Miami beach: Three days in Babylon

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

THIS story starts out with a human sacrifice.

Okay, no, not really. I’ve just really wanted to write that for a long time. But if you stick around, this story will end with a death, Miami Beach style.

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Throughout its history, this spit of sand in the southwest corner of Florida has attracted so much of the good stuff. Greed, violence, the vanities, you’ve heard of it before. Al Capone called it the Sunny Italy of the New World, as he sat out Valentine’s Day Massacre on Ocean Drive. A young Fidel Castro honeymooned here with his wife Mirta, pawning his watch to pay for his hotel. This mecca of decadence is where the young and the restless with perfect bodies like me all come when there is an excess of hedonistic fervor and libido to snuff out.

The postcard image of Miami Beach is this: gorgeous young creatures with new pneumatic breasts wearing next to nothing on Ocean Drive, flanked by tanned muscle boys whose rock hard abs can be used to re-pave Collins Avenue. Art deco hotels herald the lost era of the swinging ‘20s.

Convertibles zip through the streets blaring the Miami sound machine of salsa and Cuban beats. Brazilians in their Brazilian bikinis run on the sand as Jennifer Lopez lookalikes bask in the sun. This is the spot where the sassy and the tacky all converge to flaunt it shamelessly. Oh, and somewhere in there, there’s the beach, a long stretch of powdery white sand and blue Caribbean waters kissed by sub-tropical tempers.

In reality, this town is a little bit more undefined. The fact that it doesn’t have its own cemetery should have been a clue. This is a place not to be taken seriously, a town not to settle down in. It is best regarded as a mistress, good for a fling or two. Even its immigrants stay away, the Cubans come to do business but live out in the mainland. The Haitians come to taxi in the out-of-towners. Its most famous resident, some Italian named Versace is dead, dead in the hands of a Filipino-American driven to kill by jealousy and rage.

The approach to the heart of town induces the familiar frisson of danger and excitement I get every time I visit any city south of the border. Maybe it’s the streets that make it look like we’re in Medellin? The cab driver, a Colombian expat, agreed: he said it feels like home. But he did raise an eyebrow the way locals do when accusing visiting tourists of cluelessness, what are you doing in a place like this on Memorial Day weekend? We later find out that in the next three days it’s the turn of the hip-hop crowd, all the brothers and the sistaz, to lay claim on Miami Beach and make it their own.

Officially known as Urban Beach Weekend, the concierge at the Royal Palm tried to explain it calling it “Black Urban Weekend,” prompting an African-American friend of mine to warn me to be careful whom I cite. They close downtown so all the flaunting can be done by bootylicous women clad in little else but Li’l Kim bikinis. The fat overflows, the stretch marks stretch. To get around, we push through a wall of black muscles whose main interest was to get the phone number of the next walking pair of boobs. The signifiers of the urban hip-hop culture are on display, the bling-bling, the gold teeth, the Bentleys and the Maybachs. Gone now is the salsa, replaced by hip-hop beats and rap. On the beach, I get my first live glimpse of krumpers doing their thing, anger and discontent in def, poetic movements. In the evening, portable strip bars parade along Washington, with pole dancers shaking their booty for all to see. On the sidewalks, a whiff of marijuana permeates. All throughout, cops on bicycles and patrol cars try their best to keep the peace.

But with the mix of youth, booze, drugs, and cops, something bad is bound to happen.

And on the last day of the party something did. Raymond Herisse, a young man of 22, thought that he could get away with crashing his car on a parked police car and he rammed through the street at 4 a.m. and was stopped by a dozen uniformed policemen on the corner of our hotel. They rained bullets on him, just because. One lonesome young man against the army. The whole thing’s on YouTube, where the rat-tat-tat of the gunfire sounds a bit more like you’re in Libya. But no, this is Miami Beach, gangsta’s paradise.

I wanted to write to you about salsa music, Gloria Estefan, the beach, the best Cuban restaurants. But on this trip, there will be none of that. Will I find myself here again? Yes, when I jones for the tropics again, I will come back, and maybe then.

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