dmdp.2 - Lady Miami Magnificent and Morose (Miami part one)

[david's

menu-driven planet]

the second in a series of semi-lucid rants
by david, only on LifeLube

Finding
Sacred South Beach
requires sifting
thru a lot of Shit

Versace is dead. Perhaps my closest brush with fame came in 1991; staying at, with, my newly- Exed Ex (quite a trick right there) at his condominium on Lenox. Back then it could take a queen an hour to walk two blocks, so pervasive was the street cruising. I emerged from the Sea, wearing nothing but a pair of white painter shorts. Gianni Versace lived and died at the News Cafe, and as I approached he was at his table looking down at the Street and the Drive and the Beach and the Ocean. His eyes lit up with the look of Love (slight chance also that it was cocaine, or a combination of the two) as he saw me. I entered and perused the extensive magazine selection, all the time he and I stealing glances of each other. I know- hard to believe in 2007 that you could enter a commerical establishment without a shirt.

As I said, I was down there with a newly exed- and not happy about it- Ex AND I was newly, seriously enamored with someone else as well. The Man situation was already complicated enough without adding another, no matter HOW famous and rich. And in those days I wouldn't even consider sex - any kind- with an HIV positive person. I would have been floored to discover Versace was HIV negative. Just common sense. As much as I could tell from a couple looks into his eyes, Gianni Versace was a decent man.

So here it is, South Beach 2007. Caricatures run rampant- the fake I.D. crowd - BREEDER TEEN URBAN POOR BEACH BAR PARTY- run to make reservations NOW- blasting their music while cruising or crawling down Ocean Drive; fagaphobic Amer- Cuban kids, visible 'Ho and Pimp combos (like the less-Desirous aspects of Las Vegas, more on that later), a gay circuit beach party replete with bull-horn blasting protesters (tho the cops show up and make them spew unamplified Hate only)...almost full circle from my first visit here, maybe 1986; I'd never seen an abandoned City before and just my Buddy PULLING OVER- not even putting the car in park- caused me to become very disturbed indeed. We walked to the ocean, me just about walking backwards as I was sure somebody was going to come between us and the safety of the car. There was already the pastel orange- aptly named -SOUTH POINTE TOWER up-- my Buddys' YUCA lover had the brochure in their Coral Gables apt. - so the writing even then was very much on the wall. Miami Beach needs to be re-, no THREE-Gentrified but seeing as how every last single HOMO in South Florida has moved to LAUDERDALE, that ain't going to happen.

Our First night finds us in a Jordan Mozer- rehabbed hotel-er, bedsit. Small. Expensive. Centrally located. Then it's the MARLIN HOTEL, former home/studio of Island Records founder Chris Blackwell. Back in '93 I used the toilet here on a quick cab sortie from MIA, on brief layover between the Cayman Islands and O'hare....like I said, (toilet) brushes with fame. Also noted that last flash visit was the disheveled sands, courtesy of hurricane Andrew the previous year. We are happy to have this suite at the MARLIN- our trip is almost in the "last minute" catergory- and the present owner/operator is salacious and sails the ship smoothly during our stay- however there is a strong smell of vomit in the suite, right inside the bedroom door. As much as the roaming bar party that South Beach has become (Marlin ground floor included) I blame for this the immense disease incubators called CRUISE SHIPS- zillions of them, magnificent to look at as they round the tip of SoBe in the Government Cut. THe new downtown Miami performing arts center isn't named after CARNAVAL for nothing. Our ANCHORAGE AK. relatives say when Summer comes and the ships return everybody is frequently sick, as they contact the passengers at their jobs and bring pathogens home. SICK SCHMICK- SoBe has its' priorities straight- pop a bottle or can into any reputable lodgings' fridge and 2 minutes later it's not merely FROZEN- it is CRYOGENIC.

I talk with a black woman in a cafe about how there are no jobs anymore. I drink cuban coffee, which makes me psychotic. We got to JOES STONE CRAB several times even though my Partner doesn't eat crab. Sort of like Miami Beachs' BERGHOFF (R.I.P.) and lying in what was once known as SoFi (South of Fifth; does anybody remember the club JUNKYARD?). If nothing else it is venerable, capacious enought to make reservations an afterthought, and has rank after rank of servers that give a taste of how 'It Used To Be". The Food in South Beach is awful (another shared trait with Las Vegas); we get thru a meal (nice silver) at PACIFIC TIME, on a busy pedestrian thoroughfare. It too smells of puke. In back I find an article framed on the wall from a magazine that declares PACIFIC TIME one of it's "Best New Restaurants"...for 1994...I want to cry. Doing some research yields an eatery tip, and despite the fact that it's named after a person (always a bad sign- cult of personality and ego, ya know) and we go check it out. It's in what looks like a drop-dead gorgeous renovation of a historic hotel...from a distance. The lobby reveals all sorts of expensive woods and tarting up...this in a building, a district- originally constructed for the middle and (cough cough) working class Fantasy-ers. All these charming sows' ears down here that the Clueless - Madonna and the surviving, HETERO half of Studio 54 come to mind- destroy in their quest for a silk purse. It's a wonder we don't walk out of this place with the subversive sleekness, young Cuban bartender that blasts us with a nanosecond of pure resentment for distracting him from the TV, and desserts so sugary that they're almost inedible. I found this place mentioned in one of the glossy food magazines yesterday; the article was expounding on why the wine scenes in Las Vegas and Miami suck so bad (they don't care about building a clientele or repeat customers, evidently) and this place is specific was sited for marking up some of their wines 5 times wholesale- which the author says should be criminal.

Architect Michael Graves is wasted on South Beach, his condo building unfortunately similar in size to it's neighbors and probably forced to tone down by a local "design review board" as well. If Las Vegas and South Miami Beach have the worst food of any US Tourist meccas, Metropolitan Miami has the most all-abundant awful modern architecture. Witness how, over a decade ago, a design for twin condo towers from Chicagos' very own Helmut Jahn was rejected for being too "radical"- a rare occasion when perversity would have been appropriate, like smoking MARINOL pills, but ended up being-- like Irony in Miamis' overgrown, omnipotent and Evil Cousin Los Angeles- useless. The Should-be-fantabulous BASS MUSEUM is undone by its' small size and evisceration (again) of a historic library. In all fairness to architect ARATA ISOZAKI, there's a model here of what he WANTED to build, funds permitting. And South Beach can be solemn - the lustrous little clip of coral rock that constitutes the BASS is mere steps from the Ocean- how may treasures would YOU want to heft when invariably you flee, Florida being as perfectly mated to Atlantic Hurricanes as Mexico is to funnelling narcotics to the United States? The whole point maybe moot as Miami in general- South Beach in specific- are about a holy trinity of Beach, Body, and Party; if you want art, go to Buffalo.