Pumpkin Pie in Your Eye

Marco Screwbio Landslide !

As the sun sets in South Florida, it has become abundantly clear that the political landscape is painted in clashing shades of camo and dayglow. The atmosphere could not be more befuddling. There will always be winners and losers so for those who are disillusioned with the constituency at large, let's be content for now with counting our losses and crossing our fingers that the "tide of the teaparty" will retreat with predictably disappointing and classic gop ineptitudes and scandal.

Season of Austerity

With the change in weather comes a change in number of tourists that visit the swamp.

Like migrating geese, the throngs of well-heeled patrons that are anticipated during ABMB andArtWeek in Miami will surely leave a few eggs in our baskets but not without leaving some droppings behind as well. This year promises to be rather austere in terms for pillow taxes, tipping and all the other ostentatious displays of affluence we have come to rely on and expect as year-round residents of resort town.

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All aboard the Bus of the Bourgeoisies. There is something amusing about the medicated middle class enjoying the spoils of a celebrity culture. Two days and three nights of distraction are a sure gamble and the gamings is rigged by the house on wheels. The status quo is a juggernaut of jaundiced jackasses in pinstriped suits.

Dumbo Buffet

In the shadows of the glistening condo towers that dot the swampscape glamour and sparkle begin to fade quickly. With flip-flops on the ground boots at our behinds here follows a brief sideshow of Miami's not so finest.

The Beagle Has Landed

Departing from Miami Beach westbound to the mainland is tantamount to leaving Oz in a twister bound for a cuban kansas. This truck sign leads the way.

Elevated Snarls

It may take more than a GPS to navigate the dizzying matrix of highways that slash to and fro. From Moral Gables to MocaRaton, from Overtown to Little Haiti visitors and natives alike will need to contend with an obstacle course of never-ending roadwork, red-light cameras, inept cab drivers, grandmas and teen drivers. The good news is the weather is lovely the ladies are fine and the gents all dance tango.

Bayside Behimoth

To survey the mainland we wander a short walk from the waters edge. Just west of Biscayne Bay are relatively curious enclaves of disenfranchised neighborhoods currently under a diluted case of gentrification. What is it that makes this place unique? perhaps it's that old "Je ne sais quoi" that keeps visitors guessing what miami is exactly.

New Urban Wynwood

Some one sign painter channels the Scull Sisters with this colloquial version of what Midtown might already be... a thumping latin manhattan with homemade corporate foods.

Eduardo Hopper

These views of the Shoe District are practically paintings disguised as snapshots.

Box With a View

Overlooking the magnificent I-95, this two family townhouse is available to gentrifiers or squatters and bank foreclosures.

If One Is Good...

Supplement your income with a giant billboard totem in your yard. Never mind the visual pollution when there are bills to pay.

Homage to Why Not.

Over There Town

We continue driving west under the over-pass and south across the tracks toward DWNTW to a well worn part of town. This is a neighborhood like so many others that can be easily avoided at best and intentionally isolated at worst. Isolated like a squirrel in a pumpkin patch, a screw in a box of nails, the color purple in a jar of grape jelly.

Out of Their Gourds

In closing this rambling tour of the tropics 2010 post mid-term election debacle, one thing that come to mind is Henry Miller's words...

“A new world is not made simply by trying to forget the old. A new world is made with a new spirit, with new values. Our world may have begun that way, but today it is caricature. Our world is a world of things. What we dread most, in the face of the impending debacle, is that we shall be obliged to give up our gewgaws, our gadgets, all the little comforts that have made us so uncomfortable. We are not peaceful souls; we are smug, timid, queasy and quaky.”

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