Miami Glamour: The Architecture

Art Deco construction in South Beach

Classy and glassy

jazzy new parking lot in South Beach on Alden Road

Van Dyke Cafe on Lincoln Road; reclaimed by vines

Miami, Florida, is a fairly new city. It was established around 1900, with loads of landfill building it up from the swampy shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Because of hurricanes, non historic architecture is constantly being torn down, and rebuilt. Consequently, there are numerous new buildings of striking architectural styles from Art Deco to yesterday all over downtown and South Beach.

What is cool there? Everything but the weather. The famed Route One which is a mile from my house ends in Miami. And then shoots up north past Alexandria all the way up to Maine. That is one very long road!!

The most devastating hurricane to ever hit Miami in our lifetimes was Hurricane Andrew, which flattened Homestead, FL, just south of Miami, on the way to the Florida Keys. Hurricane Katrina did some serious damage to Miami before it made its more famous landfall in Louisiana and Mississippi.


Believe it or not, the Everglades, which are just to the west of Fort Lauderdale and Miami, are actually a river, albeit a slow moving one. When hurricanes are scarce, the Everglades  become dangerously dry, and there are brush fires every few years from the dry heat. Hurricanes and large tropical storms help flush the water from the wetlands and bring fresh nutrients.


More than you wanted to know!
Patsie

Greetings from the Front Porch Cafe in Miami!

Your Imaginary Reporter :)

Enjoyed the breeze on Ocean Drive in South Beach this weekend.

The weather was 80ish, the beaches were packed, the sunburns were happening.

As for me, I ate every meal outdoors, sunning myself into a stupor of Vitamin D. I only brought one sleeveless top. So, if you go to Miami in January, please do bring your shorts and short sleeves.

And have a shrimp taco for me at the Front Porch Cafe across from the Atlantic Ocean. (I know; what a sacrifice!)

Your Imaginary Friend,

Patsie

Why I Hate Spirit Airlines

Dear Spirit Airlines,

How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways!
Last weekend, my husband and I trekked to Miami Beach and we made the consummate mistake of flying Spirit Airlines. Biggest problem: apparently, knees are optional! If you are taller than 5 feet, you will wonder where you are supposed to stow your knees on their airplanes, which seem to hark back to darker days when our ancestors travelled in stowage to America. If you had a magazine in the pouch in front of you, you no longer had room for your knees. Because the space allowed is 3 inches maximum.

As if the space issue is not heinous enough to turn one away from this wretched airline, add to that the charges for tea, coffee, soft drinks, reserved seats, and carry on bags.

This leads to the inevitable person-on-a-budget-making-unwise-spatial-decisions syndrome.

A very fat young lady stuffed all her belongings into a back pack and proceeded to stuff it under the seat in front of her. She was avoiding the $35 charge to carry on a bag in the overhead compartment. My sad luck: she was my seat mate. Consequence: I had to leave the aisle briefly in order for her to shove it with all of her might into the tiny space. Then, she parked her foot and leg in my foot space. Now, I am not normally a irritable person, but this made me want to accidentally kick her. Of course, I did not actually do so, but the temptation grew stronger with every minute. In the privacy of my own mind, I formulated plans to drop an anvil accidentally on her foot. Slight problem: I had no anvil, and if I did, there would have been an anvil-dropping charge imposed by Spirit.

Then the lady in front of her got really angry as the backpack girl pushed her voluminous body into the seat ahead of her in order to retrieve the MP3 she dropped on the floor in front of her. This sort of thing went on for 2.5 hours...

Smells like Bad Spirit...not teen spirit. I. will.not.ever.fly.them.again. 

Never again. 

US Airways is looking better... as would Rat and Bedbug Air.

Original denizens of Miami

Sincerely,

Veteran of the airways