by pod on Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:06 am
Re: The Five Most Annoying Things About Miami
Any city is what you make of it. There's plenty to do outside of nightclubs if you live in South Florida. Fact is, once you get older, you can have the best of both worlds and move to a nice area like Miami Shores, Aventura, or Broward, and still be a stone's throw from some exciting entertainment options. I have business in Broward on occasion, and I've clocked myself going from say, Broward Boulevard, to my apt in Midtown, and I can do it in about 20-30 minutes depending on traffic. If the surface roads didn't suck I could do it in less. I'm not gonna fuck up my suspension just for the sake of a few minutes. The craters on the side streets make it look like a mechanized division just went through.
Actually that being said, the surface roads around here, excepting US-1, are in shit shape.
But, I do see myself living say, Miami Shores or Broward once I get older and I don't need to be in the thick of things 24/7. With remote work and telecommuting largely becoming a reality, it actually doesn't matter if you live near your office. I foresee a future where most work from home and meet with their co-workers once a week to keep the human weakness of face-to-face contact in a professional setting satisfied. That and hopefully automation will finally catch on and we'll stop working ourselves 80 hours a week to an early grave.
See, it's funny, the people who were born here or have lived here a bit say it's the best, and those who moved here recently do nothing but bitch and moan.
But, objectively, there are annoying things about living here. However, there's a lot of pluses, in my mind.
Yes, our nightlife scene is bar none. Some call it a one-trick pony, but you just have to look a little deeper than LIV and Mansion. Space takes a huge risk every weekend and dedicates one room to DJs no one has heard of. Yeah, this weekend the Techno Loft has Josh Wink, but usually it's headed up by undiscovered talent. And it's packed. Right around the corner is the Vagabond which has everything from deep house DJs to live bands to a great outdoor area out back which is perfect for hanging out. The Pickle has shit facilities but they bring in DJs that barely play the US, much less Miami. And, believe it or not, there's live music galore, if people would just look around.
There's plenty of art museums going up. The Miami art scene is light years beyond where it was. And we've one of the biggest art fairs in the world now (Art Basel) which shows no signs of leaving.
Now, one can argue that places like Boston, NYC, and so on have all this, and more. They probably do. But bear in mind Boston is nearly 400 years old. New York, about the same. Even Los Angeles is older than Miami. We're not doing too bad for a city/area which just passed the century mark. There's a lot of issues, but most of those issues are what I like to call "white people problems". Listen, we've got solid roofs over our heads, the power is generally on all the time, I can flip open my PodBook Air and get online from anywhere in the area, and I can drive somewhere without the directions going "take the dirt road", unless I'm going to the Glades or something, and I can even take a train or a bus to most places. Yes, there's room for improvement, but we're still way ahead of 95 percent of the world's population. Not an excuse, sure, but at the end of the day, most of the "Miami problems" are annoyances, really. Talk to the guy who just floated over on a door yesterday, he'll think you're crazy for complaining.
It's all relative I guess. I've bumped around the continent a few times now (I had to pull my travel docs for accounting today, yeah, it's a lot) and I've seen some truly shit areas of the country that would put any area of Miami to shame. I drove through the slums of San Antonio and watched a line of destitute meth addicts board the Mexican version of a Greyhound bus under the "supervision" of the local deputies. I fought with some crackheads in Knoxville attempting to steal some of my gear in broad daylight right in front of the venue we were at. I won, but still, pretty brazen. I dealt with a creaky venue in Pontiac, Michigan, where the head of security was shot two days before. I made a wrong turn in El Paso and saw Mexican illegals burning god-knows-what in the back alleys. I was accosted by drunken girls from Wales in Chicago. I witnessed guns drawn in a bar fight in Dallas on my day off. I saw IV drug users outside of a show in New York. I watched Guidos harass a poor Latina girl in Asbury Park, to the point where I was surprised no cops had shown up. Yeah, I've seen the best and the worst of our nation. Yeah I just kind of beat up on Texas, but it is what it is.
And from where I sit, Miami's not too bad. You just gotta know what you're doing. You can't come here with a babe-in-the-woods mentality. Nor can you come here expecting "America". I think one of the hallmarks of our nation is our diversity, and Miami is part of that. Until the day the US finally dissolves into independent republics, we've all just got to realize Miami is just another part of the puzzle that makes up the United States. It's that oddball piece that doesn't make sense, but when you put it all together, you see where it fits.
Thank you and I hope I can count on your vote in 2016.