Valentine’s Day the South Beach Way

(This Valentine Vision, seen on Lincoln Road selling the plants perched atop her  voluminous skirt, seems to have escaped from "Alice in Wonderland".)

I’m back in Miami Beach and every day I push my grand-daughter in her stroller up and down Lincoln Road, the 8-block long pedestrian mall which is the main street of South Beach.  As we promenade,  my jaw often drops at the exotic, outrageous and just plain weird things I encounter on this Main Street of Bizzaro World, home to art galleries, drag brunches, mimes, clowns, evangelists, flea markets, produce sellers, Hasidic Jews, bikinied beauties and a whole lot of homeless people rubbing elbows with tourists, models and club goers.  Adding to the excitement are the many kinds of vehicles threading through the crowds: skateboards, Segways, bicycles, and every kind of stroller and motorized chair.

Like every Main Street in the U.S.,  Lincoln Road is now awash in Valentine’s Day decorations and gifts, but here in South Beach they do Valentine’s Day their own way.

The Britto Art Gallery on Lincoln Road is devoted entirely to selling the work of Miami’s most famous (and controversial) artist, Romero Britto.  He was born into abject poverty in Brazil in 1963, is self-taught and arrived in Miami in the 1980’s.  His cheery, comic-book-like images of Mickey Mouse and smiling cats, the Statue of Liberty and the Virgin of Guadalupe now sell for many thousands of dollars each, and he has  designed for Miami huge street art, parking meters, china, purses, umbrellas, luggage, even the uniforms worn at Miami airport.

Serious art critics in Miami scorn his art and dismiss Britto as a “hack” but yesterday, people were streaming into the gallery, filled with his “heart” images for Valentine’s day and streaming out with purchases in his distinctive winged-heart shopping bags.

 Many other stores on Lincoln Road had striking Valentine-themed displays yesterday, suggesting that you tell your valentine you love him/her/it with:

 Lingerie,

 Wigs and dresses,

 Jewelry,

 Shoes,

 Books.

 Paul’s French bakery had heart-shaped bread and macaroons.

 A sports bar encouraged Happy Hour with an inflatable teddy bear

 A man was kissing two parrots he had saved – one fell from a tree, the other was given up by his owner.

 A psychic was busy doing readings.

By this morning (Monday) things had quieted down a lot and the crowds had thinned out except for two models being photographed.

 But on Valentine’s Day lovers of every persuasion will be thronging to the outdoor restaurants, bars and happy hours, the flames of the outdoor heaters will flicker (because it’s unusually cool for Miami Beach), music will be blaring from every restaurant and bar, and South Beach will be celebrating love—every kind of love—in its own unique way.

The Baby with 1,000 Faces

Here it is November 11 and I haven't written a blog post since Halloween!  My computer & blog teacher and famous artist Andy Fish will be scolding me again, as he firmly believe in Blogging Every Day as he does on Fish Wrap.

In the last two weeks I have experienced the "Historic Storm" in the Northeast,  which downed a lot of trees and knocked out our power for four days (when the interior temperature went down to 20 degrees.)

Then I flew down to Miami to spend about five days with daughter Eleni and granddaughter Amalia (and son-in-law Emilio).  I've been planning to write a blog about South Beach and the Sleepless Night festivities we enjoyed and the art on the Wynwood Walls, but just can't get my act together. Stay tuned.

And then I flew yesterday to San Francisco with husband Nick to attend a Hellenic Charity Gala, staying in the Fairmont and exploring San Francisco with daughter Marina who is setting up her apartment here (with a kitchen that incorporates a diner theme.)

So I'll tell you about all that soon (I hope) but meanwhile will show you some more photos of Amalía, the baby with a thousand expressions, as she  approaches her three month birthday and delights us by interacting with and discovering the world.

She sits in her Boppy Pillow watching with awe as her butterfly mobile spins.

She hangs out with her parents at all the happening spots in South Beach.  But sometimes can't stay awake.

She practices making sounds as a preview to talking.

And she readies her wardrobe  for Thanksgiving, when she will travel to New York and Grafton, MA to meet all of her extended family and her parents' friends.

I promise a more serious blog post soon--with no grand-baby photos!

South Beach—We’re Not in Kansas any More

I’ve now been living in South Beach, Miami, for over a month and I think it’s time to go home.  The other day I was walking on Lincoln Road behind a six-foot-tall curvaceous female wearing only a tiny black string bikini and very tall spike heels, and I took a good second look to decide whether she was a man or a woman. 

This is not such a strange reaction on my part, since nearby Ocean Drive swarms with gay bars and drag brunches in its elegant Art Deco hotels.   Absolutely no extreme or peculiar dress gets a second look on Lincoln Road, while back home in Worcester, MA, the bikini-wearing vision in front of me might get arrested, if she was walking on Main Street.

Lincoln Road, the heart of South Beach, was re-designed around 1960, by Miami Beach architect Morris Lapidus.  His design for Lincoln Road, with exotic gardens, bubbling fountains, raised “grassy knolls” for kids to play on and an amphitheater, reflected the Miami Modern Architecture, or "MiMo", style. The road was closed to traffic and became one of the nation's first pedestrian malls—stretching for eight blocks from Alton Road to Washington Avenue.

I’ve been since Aug. 12,  renting an apartment in the same Art-deco building where daughter Eleni, her husband Emilio and my first grandchild, two-week-old Amalía, live.  (For an account of Eleni’s trials, tribulations and triumphs mastering the art of breast feeding, check out her blog post, “Say Yes to the Breast.”)

Every morning I set out to the nearest Starbucks, half a block away, past the optimistically waiting pigeons, to get my coffee and newspaper and then I walk up and down Lincoln Road, marveling at the rare and amazing  species of people, animals, flowers and birds.  This is surely the most exotic, bizarre and just plain weird street I’ve ever seen, and this is coming from someone who lived on Manhattan’s 14^th street in the 1960’s and is familiar with Venice Beach in LA and Haight Ashbury back in the day. Skate-board champs, shirtless and covered with tattoos, somehow avoid running down Hasidic Jews and  bikinied beauties.

Every day you see the regulars—panhandlers and people who earn money as living statues (this one is Ghost Elvis)

or weaving palm fronds into baskets,

juggling or letting  people admire his pet ferret  (or whatever this is.)

There are a plethora of design stores and art galleries.  I loved this piece of art work—a dog excreting a long length of pink fabric—juxtaposed with the nearby Dog-pot.

If you are a seasoned Lincoln Road pedestrian, your accessory of choice is a small dog or a baby in a stroller, and your vehicle is a Segway, or a skateboard, a rented bicycle or a motorized wheel chair.

I think no street anywhere has the caliber of restaurants, food stores and cafes as those found on Lincoln Road. I’m trying to taste every one of the tartes at Paul’s, which is so French that both staff and clientele seem to speak French most of the time. 

I’ve already discovered my favorite flavor of ice cream at Kilwins.  (It’s Kilwin’s Tracks—they throw in bits of all their hand-made candies.)   

The Ice Box, which serves indescribable brunches, makes, according to Oprah, “the best cake in the United States”.  Good thing there’s no scale in this rented apartment.

 

All the restaurants lining Lincoln Road have tables indoors and outside, and most people sit outside, despite the sweltering heat.  Cooling fans and misting machines make it bearable.

Overhead are towering palm trees chock full of parrots and parakeets which squawk non-stop and sometimes come down to be hand-fed morsels 

Orchids  grow parasitically on many trees but the most famous tree on Lincoln Road is this “Orchid Tree” dripping with  blooms that look like orchids but bloom only at night.  Its proper name is Bauhinia Varigata.

Lincoln Road turns into an outdoor market every Sunday, selling every exotic type of fruit or flower or spice or Latin food that you can think of.

An atmosphere of sin hangs heavy over the street, especially at night.  There are party busses with smoked glass windows and advertisements for “No-Tell Hotels”. 

Every time I walk by the  “Vice Lounge” I wonder what goes on inside.  This is what the outside looks like.

 When you have exhausted all the pleasures and vices of Lincoln Road, you can continue to the end, where the Ritz Hotel offers the best Happy Hour food and drink around.  (Every single restaurant and bar has a happy hour every day, sometimes starting at noon.)  Or you can hitch a parachute right on the beach.

No wonder every time I walk down Lincoln Road I feel like Alice falling through the rabbit hole or Dorothy landing in Oz.   But like those two ladies, I’ll have to return home in the end.  Sadly I’m leaving South Beach and my new granddaughter in four days.  Dorothy said, “There’s no place like home”, but I’m here to tell you, home is no place like Lincoln Road.

A THANKSGIVING MIRACLE--(How NOT to mail that Christmas gift.)

My first mistake was that I was so eager to have Eleni and Emilio see the two wedding gifts I carried back from Greece for them that I decided to mail them to Miami from our home in North Grafton, MA.

They were two silver trays that I carried in my hand luggage.  One, about nine inches in diameter, was a sterling silver replica of a dish in the Benaki Museum in Athens, with medallions incised around the rim representing the twelve apostles. (The original was made in the mid 17^th century in Transylvania.)

The other tray was ten inches square and had been engraved with  “E & E” (for Eleni and Emilio) and the date of their wedding—10.10.10.  It also had an inlaid  blue and white “mati” as protection against the Evil Eye   

So I found a box just the right size.  I wrapped the trays in bubble wrap and added a square cloth from Mexico embroidered with angels and the Virgin that I thought would look nice in their South Beach home.

But the box I found was a Tiffany box, so I wrapped it in brown paper so the name wouldn’t show.  That was my second mistake.

I went to our neighborhood post office where the employees are eager to help with packing, taping, sending—sort of the opposite of any Manhattan post office, where you get shunted from one line to another and generally feel you’re under suspicion.

I asked the postal clerk to put priority mail tape all around the box so it wouldn’t open, and I insured the package for $500.  That was mistake number three.

I had written Eleni and Emilio’s address on one of my husband’s adhesive package labels, which was printed with his return address.  That was the worst mistake of all.

So far I’ve sent about a zillion priority mail envelopes and packages to Miami and they inevitably get there within two days.  I mailed the box of trays on Saturday Oct. 23. Expected delivery date printed on the receipt  was  Monday, Oct. 25.  At the same time, I sent a priority envelope full of mail and clippings.

You guessed it—the envelope of clippings got there on Monday.  The package insured for $500 did not. 

I tried to track the mailing receipt number on line and failed, but my post master learned that the package had reached Nashua, New Hampshire, where all the priority mail goes to be flown out by FedEx planes.  Then it disappeared.

There ensued daily visits to the post office (mine and Eleni’s) to speculate about where it went. You have to wait for 14 days beyond expected delivery to fill out all the necessary forms and send them to the USPS Domestic Claims Center in St. Louis Mo.

I filled out and mailed forms (so did our postmaster Joe) and searched on line for a photo of the Apostles dish.  My heart sank when I learned that it costs 520 Euros.  That’s $700!  I had only insured the box for $500.  And this was the smaller of the two trays.

Eleni in South Beach and I in North Grafton pestered our post offices.  I learned that I should NEVER wrap a package in brown paper, because it can be ripped off by a machine.  All mail without an address ends up in a very large warehouse in Atlanta, GA., and no, you can’t get their phone number or e-mail address.  You have to go through channels.

Eleni got the phone number of a helpful Consumer Affairs representative named  Donna,  who quizzed me about the  trays and how they were wrapped.

Then there was nothing we could do but wait and hope.  (If an unaddressed package in Atlanta is not identified in three months, it’s disposed of.) We couldn’t nag Atlanta, so Eleni baked a cake for Saint Fanourios, who helps you find things. 

She had written the recipe for the cake in her 2006 travel memoir “North of Ithaka”, but in the book she called it a  “Get-Me-A-Man Cake.”  Now she had her man, but wanted her silver trays.

She had to say a prayer as she baked and then get 12 people to eat a piece of it.  Emilio took it to work with him. Everybody liked the cake.

Then, on Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving, there was a call from Atlanta.  The trays had been found!   Should they send them to Miami?

No, we said, because the newlyweds were flying to Grafton for the holiday. And today, the day after Thanksgiving, the box came, with all sort of official stamps  and insurance labels. Under their brown paper was my original brown paper (from a Trader Joe’s bag).  The address label had come off.  It had arrived in Miami “w/o address”.

It left our house on October 23 and one month and three days later, thanks to Saint Fanourios  (and the USPS folks in Atlanta), the trays found their way back.  It was a Thanksgiving miracle!

Just so you won’t make the same mistakes I did, I’m spelling out what I learned about mailing valuables.

1.    1. Insure for the right amount.  Do research to find out.

2.   2. DO NOT wrap anything in brown paper.  Put the address directly on the box.

3.    3. If it’s an address label—put clear tape over it, so it can’t be torn off or obscured by  snow.

4.    4. ALWAYS put a copy of the address information—sender and recipient’s address—INSIDE the box.

5.    5. Make sure the flaps on the box cannot possibly come open.

6.    6. And whatever you do, don’t lose your postage receipts.

7.    7. Priority mail only gets scanned when it’s sent and when it’s delivered—if that.  Maybe you want to send it registered?