Miami Vices Part 2: Lounges, Latinas, and Libertines

Watch out or the greed-fest of a sin-city peppered with material girls and tanned meatheads will devour your soul.

If you are thinking of venturing south to Miami, 3 talents (6000 denarii in Biblical times) of advice for you: 1 - brush up on your Spanish, 2 - bring an extra credit-card (an unsuspecting friend’s is preferable), and 3 - avoid South Beach. Miami se habla Español. Sure, you can get by in English but speaking un poquito Español goes a long way. Cost is not to be underestimated. While it’s not as bad as NYC or Hong Kong for example, rent prices are rising and getting higher because more snowbirds are moving here. South Beach is for tourists and seldom the most mild-mannered types either. It should be experienced the way one eats at Jack-in-the-Box (or Carl’s Jr.), under cover of darkness, out of desperation and something you reveal only under duress.

It is a greed-fest, a sin-city peppered with material girls and tanned meatheads.

Prima facie, three pillars – Spanish-speaking, cost-prohibitive and bon vivants capture the Miamian élan. It is a greed-fest, a sin-city peppered with material girls and tanned meatheads. Ken and Barbie would do well here if they pimped out Ken’s Mercedes AMG and Barbie got a lip job. Speaking of plastic surgery, lip jobs are just appetizers. As of 2016, according to mia aethestics (a leading provider of plastic surgery across America) Miami has the most plastic surgeons in the US, more than NYC and LA. Their surgeons specialize “in body procedures like liposuction, tummy tucks, Brazilian butt lifts (BBL), and breast operations.” Let’s just say conspicuous female pulchritude is enhanced, noticeably. Most of the time I find it over-the-top and uncouth but maybe that’s the point?

La Faux Cultura

A big part of Miami – like many trendy cities today – is social climbing. Unlike DC where local politicos climb via sycophantic groupthink and slavish conformity or NYC where getting-to-the-top is a Darwinian blood sport for workaholics – whoever outlasts the other survives – Miami is more superficial, in a literal sense. It is a network driven city like any other but folks at the top are not hawking fancy degrees or “eviscerating their enemies” Jordan Belfort style. Instead, Miamian bonafides are serrated pectoral muscles, mommy make-overs, tricked out yachts, and lots of plastic wealth. Where else can you valet park at a hospital?

If “fake-it-till-you-make-it” was coined anywhere, it was probably in South Beach.

If “fake-it-till-you-make-it” was coined anywhere, it was probably in South Beach. Don’t be too impressed when you see a Lambo or even a perfect 10 sauntering by because odds are both are fugazi; one is probably rented while the other enhanced (hazard a guess as to which is which). There is plenty of money in Miami to be sure, largely inherited trusts and liquid foreign elites with some self-made crypto millionaires, real-estate moguls, and celebrity quarterbacks here and there (Tom Brady's $17M Mansion is on Indian Creek Island).