Bokeelia → Naples → Big Cypress → Miami Beach

[amw]

I love Miami Beach. It is exactly like my dream of what it should be. It is seedy. Dirty. Glitzy. Glamorous. Fake. Gritty. It feels like a future city. But also with a legacy that hasn't been steamrolled to make way for new development

Comments

[newwaytowrite]

My South Beach story. We were staying at the airport hotel for one night. We took a taxi to South Beach on the strip that faces the water. It was starting to get dark and the cab driver asks, “What was the building number again? I don’t see so good at night.” Our in sync reply was, “You can drop up here.”

The concierge at our hotel said you don’t have to pick a restaurant before you head out. Just take a walk and get a feel for what suits you. Turns out we ended up not feeling anything except love for our choice before we got in the cab. We did walk up and down that street and it was a sea of people which included a Rastafarian who was seemingly 7 feet tall and walked right into me, the warm April night air and the Art Deco vibe of area was magical.

Dinner was great at A Fish Called Avalon which it seems is still in business.
After we wandered around hoping to find live music place playing Latin music. We never found it and hopped in cab back to the hotel.

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[wanderingmogwai]

Wow. I have friends in Naples who just trash Miami but you make me want to see it for myself

[siglinde99]

It sounds like a great visit. I didn’t really see much of the Everglades when I was there just before COVID lockdowns started. I don’t think my daughter would have been happy with anything more adventurous than the little we did see.

And I agree that South Beach is pretty special. I fell in love with the idea of it from Some Like it Hot, the old Marilyn Munroe, Toney Curtis, Jack Lemmon movie. When I finally went, I was delighted to see that some of the architecture and atmosphere were still there. It was also the site of one of my most amusing encounters with Americans. I ended up in a bar talking to some young guy who had always been. Republican but had voted for Obama because of Obamacare. He realized how much he needed it after getting a concussion because he crashed his ATV while driving drunk. The only thing missing from that stereotype was a gun; though maybe he was hunting when it happened and I just forgot that part (yay tequila shots).

[geminiwench]

Yeah, I wonder how Florida was the center of the global pandemic for like.... 6 months!

Land of the Free-ing it up down there.

I listened to a story about how a self-published 1980s nihilist short novel became the basis of a couture collection in Milan in the 2010s.... the original author only finding out when a friend showed him a Vogue with his book title printed on a $900 t-shirt.... and an exploration of the changing face of lived nihilist philosophy.

Short answer: Planned obsolescence, YOLO, and the idea pervasive idea that is so close to the surface that even commercialism sells the idea that there literally is no future... just accept it.

That is what a club filled to the brim with maskless questionably vaccinated people during a global pandemic sounds like to me. "Fuck the future".

[amw]

I think that's how a lot of young people look at the world... and old people too. I mean, it's fair, right? Why should anyone care about things outside of their immediate bubble, or outside of the now? What does it matter after you're dead? I imagine that's the default state of a creature. Considering the health of the rest of the species, or other species, or the ecosystem as a whole... that has to be a conscious decision, and one that we can't depend on everyone to make, so all we can do is best efforts with the tools (societal norms, government regulation etc) that we have.

[geminiwench]

People of all generations find 'reasons' [excuses] to care only about themselves and to turn off the feelings of responsibility toward... the future or others.

It's probably the central 'fight' which is inherent in things like tribalism and generalized selfishness. Pinpoint thinking.