South Beach weekend
Posted: Monday, November 03, 2008
by Gregory Lewis
PopGnosis
Ocean Drive , Saturday, November 1. With the sun out from behind the clouds most of the day, the air is hot. The aquamarine sea pulses with whitecaps; swimmers and surfers bob on the surface like marooned coconuts.
Every day is a new adventure in SoBe. I thought it might be hard to beat last night's city-wide Halloween party, but the action on Ocean Dr was hard to take in full. So many pockets of wonder and life.
A cross dresser at the Paradise magnetized onlookers while standing on a table with a bullhorn. A skinny Latina with long blond pigtails and a blue cowboy hat, she captivated her audience with comedic taunts. An athletic black she-male danced and shook. Together the two baited each other. The two were partners, baiting one another in ribald jest.
Not far south of the Palace, outside the Royal Hotel a man with a python draped around his neck offered to let others wear it for photos.
In Lummus Park a Brazilian group was performing capoera to the hypnotic chant of the capoera master, himself accompanied by six or seven others with what looked like a bow and arrow with a small, round gourd attached. All dressed in white uniforms, reminding them of the involuntary servitude of past centuries when fighting skills were disguised as an athletic dance form.
This was enough for me, so I headed south, to find a place to stay for the night. South Beach Hostel-$15 a night.
Evening was descending on Florida 's playground, and dining had begun in the posh South Pointe, the southernmost tip of South Beach . These diners were a more refined breed, not to be lured by the undignified gimmickry found uptown.
The rancor had diminished to quaint undulations, hushed civility, intellectual discourse, though romance was never very far from the table. Men helped their satin gowned belles out of taxis, perhaps they had only traveled a couple hundred yards from the Yacht Club hi-rise, although surely even these distinguished folk would walk from the nearby Porto Fino Condominium hi-rise.
On the patio at the understated Browns Hotel an intellectual fellow turns his gaze briefly my way, but in moments his focus reaches beyond my insignificant presence. The others barely notice my phantom passing, perhaps they notice nothing.
At the Monty's Cabana Club, drunken young men and equally drunk blond women dance awkwardly to canned jukebox Fleetwood Mac.
This is the Marina Bay Walk, one of the most serenely picturesque locations in South Beach , with a clean walkway and cement tables and benches, encrusted with tile mosaic.
"You'd cry too if it ever happened to...chew," sings an intoxicated blond, or did she mean it to sound like "Jew," crooning as she sauntered past the sodium lights?
There's no telling what drunken money will say, or what it means, unless it intends to be heard for what it means. A Princess Cruise ship ushers itself gracefully out of the harbor. The ordinary cargo ship needs a tugboat escort.
A gecko scurries out from the coral rocks that line the marina, keeping me company under the orange light, gazing at the harbor. Miami 's distant jeweled skyline is beyond its elemental comprehension, as the shadow of its impassioned poor are beyond mine.
The music has since changed several times over, and the pleasant voice of a much younger Madonna fills the marina with "Celebrate," Lionel Ritchie's "All Night Long," and Toots Hibbert singing, "Gotta Believe in Miracles."
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