April 2017
Miami, Florida
By David Schayne
Landing in Miami airport is like landing in a foreign country. Late passenger arrivals are belted out over the loud speaker first in Spanish and then some barely recognizable form of broken English. The realization that people there have to obligation whatsoever so speak your language is a feeling usually reserved for landing in a foreign country, welcome to Miami.
The humid haze of a Miami summer heat is thick and confusing. The city is a tropical knot of confusion, but in Miami this makes sense. In its unique, complicated way, the city is unruly and antiquated. With its heyday of lavish, over the top deco buildings happening between the world wars and densely populated, high-rise condos ever since, completes the oddly dated, futuristic feel of the city
Miami can be anxiety-educing mayhem, but there’s a cure for that. Endless rows of perfectly lined pineapple trees and abandoned, sun-bleached speed boats. Biscayne National Park is filled with bird watchers, amateur fisherman, and just anyone else that welcomes salty fresh air enjoys the OCD satisfaction of cruising past perfectly lined palm tree plantations that stretch as far as you can see. Abandoned boats and jets skis spice the road between the endless rows of palm and pineapple trees and the everglades. The discarded water rides set to the maddeningly long, straight rows of palms add to the hazy fantasy that Miami never seems to escape.
Miami is perfectly nonsensical and over-the-top, and somehow at once irreverent and important. It will soon helplessly give way to a rising ocean and even greedier developers moving inland, but in the meantime its people hold on to tradition in a way that isn’t possible in other cities. Its pride is only matched by its celebratory, care-free nature and perhaps the most unique megacity we have in our 50 states.
