Good morning, friends. I spent last week on the beautiful shores of MIAMI BEACH, FLORIDA. It was a pretty prime vacation spot, with tons of hotels, nice cars, rich people, and hot weather. I think the thing that kept us most busy was just sitting somewhere having a drink and watching people and cars. That may not entertain YOU, but trust me, it was gooooooood times.
Here are some of my astute observations on Miami:
- It seems to be the case that it is legal, or else just 'okay' in everyone's eyes, to get a drink from a bar, and then just walk around on the streets with it. They usually serve mixed drinks and beer in plastic cups (think those red plastic ones from all your university keggers, only clear instead). If you feel like parading yourself around instead of sitting at the bar, you can just pick up and leave and keep on drinking. It was really odd... reminded me a bit of my year in Namibia, where it's legal to drink anywhere you want, even in a moving car.
- The cars in Miami Beach are ridiculous. SO MANY PEOPLE had mustangs, lambourghinis, jaguars, beamers, etc etc etc. And a lot of vintage convertibles. The "cool thing to do" is to just cruise up and down Ocean Drive slowly in your nice car and hope that as many people as possible will notice.
- A huge percentage of the people there are runners. Out on the beach in the morning or the evening, you would see swarms of people running in packs, and also some flying solo. This was okay with me, but what really got my goat was when people would be running in the middle of the day. The heat was super oppressive and it was really humid, which was conducive to sitting around drinking, or swimming. That's IT. Some people would jog by at like noon, just dripping sweat and about to keel over. I just don't like seeing this. It's like torturing yourself!
- An odd contrast to the number of runners was the number of pizza places. Probably every other shop along the major streets was a pizza place. I don't really get this, because most of the non-caucasians there seemed to be from either Mexico or Haiti, countries which I didn't think were huge on pizza. It was comforting and satisfying though to see so many pizza places, and gave me a vision of what Toronto could look like one day if we get our priorities straight.
- There were two other types of shops besides pizza places, and one was tattoo parlours. I think I counted 4 tattoo shops on one block at one point. Pretty much everyone, guys and girls alike, seemed to be heavily tattooed. An interesting trend, but understandable, because it seems that the main goal of people there was to show as much skin as possible. Showing skin on its own maybe gets kind of boring (???) so they get tattooed to give other people something else to look at.
- Restaurants in Miami Beach could be counted on for HUGE portions, including epic drink sizes - like daquiris larger than a baby's head. There were always lots of drink specials going on, and our hotel even gave us free drinks from 7-8 every night. The huge portions of food also didn't really jive with the fact that a lot of people there are ridiculously skinny, but who am I to question these things? Mom and I usually just shared one meal between the two of us which worked out well. Oh and I also got carded several times when ordering drinks, which got annoying after awhile. (Restaurant side note: We also saw a guy order an entire bottle of red wine and a dish of pasta at 10 am.)
- This list would not be complete without sharing with you Miami Beach's biggest obsession: ED HARDY. The store windows were dripping in rhinestones and emo-esque phrases splashed onto shirts and shoes. SOOO many people, even moms, were wearing Ed Hardy crap constantly. I do NOT get it - Ed Hardy seems pretty tacky to me, and it's overpriced. Plus it's become synonomous with sleazeball Jon Gosselin. Please explain to me why this brand is so popular. Am I getting too old to understand??
