miami and the keys picture post
Okay. I am something like 15 hours removed from my flight to Panama. I really hope that they don't institute some new bullshit COVID restrictions in the next day because the US and Canada both did. I could very well end up stuck down there without an easy way to get out of the country due to omicron, but i think i'd rather be stuck in a weird country that i don't know anything about than the US. It's more of an adventure.
In the mean time, here is my picture post for Miami and the Florida Keys. I liked the panhandle quite a lot, it was super chill, kinda like a version of the south that also had beaches and marinas and a bit of cosmopolitanism. But Miami just kills it. (Let's not talk about the dreary ride from the panhandle south.) I love this city so much. I will miss it more than any city i missed bar Berlin. Despite the incredible wealth inequality visible on every corner, the vibe here is just unparalleled in America. It's better than LA, better than Vegas. Miami rocks.
The opening shot is in the art deco strip of the South Beach neighborhood of Miami Beach (which is technically a different city from Miami). The strip is no longer a street where you can drive your Ferrari down while listening to Phil Collins, it's now a walking street with a whole a shit-ton of touristy restaurants on one side and the beach on the other. Almost everyone walking around is impossibly beautiful. Women in bikinis, topless men, boobs and six-packs busting out all over the place. I'm not sure who is gay and who isn't. Almost everyone is a native Spanish speaker. It's incredible, exactly like everything i imagined of Miami. It's not "rich" in the sense of being old money classy, but there is definitely a ton of money flying around.
Coming up is an evening shot of the Miami Beach back streets. I don't associate Italians with Miami (other than Al Pacino taking the role of a Cuban in Scarface), but Italian food for whatever reason is popular down there. Note the bicycles, bikinis, black people and palm trees. This ain't like the rest of Florida.
Another sunset shot of Miami Beach, showing a Walgreens - an American drug store (pharmacy) that you will find everywhere in the country. Unfortunately there are lots of chains in town, which sometimes busts the illusion that it's a weird, wild city completely disconnected from the rest of America.
Selfie sitting on the rocks by the sea.
Night time back alley shot of Miami Beach.
On my way down to the Florida Keys, i tried to get onto a dyke that hugged the edge of Biscayne National Park. There was a bunch of construction and blocked off roads on my way there, but finally i made it and enjoyed a peaceful bike ride with absolutely nobody around.
When i got to the end of the dyke i had to wrestle my bike under these two gates, which were padlocked closed. Note the myriad bullet holes on the gate, reminding you that you are still in Florida. The Miami Bike Scene sticker was how i found the bike co-op where i donated my bike this afternoon.
I don't have very many photos of the Florida Keys because they fucking sucked, so here is one in North Key Largo that shows me cycling along the road with mangroves on both sides. That water on the edge of the road is actually the ocean, the shallows that made it through the mangroves.
The Seven Mile Bridge is by far the coolest section of the ride down to Key West. It's just a massively long causeway over the ocean. It's what i imagined the whole ride to be, but mostly it wasn't. The funny thing on this photo is the duplicated power pylon. The new (cheap) phone i bought in Miami clearly isn't very good at taking in-motion shots. Unfortunately you can't stop on this bridge, and this was one of the few sections where there weren't a million cars passing me.
Here is another view from the Seven Mile Bridge, looking over at the old bridge. The old bridge used to be a railroad bridge, before it was destroyed by a hurricane. Then they used the old bridge to make a highway, repurposing the railroad tracks to create those metal railings you see on the sides. But then even that bridge got retired and now it's a very, very long fishing pier for fishermen who have a lot of time to kill, walking all the way up to the best spot.
This is a neat piece of street art i saw in Key West. It's made out of a map of Chicago, which i thought was fun.
I liked this mural in Key West too, harking back to a time when ships were tall and romantic, and perhaps the town wasn't overrun by tourists.
This is my last Key West photo, taken from the restaurant right next to the southernmost point of the contiguous United States, looking south. We ate poke cups there, but that picture will come in a future food post.
Key West sucked, so i came back to Miami. This is a photo from way out in the southwest suburbs. There is a very long bus rapid transit road that goes along there, with a cycle path next to it, but thanks to Uber there are hardly any buses running any more. Most of the property next to the busway is derelict. This is a weird spot where they built a brand new condo building, but just like the property "gold rush" areas in China, it appears to be completely vacant. Really weird.
Some more graffiti along the busway.
I wanted to give you one more photo of a mangrove. This is from the mangrove near Coconut Grove/Coral Gables. There is a cycle path that goes down there that's now permanently flooded because of climate change or perhaps just sinking coastal mudflats. I got bitten by about a zillion mosquitos trying to go down it, then turned back because it was just too creepy. Instead i took the road, which was also half-flooded, and found a little beach and marina, with a mini-mangrove that made for a better photo.
There is a section of Miami called Wynwood where graffiti is legal. It is sandwiched in between a really seedy part of the city full of homeless and the ultra-sexy downtown area. I love street art, so you are going to get a bunch of stuff from this part of town. This is a picture of Jubilee, who is one of the X-Men. She's one of the few X-Men who is Asian-American.
This is one part of a huge mural by "ALEC" that appeared across many buildings in Wynwood. It's a very in-your-face criticism of the rich and powerful in Miami, featuring the Monopoly man and other American heroes like Betty Boop enjoying all the money and all the joy while the rest of the city suffers. The irony is that all the rich tourists coming to this part of town (including me) just walk past all the homeless people lying on the streets, take photos and then go back to their comfortable hotels feeling chuffed that they got in touch with the poors.
This was a badass mural on the side of an active, in-use warehouse in Wynwood.
Here is a picture of some people painting a new mural. Note the drone flying up there taking photos, presumably for a YouTube channel or something.
This is a less interesting photo, perhaps, but i really loved this art. These weird orange faces, gas masks (is that what they are?), black shipping container, painted palm trees... Plus the yellow buildings remind me a lot of the military buildings we used to live in when dad was in the British Army stationed in West Germany. Something about it just did something for me.
I had to get one last photo of my loaded bike, in front of a mural with a Miami Vice theme. Unfortunately i couldn't get a good photo of the industrial machinery behind the wall that was also painted from top to bottom.
Hey, there are some of those orange guys again.
Back in South Beach, i saw a bunch of baos hanging from the sky. I don't know if they were Chinese baozi, but they looked so much like baos i had to take a photo. I miss baos! I hope i can eat them in Panama City, since i have no doubt obnoxiously rich Chinese people laundered their money over there and perhaps opened some restaurants to boot.
Today i cycled up to the North Beach area, which is much quieter and less "hip" than South Beach, but it is still full of very expensive highrises. There are a few vacant lots, however, and this one had some trailers with street art on them.
God. Miami Vice. It's such a meaningful show for me. I went to South Beach. I went to the building with the hole in it (Atlantis Condominium). But the funniest thing i went to was Hialeah Park Casino, which didn't used to be a casino. In the time of Miami Vice it was a horse racing track with a lake in the middle where flamingos lived. Something like 30 years ago it closed down, then it reopened as a casino. The horses don't run there any more, but there are still a few flamingos. I got a photo of one of them, but it was so blurry you'll just have to "enjoy" this picture of the old horse race stands instead. The casino is underneath. I didn't visit. It made me sad that this iconic part of the Miami Vice opening credits kinda isn't there any more.
Here is the last photo of my bike, right in front of the shipping containers that are owned by the Miami bike co-op. It's back in Wynwood neighborhood. They run classes to teach people how to fix and maintain bikes, and accept donations of bikes and parts to give to low-income people in the neighborhood, of which there are many. At first i thought i was going to be sad that i was losing the bike that took me all the way from BC to Florida, but cycling through Overtown, Wynwood... Seeing the Ferraris and Maseratis literally parked right next to people sleeping on the street... Yeah, nah. Someone there needs that bike a lot more than me.
It's Art Basel weekend, and the cops were everywhere in Miami. It was insane. It felt like the fucking president was in town, there were whole swarms of 20 motorcycle cops cruising this way and that, traffic cops directing cars here and there. Nuts. Here is a cop car sitting there, chilling, while some artists paint a new wall.
One of the last photos i took, this is some street art on the way to the el train stop. They don't call it an el train over here, but it's a train, and it's elevated. I like being on foot again. Being on a bike is great because you can make a quick exit from sketchy areas, and you can go for miles between cities that you would have a very hard time walking. But inside the city, walking really lets you appreciate weird corners and angles that you don't get if you're on a bike (and absolutely not in a car or other motorized vehicle).
Man, i am going to miss Miami a lot. I wish there was a way to stay here as a tourist that wasn't incredibly expensive. I don't think it's much better for residents. There is such a stark split between the fabulously wealthy and luxurious parts of town and the trailer parks, crumbling tenements and homeless people located just down the road. It's baffling that somehow the wealthy residents aren't doing more to lift up the poor, because wouldn't you prefer to live in a neighborhood where everyone has a place to stay and a bit of self-respect? I guess not, as we know from San Francisco and all the cashed up tech workers who literally step over homeless people's bodies to get to their office and then complain that their six figure salaries aren't enough to afford a decent house in the neighborhood.
America is fucking fucked, man.
I mean, not that other countries are any better, but America is especially egregious because they are one of the richest countries in the world, and supposed to be the shining city on the hill. Culturally, perhaps. In places like Miami you really see the diversity and creativity of the American dream - in music, food, art, the works. But from a social justice perspective, lordy America got a lot of work to do.
In the mean time, here is my picture post for Miami and the Florida Keys. I liked the panhandle quite a lot, it was super chill, kinda like a version of the south that also had beaches and marinas and a bit of cosmopolitanism. But Miami just kills it. (Let's not talk about the dreary ride from the panhandle south.) I love this city so much. I will miss it more than any city i missed bar Berlin. Despite the incredible wealth inequality visible on every corner, the vibe here is just unparalleled in America. It's better than LA, better than Vegas. Miami rocks.
The opening shot is in the art deco strip of the South Beach neighborhood of Miami Beach (which is technically a different city from Miami). The strip is no longer a street where you can drive your Ferrari down while listening to Phil Collins, it's now a walking street with a whole a shit-ton of touristy restaurants on one side and the beach on the other. Almost everyone walking around is impossibly beautiful. Women in bikinis, topless men, boobs and six-packs busting out all over the place. I'm not sure who is gay and who isn't. Almost everyone is a native Spanish speaker. It's incredible, exactly like everything i imagined of Miami. It's not "rich" in the sense of being old money classy, but there is definitely a ton of money flying around.
Coming up is an evening shot of the Miami Beach back streets. I don't associate Italians with Miami (other than Al Pacino taking the role of a Cuban in Scarface), but Italian food for whatever reason is popular down there. Note the bicycles, bikinis, black people and palm trees. This ain't like the rest of Florida.
Another sunset shot of Miami Beach, showing a Walgreens - an American drug store (pharmacy) that you will find everywhere in the country. Unfortunately there are lots of chains in town, which sometimes busts the illusion that it's a weird, wild city completely disconnected from the rest of America.
Selfie sitting on the rocks by the sea.
Night time back alley shot of Miami Beach.
On my way down to the Florida Keys, i tried to get onto a dyke that hugged the edge of Biscayne National Park. There was a bunch of construction and blocked off roads on my way there, but finally i made it and enjoyed a peaceful bike ride with absolutely nobody around.
When i got to the end of the dyke i had to wrestle my bike under these two gates, which were padlocked closed. Note the myriad bullet holes on the gate, reminding you that you are still in Florida. The Miami Bike Scene sticker was how i found the bike co-op where i donated my bike this afternoon.
I don't have very many photos of the Florida Keys because they fucking sucked, so here is one in North Key Largo that shows me cycling along the road with mangroves on both sides. That water on the edge of the road is actually the ocean, the shallows that made it through the mangroves.
The Seven Mile Bridge is by far the coolest section of the ride down to Key West. It's just a massively long causeway over the ocean. It's what i imagined the whole ride to be, but mostly it wasn't. The funny thing on this photo is the duplicated power pylon. The new (cheap) phone i bought in Miami clearly isn't very good at taking in-motion shots. Unfortunately you can't stop on this bridge, and this was one of the few sections where there weren't a million cars passing me.
Here is another view from the Seven Mile Bridge, looking over at the old bridge. The old bridge used to be a railroad bridge, before it was destroyed by a hurricane. Then they used the old bridge to make a highway, repurposing the railroad tracks to create those metal railings you see on the sides. But then even that bridge got retired and now it's a very, very long fishing pier for fishermen who have a lot of time to kill, walking all the way up to the best spot.
This is a neat piece of street art i saw in Key West. It's made out of a map of Chicago, which i thought was fun.
I liked this mural in Key West too, harking back to a time when ships were tall and romantic, and perhaps the town wasn't overrun by tourists.
This is my last Key West photo, taken from the restaurant right next to the southernmost point of the contiguous United States, looking south. We ate poke cups there, but that picture will come in a future food post.
Key West sucked, so i came back to Miami. This is a photo from way out in the southwest suburbs. There is a very long bus rapid transit road that goes along there, with a cycle path next to it, but thanks to Uber there are hardly any buses running any more. Most of the property next to the busway is derelict. This is a weird spot where they built a brand new condo building, but just like the property "gold rush" areas in China, it appears to be completely vacant. Really weird.
Some more graffiti along the busway.
I wanted to give you one more photo of a mangrove. This is from the mangrove near Coconut Grove/Coral Gables. There is a cycle path that goes down there that's now permanently flooded because of climate change or perhaps just sinking coastal mudflats. I got bitten by about a zillion mosquitos trying to go down it, then turned back because it was just too creepy. Instead i took the road, which was also half-flooded, and found a little beach and marina, with a mini-mangrove that made for a better photo.
There is a section of Miami called Wynwood where graffiti is legal. It is sandwiched in between a really seedy part of the city full of homeless and the ultra-sexy downtown area. I love street art, so you are going to get a bunch of stuff from this part of town. This is a picture of Jubilee, who is one of the X-Men. She's one of the few X-Men who is Asian-American.
This is one part of a huge mural by "ALEC" that appeared across many buildings in Wynwood. It's a very in-your-face criticism of the rich and powerful in Miami, featuring the Monopoly man and other American heroes like Betty Boop enjoying all the money and all the joy while the rest of the city suffers. The irony is that all the rich tourists coming to this part of town (including me) just walk past all the homeless people lying on the streets, take photos and then go back to their comfortable hotels feeling chuffed that they got in touch with the poors.
This was a badass mural on the side of an active, in-use warehouse in Wynwood.
Here is a picture of some people painting a new mural. Note the drone flying up there taking photos, presumably for a YouTube channel or something.
This is a less interesting photo, perhaps, but i really loved this art. These weird orange faces, gas masks (is that what they are?), black shipping container, painted palm trees... Plus the yellow buildings remind me a lot of the military buildings we used to live in when dad was in the British Army stationed in West Germany. Something about it just did something for me.
I had to get one last photo of my loaded bike, in front of a mural with a Miami Vice theme. Unfortunately i couldn't get a good photo of the industrial machinery behind the wall that was also painted from top to bottom.
Hey, there are some of those orange guys again.
Back in South Beach, i saw a bunch of baos hanging from the sky. I don't know if they were Chinese baozi, but they looked so much like baos i had to take a photo. I miss baos! I hope i can eat them in Panama City, since i have no doubt obnoxiously rich Chinese people laundered their money over there and perhaps opened some restaurants to boot.
Today i cycled up to the North Beach area, which is much quieter and less "hip" than South Beach, but it is still full of very expensive highrises. There are a few vacant lots, however, and this one had some trailers with street art on them.
God. Miami Vice. It's such a meaningful show for me. I went to South Beach. I went to the building with the hole in it (Atlantis Condominium). But the funniest thing i went to was Hialeah Park Casino, which didn't used to be a casino. In the time of Miami Vice it was a horse racing track with a lake in the middle where flamingos lived. Something like 30 years ago it closed down, then it reopened as a casino. The horses don't run there any more, but there are still a few flamingos. I got a photo of one of them, but it was so blurry you'll just have to "enjoy" this picture of the old horse race stands instead. The casino is underneath. I didn't visit. It made me sad that this iconic part of the Miami Vice opening credits kinda isn't there any more.
Here is the last photo of my bike, right in front of the shipping containers that are owned by the Miami bike co-op. It's back in Wynwood neighborhood. They run classes to teach people how to fix and maintain bikes, and accept donations of bikes and parts to give to low-income people in the neighborhood, of which there are many. At first i thought i was going to be sad that i was losing the bike that took me all the way from BC to Florida, but cycling through Overtown, Wynwood... Seeing the Ferraris and Maseratis literally parked right next to people sleeping on the street... Yeah, nah. Someone there needs that bike a lot more than me.
It's Art Basel weekend, and the cops were everywhere in Miami. It was insane. It felt like the fucking president was in town, there were whole swarms of 20 motorcycle cops cruising this way and that, traffic cops directing cars here and there. Nuts. Here is a cop car sitting there, chilling, while some artists paint a new wall.
One of the last photos i took, this is some street art on the way to the el train stop. They don't call it an el train over here, but it's a train, and it's elevated. I like being on foot again. Being on a bike is great because you can make a quick exit from sketchy areas, and you can go for miles between cities that you would have a very hard time walking. But inside the city, walking really lets you appreciate weird corners and angles that you don't get if you're on a bike (and absolutely not in a car or other motorized vehicle).
Man, i am going to miss Miami a lot. I wish there was a way to stay here as a tourist that wasn't incredibly expensive. I don't think it's much better for residents. There is such a stark split between the fabulously wealthy and luxurious parts of town and the trailer parks, crumbling tenements and homeless people located just down the road. It's baffling that somehow the wealthy residents aren't doing more to lift up the poor, because wouldn't you prefer to live in a neighborhood where everyone has a place to stay and a bit of self-respect? I guess not, as we know from San Francisco and all the cashed up tech workers who literally step over homeless people's bodies to get to their office and then complain that their six figure salaries aren't enough to afford a decent house in the neighborhood.
America is fucking fucked, man.
I mean, not that other countries are any better, but America is especially egregious because they are one of the richest countries in the world, and supposed to be the shining city on the hill. Culturally, perhaps. In places like Miami you really see the diversity and creativity of the American dream - in music, food, art, the works. But from a social justice perspective, lordy America got a lot of work to do.