Getting back to Miami, I knew I had to live on the beach. In South Beach. There was no other place I wanted to be. Plus, that’s where most of the entertainment business was, or was near.
I got a cheap hotel room, by the beach, and was determined to find an apartment nearby. And I did find one. I soon landed an inexpensive, yet spacious studio in a set of apartments above a gelato shop. It was a killer location, too. Only a block away from the beach and only a block from the Versace Mansion.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent (In front of the mansion, which has now been converted into a hotel, is the spot where Gianni Versace was tragically shot and killed. I remember passing by that spot, regularly, and feeling the negative energy, on that strip of pavement. Once, late at night, I swear I saw a ghostly figure resembling Mr. Versace, an apparition, at the mansion’s front door, attempting to open the door, to no avail, and then vanishing, like a swarm of flies, into the eternal humidity of the night…) It had been a seismic shift, going from a small university town outside Nashville, to being in the heart of South Beach.
Just walking around the circumambient streets was like injecting a drug. It was intoxicating. The lights, the neon signs on buildings lit up at night. The mottled bright colors, the pinks and greens, the Art Deco architecture.
The cars around there, too. There was every sort of vehicle imaginable. Luxury cars, limousines, Vespa scooters, Hummers, buckets. Everything. My favorites, though, had to be the 1950s vintage American cars, so well-maintained, polished up and elegant as Christine. The boat-like things, with their caramel leather interiors, tailfins, and big round headlights, bright and bursting like twin stars.
It was as if every vehicle in South Beach had a special shine to it, the way they would glint and speckle in the sun.
I was loving the culture, too, art galleries with traveling exhibitions. It seemed like there was top-notch art talent everywhere. Young painters by the beaches and on the streets, poised to be the next Picasso.
And the music. The music! The hot nights were alive with hot live music, music pouring from bars, restaurants and clubs, powering the party. There were such great, swinging Salsa bands. Salsa so carnal and vibrant that it made you want to tear off your clothes, jump, and dance naked in the night. And there were so many awesome radio stations, too, playing everything from Latin music to dance, hip hop, pop, and rock.
I also found myself reading and highly enjoying the entertaining and insightful Miami New Times newspaper. As well as returning to reading print editions of my long-time favorites, The Miami Herald and Sun Sentinel.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent While I’d loved the food in the South, the Tennessee BBQ, South Beach was a truly diverse culinary paradise. Eliding a plethora of cuisines, with its daring fusion restaurants. And the beach boasted numerous fantastic restaurants, of all sorts, from Latin, to Asian, to American to Euro.
But the most delicious thing in South Beach, which was also the best scenery, was the walking works of art: the girls. Every sort of beautiful woman imaginable was in South Beach. The girls were even hotter than the climate. The Latinas, the South American ladies, and the European ladies there. Wow, wow, wow! They were immaculately beautiful! Cartoonishly beautiful! The Latin women with such impossibly perfect curves!
There were tons of models everywhere. Many agencies had headquarters in South Beach. So you’d see tall lovelies slinking and strutting all over.
(I found very little use for porn while living in South Beach. One only had to exit his/her dwelling, have functional vision and look around outside, especially at the beach, and the mind would be suitably stuffed with erotic imagery…) The beach was one of the spots where the beautiful people would congregate, understandably, to flaunt their bodies. Because… Why not? Why spend that time in the gym? Why diet? Why buy a bathing suit if you can’t wear it? And what’s South Beach without its beaches? In South Beach, the beach is the main attraction… I was there every day, my six-pack on full display…
The beaches featured beautiful locals, tourists, topless sunbathers. It was packed with eye candy. But it was more than just a place to ogle flesh. There was life, activity of all types. Everyone from surfers, runners, swimmers, walkers, artists, musicians, dancers, yogis, and folks playing volleyball, Brazilians doing Capoeira.
At night, the beach didn’t sleep, either. Night was a wonderful time to go for a late run, since it was cooler than daytime, less crowded. It was fun to walk on the beach at night, too, breathe in the salty air and glance up at the starlit skies and the endless, black ocean, with its flickering lights from cargo ships off in the distance. There’d be parties, bonfires, too, at night, and one could spot couples under blankets, having sex. Once I saw a young Black couple fucking in the bushes nearby the entrance to the beach…
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent (As the guy was banging the girl, from behind, I could hear his pelvis slapping at her ample buttocks, and the girl was cursing at him between feral moans, calling him, repeatedly, a “pizza eating nigga,” which I found slightly erotic, in a sinister way…)
Of course, it wasn’t all fun and fucking, wasn’t all glitter and gold, South Beach.
One of my neighbors, a young Colombian dude, was missing an arm, and he’d told me he’d had it chomped off by a shark as he surfed past the breakers, in the ocean, right nearby our building.
(There are countless shark attacks in Florida. But most of them involve small “bull sharks” that didn’t usually kill, only would take a nasty bite, rip off an arm or leg.
A cautionary tale for swimming or surfing past the breakers, which is where the sharks usually lurk. Though once, a small shark swished past my leg, and I felt its slimy, cold body brush the side of my calf. This was not even too deep in the sea.
Seeing the shark, I steeled my nerves, calmly walked backwards, and got out of the water unharmed, thankfully. I never entered that strip of water again…) As for the beach itself, with all the tourists and partying, it could get quite filthy.
There’d be lots of litter, especially in the morning, residue from the previous night’s partying, as well as pools of piss and vomit, used condoms, and I once found a bloody tampon in a parking garage next to the beach. The worst I saw, though, had to be broken glass which appeared sprinkled into the sand purposely…
There were tons of crazies around there, many homeless. One in particular who looked like a shit-encrusted version of Jesus, long hair, beard and everything. He’d stalk around the beach, screaming and yelling nonsense at people. One afternoon I saw him walking down the street naked, and he walked into traffic, squatted, dropped a shit in the middle of the road, then rose and stepped off calmly, as if nothing happened. I remember passing motorists, aghast, honked at him and gesticulated, though I’m not sure what they thought their honking and gestures might accomplish…
He’d beg for money too. Once I saw him beg for a dollar from a passerby, and the passerby asked him what he’d do for the money, that he better sing or dance or something if he wanted to get paid. I’d never heard that response to a homeless
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent beggar and was simultaneously appalled, depressed, and amused (in a gallows humor sort of way).
There were many homeless around South Beach. Part of it was that mental hospitals nearby had been shut because of budget cuts, leaving the mentally ill with nowhere to go. And part of it was that warm places tend to draw homeless.
Better to be homeless there than in a place where it’s freezing. In addition, many in South Beach were made homeless due to land development companies buying up properties to build luxury condos, evicting long-term residents, many of whom were senior citizens in rent-controlled apartments and had nowhere to go, no one to help them.
It was depressing as fuck seeing an elderly bag lady collecting leftover food from the dumpsters behind an overpriced tourist trap restaurant.
Many of the homeless were mentally ill, but many weren’t. They were down on their luck or had retired to Miami Beach and were thrown out of their homes by developers. It’s despicable that a city, state, country would treat its residents, citizens in such a heartless way.
There was a fair amount of violence, too, but nothing like across the bridge, in Liberty City, Overtown or Opa Locka. I saw fistfights here and there, in South Beach, but not too many, and Suge Knight got shot in the ass, at a party near my apartment. Though, still, for the most part, it was generally safe, aside from scattered burglaries.
Including the burglary of my apartment, and other apartments in my building.