit further on Washington you have this r’n b club with an dress code! And there’s the ‘Madonna’, which is basically a nude bar. The only other club that I went to was on Lincoln Road, called The Score. I had been there once and was disappointed by its size (small bar), but I didn’t know there was a door leading to a big dance hall behind the bar. I went on Wednesday night: the latin night. I hoped to hear some more reggaeton, but all I got was salsa, salsa, merengue, salsa, latin pop and did I mention salsa? I needed a few cuba libres to appreciate it though. But I had great fun.

Friday and Saturday night are incredibly busy! Parking is hell. Remember this golden tip: park your car in the car parking near the police station (12 street/Washington). During the week it’s only 6 dollars/24 hours. In the weekends it’s 10 dollars. You’ll pay much more in other parking lots and it’s kind of safe next to the police station. It’s also very central. The parking on Lincoln Road for instance is always full and 8 dollars per day during the week. There is hardly any room to park your car in the street as it’s for residents only. And the other places are a quarter per 10 minutes or so. Actually, don’t get a car when you just want to stay in South Beach alone.

I was happy to have a car though as I found a very nice and affordable hotel on 76 street (yes, 60 blocks north of Lincoln Road which is 16 street). I found the Baltic hotel by accident. I wanted to get something cheap but the motels along highway 1 and road 1A1 (the coastal road) were either dirty, sold out or too expensive. I just happened to see the little corner hotel and stopped. I got a nice room for 80 dollars flat. A 2 minute walk from the beach (very clean, family friendly, quiet). The owner is a Costa Rican woman who just loves to talk (about her feud with the Cuban neighbours: ‘the Cubans think they own Miami’) and the rooms are really neat. I also stayed in the Royal Hotel on 8^th street/Washington. That room wasn’t as clean, but I loved the interior (very sixties: all white plastic furniture which combined the bed with the kitchen table or the relax chair with the tv holder) and the price was okay for such a good location. I would recommend the Clay hotel though, if you ever decide to go. It’s most central and most economical. No cool interior, but really the best place on the beach. There’s a lot of shabby motel looking hotels that overcharge for dirty rooms. And the big hotels charge too much money for a room. I finally understood how hotels can make money. It’s because of impulsive travellers like me. You end up paying twice as much as if you would pay it in a travel agency! My business card didn’t help much.

Oh well. I’m stuck at the airport in Miami. Hope to get the last flight to Atlanta, otherwise I’m fucked.