One Sunday on Lincoln Road, South Beach, Miami

Lincoln Road in South Beach is the capital of strangeness every day, but on weekends the antique dealers and food sellers and purveyors of art and eccentricity come out, and you can see and buy some interesting things.  Here are a few photos I took on a Sunday not so long ago.

You can buy Barbie and Ken porn.

And Sanders and Trump caricatures.

I had to buy this wonderful pop art jacket for daughter Marina...You see, her boyfriend's name is Jeff.

 Many are offering a healthy life style.

Juice therapy...

And exotic fruits I cannot identify.

Not to mention a variety of dishes for dogs.

A former Cadillac dealership now offers leisure wear

A sinister face looms over a door to a store that's for rent.

You might want to take in "The Golem of Havana"

This lady has a warning for the people of Lincoln Road.

Babies on Book Tour

-->

Photo by Eleni Gage.

Guest editor blog today Author (and daughter) Eleni N. Gage, author of The Ladies of Managua, relays her travel fiasco from New York to New Orleans to Miami and back home.  This first appeared on the travel website Fathom.

 I thought I had planned everything perfectly. But one of the things travel and motherhood have in common is that nothing ever goes as planned. When I did the math and confirmed that my novel, The Ladies of Managua, would be published while I was on maternity leave, I realized I'd be able to set up a book tour, something which would have been nearly impossible at any other time, given my full-time job as a magazine editor. For the first third of my three-month leave, I figured, I'd sit at home, recovering, breastfeeding, and staring into the eyes of newborn Nicolas. In the second month, I'd bring him and his three-and-a-half-year-old big sister, Amalia, with me from New York to New Orleans and Miami, both of which are settings for the novel, for book events. Again, perfect timing! I'd forgotten the cardinal rule of parenting: Just when you think you've got this motherhood thing down, someone is guaranteed to poop all over your white jeans.

As my book tour approached, I found myself right back on that parenting roller coaster, hurtling up peaks and down valleys. The new baby was a great eater: peak! But I now had mammoth, grandma-like 32E breasts and a gut that celeb moms such as Heidi Klum, who walked the runway for Victoria's Secret shortly after giving birth, would never recognize: valley. I finally found a dress (that concealed unloved body parts), to wear to every single book event: peak! While at my launch party, it was not wine but someone's breast milk that spilled on said dress: valley. When it came time to leave town for my event in New Orleans, the baby was in a feeding groove, and I felt invincible. Until people began to suggest that maybe I was just insensitive. Nicolas was only six weeks old, and my aunt wondered why I insisted on dragging the kids all over creation.

"Babies aren't easy to come by," she said. "Enjoy yours. Spend time with your kids instead of chasing money." Clearly, she knows nothing about publishing. The book tour was unlikely to bring me vast riches. But I wanted to give the book, which I'd been working on since Amalia was a year old, more visibility and to show my children, especially Amalia, that work you love matters. But was I making their lives more stressful in the bargain?

On the flight from LaGuardia to Miami, I carried Nicolas in a shirt made with a pouch for baby-wearing. Rocked to sleep by the motion and white noise of the plane, he slept the entire flight. Upon arrival, we learned that, after a long illness, my grandfather-in-law had passed away. My husband left for Nicaragua to attend the funeral the next morning and I stayed behind with Nicolas, whose passport had yet to arrive. En route to Miami alone, I tended to a screaming baby all through airport security at New Orleans airport (it lasted about 45 minutes). Older women corrected the way I held the baby, younger women looked horrified, and men averted their eyes in terror. When we arrived at my parents' apartment in Miami after midnight, I was covered in breast milk (mine), urine (the baby's), and sweat (who knows). All I wanted to do was shower and throw my clothes in the laundry. The next morning, I woke up clean but without my engagement and wedding rings. My mother and I tore up the house, the beds, and the washing machine looking for them. Then I remembered separating the trash from the recycling in a sleep-deprived haze the night before. My mom, bless her heart, went through the garbage and found my rings stuck to a dirty diaper. Exhausted and filthy, I had thrown out my most valuable pieces of jewelry (both practically and sentimentally).

The next day, after my final reading took place at my favorite independent bookstore, I signed books while Amalia drew on paper napkins with the Sharpies the store had provided. As I spoke to the woman in front of me, Amalia turned to the stranger behind her and said, "I'm drawing pictures for my mommy because I'm proud of her. She did a REALLY good job." It was the best moment of my book tour. The events were nice, but the highlights of the trip came from being on the road with my kids, whether we were schmoozing tattooed Cajuns in a French Quarter courtyard, feeding fish in the fountains of Miami Beach's Lincoln Road, or dabbing Nicolas's tiny feet in the ocean for the first time. And even though Amalia threw up on me during the eleven-minute drive to Miami International Airport on the way home and I caught a bug on the flight and was feverish for two days afterwards, I'd do it all over again.

Which reminds me of the second cardinal rule of parenting: Traveling with kids is never easy, but it's almost always worth the pain.

---

Shock and Awe in South Beach

In my previous post I mentioned that Lincoln Road Mall in South Beach, Miami was designed in the Miami Modern style back in 1960 by architect Morris Lapidus -- creating one of the first pedestrian malls ever--and has been on the cutting edge of art, fashion, design and cuisine ever since.

On this visit, now stretching into my fourth week since yest another snow storm cancelled our flight back to Boston today, I've noticed that, while Lincoln Road is still as energetic, lively, surprising and seductive as ever, some changes over the past four years were not for the better. The colorful art deco facade of the previous Lincoln Theater has been painted white and turned into an H&M store and some restaurants.

But every day, when I venture out onto Lincoln Road to get my morning coffee and newspapers, or  walk the five or so blocks down to the beach,  I see astonishing people and places unlike those on any other street in the world, and every day I  return to the apartment in a state of shock and awe.

 This blonde with the improbably long legs and hair and impossibly high heels has got the South Beach fashion vibe down perfectly--accessorized by a small fluffy dog (sometimes dyed to match the owner's hair) and maximum exposure of skin.

This blonde displays her love of Florida with the tattoo on her back.  The young man with her has his own tattoo art.

Every day I admire the energy of the street performers, like the break dancers.

 Risking a broken neck on the cement.

Every day I see the armless artist who paints with his feet.  

He works in the shadow of the church that doesn't reject anyone.

This young man is organizing rallies to free Lolita, the Orca at  the Miami Seaquarium for 40 years who, since the death of her mate, is called the "loneliest Orca in the world.

People on Lincoln Road often have unusual pets.

And unusual fashions, like this gentleman who wears this outfit every day.

The grassy knoll is filled with frolicking children day and night.  The balloon man is there, and at night another man sells  whirly toys with colored lights that are projected into the sky by elastic band sling shots and often get stuck in the palm trees overhead.

Kids also love feeding the fish in the several fountains-fish so big they'd make a hearty meal.

This heron clearly had the same thought.

Lincoln Road has lots of art galleries, including one devoted to Florida's famous pop artist Romero Britto (he even decorated the parking meters in Miami.)

And on Sundays Lincoln Road turns into an outdoor antiques market.

And a farmer's market of organic, locally grown produce.

 

No wonder everyone turns up on Lincoln Road sooner or later when they get tired of snow and winter.  One day I even spied Santa Claus sitting in the sun on the grassy knoll.

But then in the next block I saw this guy (below).

Will the real Santa please stand up?

Amalia's Snow Day in the Jungle

While, back home in Manhattan and Massachusetts, everyone stayed inside and watched the snow pile up during the Blizzard of 2015, Amalia, stuck in Miami because all flights back home were cancelled, spent Tuesday going with Mommy and Yiayia Joanie to Jungle Island where she got close up and personal with

many parrots

a baby alligator

a yellow python.

Feeding goats with a bottle was the part she liked best

 

Lunch was burgers beside a lake with a lot of flamingos, while white Ibises fought for leftovers.

 

 Tomorrow (Weds.) Amalia and Mommy and Yiayia Joanie hope to fly back to the snow drifts of Manhattan.

Amalia’s Jungle Adventure

-->

On Saturday, 19-month-old granddaughter Amalia paid a visit to Florida’s Jungle Island in the heart of Miami, where she had her first chance to get up close and personal with animals she had only read about in story books.

Right inside the door, employees handed her Mommy a royal blue parrot and perched two other parrots on her Yiayia Joanie and her honorary Yiayia Eleni Nikolaides, and then they took a photo.  This did not make Amalia happy, perhaps because the parrots were so much bigger than her beloved Tonia, the green parrot who lives in her complex back in Granada, Nicaragua.

 Amalia  brightened up when she saw giant iguanas and agile little monkeys inside the first gate.  The monkeys followed us around, hoping that some food would come out of Yiayia’s purse, but it didn’t.

 Amalia was amazed to see children riding “paka-paka” on top of Judy, the elephant, just like people ride on horses back in Granada, but she said decisively that she did not want to go on such a ride (nor did her grandmas.)

 She was equally worried by the sight of some alligators and their big teeth, and wished that her Papou (Grandpa) was there to go “Da! Da! Da!’ to those alligators and drive them back into the swamp.

 After passing waterfalls, caged tigers and lots more parrots,  they came to “Dr. Wasabi’s’s Wild Adventures”  which was Amalia’s first look at live theater.

They met a pot-bellied pig

And a lemur

And a bristly porcupine.  Most of the animals came around so that you could touch them if you wanted.  But not the porcupine.

Next they came to the petting zoo where Amalia fed grain to a little billygoat

And Yiayia Joanie fed juice to another goat from a baby's bottle.

 And Amalia got to touch a furry little monkey

And watch two bigger monkeys who were showing off by swinging all over, like Tarzan.

She marveled at  huge tortoises, much bigger than the tortugas in her garden in Nicaragua.

 On the way to the restaurant, they passed a giant alligator that had its mouth open, and Amalia demonstrated one more time what Papou would do if he was there to beat up the alligator.  She didn’t realize it was only a statue.

 In the lunch room there were paintings of some of the animals they had seen and Amalia had a delicious lunch of pasta, but she fell asleep in her carriage before the Key Lime Pie.

She  didn’t even see the Flamingo Lake outside the windows.

The male flamingos were flapping their wings and running around aggressively while the females glided by and pretended to ignore them.

 Amalia slept all the way home to South Beach, and when she woke up that afternoon, she couldn’t stop talking about all the animals she’d seen, especially the elephant and the alligators.

 In fact, she was so excited that she woke up at three a. m. that night and stayed awake until 6 a.m., driving everyone else crazy while reliving her jungle adventures and recounting what Papou would do to the scary animals if only he was there.

Her Mommy said that it had all been too much excitement for Amalia and they probably shouldn’t take her to see Disneyland until she was about five.