Wordsmoker

Miami. The word conjures many images. Palm trees. Beaches. Fast cars. Supermodels. Bikinis. Cubans. Cuban coffee. Cubans drinking Cuban coffee while checking out the supermodels in bikinis walking on the beach or under palm trees, along streets lined with Ferraris and Lamborghinis. That’s the postcard image. And in Miami, image is everything. Unfortunately, it’s the only thing.

Most everyone who’s never been here thinks of Miami as a tropical paradise. A place where the Mojitos flow freely and the good times never end. Then there are those of us who live here. Those of use who were not born here but arrived as a result of circumstances beyond our control. Exiles who had to flee from another time and place, only to land here, a city where both the passage of time and any sense of place are but fleeting illusions.

Ok. Enough of that crap. Why does Miami suck? Why do I hate it so bad?

Let’s start with Mojitos (mispronounced “Moe-HEE-toes”). The drink itself is not to blame. It is a rather pleasant, enjoyable libation. But why did it have to turn into a fucking lifestyle? A veritable advertising campaign unto itself.

Well, the good people at Bacardi know a good marketing pitch when they see one. And where is Bacardi headquartered? Miami, of course. Everywhere you go, they’re selling fucking Moe-HEE-toes down here.

Hotels, bars, pet stores, clothing boutiques for parrots, fucking nursing homes, they all sell Moe-HEE-toes and they all have God-damned Moe-HEE-toe Menus too. Moe-HEE-toe Menus, like their ridiculous, despicable, older cousin the Martini Menu, cannot rest satisfied by simply offering the traditional item, but must insist on adding a slew of previously unimaginable and truly disgusting ingredients to an otherwise unassailable recipe. And that’s how you get a Whiskey Moe-HEE-toe. A fucking Whiskey Mojito? Really? Fuck you. If what you want is Whiskey with mint, then order a fucking Mint Julep you moron. Jesus.

Then there’s Bud Light Lime. I know it’s not made in Miami. But who do you think they’re selling that shit to? Not beer drinkers. Miamians, that’s who. Miamians and all the other Bozos who don’t have any taste but dream of getting away from their real fucking lives in cities with real fucking trees and real fucking seasons, and moving down here to this magical, shit-stain of a tropical oasis on a beach that they imagine Miami to be. And what did you think the marketing geniuses at Anheuser Busch were smoking when they thought of making a lime-flavored-beer beverage to sell those Bozos who don’t know that Miami is a violent backwater cesspool of idiocy and silicone? That’s right. They were smoking Miami Crypto and drinking a fucking Whiskey Moe-HEE-toe with a pair of Venezuelan hookers on pile of Bolivian marching powder in a South Beach strip club. Because God forbid someone should have to go all the way to the fucking store to buy a God-damned lime and have to cut it into wedges and stick one in the fucking bottle neck. That’s way too much fucking work. Especially if you’re from Miami. Because effort is not something Miamians know a lot about. Better to buy a beer with the “lime flavor” already built-in, than have to squeeze a fucking lime yourself. Fucking lazy morons.

This shit is exemplifies everything that is wrong with this city. The inability to leave good enough alone, whilst simultaneously doing such a piss-poor job with the “improvement” that anyone with half a brain can see what a stupid, lazy ass you really are. Still, everything must be faster, bigger, fancier, flashier and shinier here, in Miami. If there is one place in the country that can truly give L.A. a run for its money as the epicenter of vapid, material, bling-driven consumption, Miami is it. The difference is that in L.A., the people are nice. Or at least they act that way because they’re all unemployed actors looking for their break and you might be a producers or the friend of a producer so they might as well smile and treat you with a modicum of decency. Not in Miami because basic manners don’t exist here. In Miami they’re all just fucking assholes who think that looking good makes them better than you. Even if the tits are fake and the bank account is overdrawn, or the Ferrari is a rental (which it almost always is because, really, who the fuck can afford a $200,000 sports car?!?!?), as long as they can make you turn your head, they’re better than you. Right?

The car dealerships down here have spas, gyms and restaurants. That’s right. If you buy a Lexus and need to bring it in for a tune-up, why not spend some time at the Lexus Gym, where you can get a workout while you watch cable TV and then have a nice bite to eat afterward while you wait for them to fix up your ride. Jesus.

Then there’s Sunny Isles. This place used to be a sleepy beach town full of classic old-school motels, most of which were built between 1940 and 1960. Ten years ago you could drive down A1A and all you would see for over a mile along a gorgeous stretch of beach was motel after beautiful motel. Classic, two-story beachfront motels with different themes, such as the Suez, the Bali, the Driftwood, the Dunes, the Tangiers. These places should have been historical landmarks.

But then, about ten or twelve years ago, a group of land developers and investors, including a quartet who called themselves “the Visionaries”—I shit you not, that’s what they called themselves— greased some palms and spearheaded the demolition of all but two or three of these little gems in order to replace them with a series of monolithic and indescribably grotesque condominiums. Now when you drive along the same stretch of A1A you can’t even see the ocean. No motels. Only tower after tower of condominiums. Massive, horrible, condos.

And the best part is that these condos, most of which are half-empty thanks the real estate implosion down here, are so fucking big that by noon, you can’t even get a fucking tan on Sunny Isles Beach because the fucking condos block out the fucking sun. That’s right. You can’t even go to the beach because the sun is blocked by a mile of fucking condos. Awesome. Good thinking there, Visionaries. Sounds like just the place I want to live. Did I mention that the few apartments they did manage to sell in Sunny Isles are occupied by fat Russian mobsters and/or their drop-dead gorgeous Russian model girlfriends? That’s right. A real swell neighborhood it’s become. Twelve years ago the whole town was a historical treasure trove. Now it’s a monumental clusterfuck of overpriced, unoccupied, condominiums.

Indeed “good thinking” might as well be the local fucking motto. Because the people you meet down here have got to be the stupidest, laziest most intellectually stunted collection of asshats ever to populate a major American city. People down here aren’t scared of big words because they’ve never even heard of them. Reading is what other people do. But not Miamians. Books take effort. And, as I mentioned before, effort is just not something they do here.

There are neighborhoods, indeed an entire demographic who neither speak English OR Spanish well enough to say that one of the two languages is their native tongue. When I meet these people and I speak to them in Spanish (my native language) they look at me like I’m from mars because I don’t look Colombian (or Cuban or Dominican) so I can’t be speaking Spanish. So they try to answer me in English, but as anyone who’s been here knows, English is not so much a second language as much as it is a means of avoiding any meaningful communication with someone you don’t feel like talking to.

To get an idea of just how stupid and lazy the people in Miami are think about this: there are actually successful tanning salons in this city. That’s right. The city with some of the nicest beaches in the country, the fucking Sunshine State for fuck’s sake, is populated by people who would rather pay money to lie on a carcinogenic tanning bed, than go out in the sun because they are too stupid or lazy to get a tan at the beach, where the sun is still free. Unless you live Sunny Isles, I guess.

Ok. I need to relax and catch my breath. More later.

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of rants examining the myriad reasons why Miami sucks.