Welcome to Miami...

So we moved to Miami…long strange trip…crammed into a very short period of time. Here's a little context. In 9 weeks...

I moved down here to start a new job.
Renee packed up the entire house in NJ
Renee came down and interviewed, she got a new job.
Got Ava registered into a new school
Bought a new house
Sold the old house
Moved in.

It was 20 gallons of fun in a 10 gallon bucket.

So what have I learned so far in my short time here? Hold on to your panties...

Driving:

Ok I had heard tons of stories about driving down here back when I lived in NJ. I laughed out loud while I read the accounts that Dave Barry put to paper in his humor columns after he moved to Miami…but it turns out a lot of what he wrote isn't humor.

So its pretty simple. Down here traffic moves at 2 speeds, One is just under 8 miles an hour, the other is at a speed sufficient to outrun a full-bore tsunami.

The traffic rules seem pretty flexible depending on time of day, ambient temperature, day of week, random holiday etc. and of course the elderly (who all seem to be driving tremendous cadillacs imported from 1982) don't have to follow any of the rules… 

...ever.

They pretty much do whatever they want and you would not be surprised to see a, Powder Blue El Dorado making its way thru the lobby of the Fountaineblue Hotel on a typical Tuesday afternoon.

Also here it doesn't seem to be a crime to change lanes without looking, the rule seems to be if you really need to get out of the way…then you will.

I may be wrong but the other morning I was headed down 37th Avenue (more on that Rubiks Cube in a second) and it appeared that everyone on both sides of the road, in all lanes were all going south at the same time.

Now logically that can't be right, I mean unless Godzilla is making his way to downtown Miami, I can't image the flow of traffic would just be reversed, even if only to accommodate his rampage.

Generally the rule seems to be to go as fast as possible at all times.

Traffic Signs and Lights.

Haven't been able to make sense of this either, I drive around a fair amount now and from what I can tell, I think there is a group of people employed by the city who run around every night and change the signs randomly, so one day you might not be able to make a right turn without checking for pedestrians and the next day, Bam!... it's OK to mow down a half dozen nuns cause they're walking too slow.

The Grid (Ha!)

They say there is a grid down here, it's separated into NW, SW, Sideways and Left. I may be making that up, not sure. Anyway, the system is such that you can follow a series of streets that go SW23rd Street then SW23rd Terrace then SW23rd Court etc so that whereas in a place like NY you know for certain that there are 20 blocks between 12th and 32nd Street, down here it could be 353 blocks between SW 23rd Street and SW 28th Street only probably more.

Also in an attempt to make sure no one ever takes the same route twice, there are multiple names for all the streets. So Miracle Mile is also Coral Way and on the same sign it tells you what corner you are at... Ponce De Leon and there also appears to be a random number like 190 on there too.

Then on many corners there are no street signs, instead you have concrete markers about 12 inches high that sit on the grass. Now since most people here drive over 138 miles an hour, they can't read them. By the time the light hits your cornea with the image, you're already 6 blocks away.

So what have I learned from all this, is that everyone (other than Gonzalo, the VP of my firm who has some innate sense of this so-called-grid), no one in Miami tells anyone, at anytime how to get anywhere by telling them street names. It always sounds like this:

So, you know the Burger King near the Crook n' Crook, you take a left there, go thru the roundabout and make another left at the Dairy Queen, go a bunch of streets until you see the BBQ place with the fat pig on top of the roof, pull into their parking lot, there's a hole in the fence behind it, mind the bum who sleeps near the trashcans and then take a right when you see the stone wall with graffiti that says "Raoul has Tasty Nuts". That's where the laundromat is.

Public Affection and Downright Nakedosity.

So its no secrets that Miami is the Latin Capital of the US *. And with that comes a level of affection I have not seen outside of the film Caligula. Everyone is always hugging and kissing down here. Business associates who only parted long enough to have lunch at separate restaurants hug and kiss when reunited an hour later.

I imagine if you were out for a day to get your car registration renewed, you would have to jump into the utility closet with your boss and engage in wanton carnality just to make up for the lost day.

* International Turnip Farmer, October 2011

Music

Music is always played at a level loud enough to be heard in another solar system. The bass must be played in such a way that when you drive within 100 yards of it, the tires of your vehicle must detonate like a child's balloon under a hippo's ass. 

The volume level must be so high that it renders birds flying overhead sterile.

And no matter what you are doing, when said music starts, you must jump out the front door and start dancing in the street with the nearest stranger regardless of race, creed, color or gender, no matter what you were doing beforehand even if that something was giving an infant a bath or disarming a bomb or talking a jumper off of a roof.

A personal example, the neighbors to one side of my home have a family/friends get together on some Saturdays. The music is very loud until around 11pm. I think at that point, the booze has run out and generally everyone is tired from smoking and dancing at a pace that makes a hummingbirds wings beating look like a tortoise with a bad leg crossing the highway.

Anyway I was in the bathroom, (taking a whizz if you must know) and the music came on with such intensity and volume that I, startled, peed all over the wall before I regained control of the situation (if you catch my drift).

So I don't use the bathroom anymore on Saturday night before 11pm.

Weather

The weather is great down here except during: 1. Summer when the heat is so intense that the simple act of inhaling causes you to sweat and froth like a thoroughbred after The Kentucky Derby.

And during 2. Hurricane season when everyone tries not to think about the fact that The Monster Death Wind could come thru anytime and render everything you own into a pile so small, you could fit it into a coffee cup…

…and still have room for coffee.

DressCode and "Enhancements"

You may have heard or seen on TV that in Miami there are women everywhere just walking the streets in bikinis..that simply isn't true..some of them are riding bikes.

Some women here wear very tiny clothes even though they have breasts that defy every law of physics I understand. There is a strange dichotomy here in which you have women who are very comfortable with their bodies…some so much that when they lean in to kiss your cheek, you find yourself getting vertigo from glancing down their cleavage...

…and then you have women who as they have gotten older have felt the misguided need to make changes to their appearance using medical means, by that I mean someone who has had their lips injected with dangerous chemicals so that when you talk to them, you feel like you're speaking into the clown's mouth at a fast food drive thru.

Like this…only somehow even bigger.

Men wear sandals entirely too often unless they are attending a funeral or wedding in which case they wear white tube socks with the sandals.

Men also wear large metal religious necklaces on the idea that if you hauled around a hunk of jewelry in the shape of Jesus for that long, they are obligated to let you into heaven.

Food

Hell yes, there is great stuff down here. lots of new stuff to try. For instance I'm pretty sure that when I die, I will be face down in a plate of Vacca Fritta from Havana Harry's.

Ropa Vieja, Pastellitos, Churrasco, Tostones and oh sweet jesus the coffee.
Cortadito or even a Colada once a day is a great way to make sure you are getting the Nutrition Councils annual amount of sugar in a single serving.

Conclusion:

Anyhoo, thats the preliminary impression of my new home here in a city that is bound on one side by alligators, on the other side by people who have paddled all the way from Cuba on top of a claw-foot bathtub and on another side by 92 year old men driving automobiles so large that they are often on both sides of an intersection at the same time.

Stay tuned for more entirely accurate strange adventures as they happen.