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First, let’s get the geography
straight. Miami Beach is not the sandy side of the city of
Miami. Miami Beach is an independent city, one of thirty-one
municipalities that lie within Miami-Dade County. Making this
distinction clear is a thankless task that has bedeviled local
tourism officials since 1915. Miami Beach lounges along seven
miles of the Atlantic coast, between the cruise ships sailing
through Government Cut on its south and the little town of Surfside
on its north. Miami is on the other side of Biscayne Bay to
the west. Miami Beach parochially has been divided into North,
Middle (or Central) and South Beach since the early 1920s, with the
lines of demarcation steadily shifting northward as the city grew.
South Beach used to be south of Fifth Street. Today, most
people think of South Beach as everything south of Dade Boulevard,
about twenty blocks north of its earlier boundary.
The first time I remember visiting South Beach was in 1960. Lincoln
Road Mall was new and an attraction. Miami Beach was promoted
as “America’s Riviera.” The entire neighborhood was painted
white and sparkling as if it were scrubbed clean every night.
This book begins sixteen years later. The decline in South
Beach in that short time was shocking. The tourists had
discovered new destinations. South Beach, along with its population
of elderly Jews, became largely ignored except during election
years. It became tired, shabby, and its new nickname was
“God’s Waiting Room.” Then it got worse.
Crime frightened most of the residents off the streets in the
1980s. They were replaced by drug dealers and prostitutes and
people who shot each other. Part of the neighborhood was
declared blighted, and a major social services agency classified the
oldest part of South Beach as a “slum.”
Fast forward another ten years and there was another astounding
transformation. The place sizzled with nightlife, celebrities,
and young people seeking excitement and each other. One
magazine that year called South Beach “the hippest hangout on
earth.”
These dramatic shifts could give a neighborhood whiplash. A
sundries store trying to serve the needs of its customers had to
stock beach towels for sunburned tourists in the sixties,
extra-strength arthritis medicine for senior citizens in the
seventies, a gun under the counter in case of robbery in the
eighties, and designer bottled water for supermodels in the
nineties. Residents, property owners, and seasonal
visitors were carried along the waves of change with seemingly
little say over their destiny.
It didn’t happen by accident. Today’s South Beach is the
unanticipated result of people
tinkering with the neighborhood. They did so with the best
intentions. There were a lot of people involved. Almost
all of them blame someone else for the decline and suggest that he
or she is a person without whom its resurgence never would have
happened. They’re all correct. This was an ensemble
performance. Each decision, each incident, each person
affected the outcome in a meaningful way.
People who have visited South Beach or seen it on TV and in the
movies have different images of the neighborhood, from an idyllic
tropical resort to an Art Deco architectural treasure to a
celebrity-sprinkled party scene.
In fact, South Beach is an ordinary neighborhood where people get
up in the morning and read the newspaper and have a cup of coffee
before going to work. It is a neighborhood where people shop at the
market for milk and laundry detergent, run errands, go to the
doctor, attend church or synagogue. It is a neighborhood where
kids go to school and play baseball, where the cable guy doesn’t
show up on schedule, where the house has to be cleaned and the
garbage taken out. It is a neighborhood filled with lawyers
and musicians, Jews and Hispanics, salespeople and teachers,
straights and gays, TV producers and ad executives, actors and
waiters (often the same). It is a neighborhood that also is an
idyllic tropical resort, an architectural treasure and a
celebrity-sprinkled party scene. This is its story. |
