Vicki and I are both Miami natives, both born at Jackson Memorial Hospital, little more than a year apart. Both our high school years occurred in South Florida. We never got to South Beach very much in those years. It was a seedy run-down sort of place in the early 60s, and the beaches of preference for us were 82nd St., Haulover, Crandon Park, and the submarine races off Hallandale Beach. Since our retirement, we've driven a bit of Collins Avenue, and even snapped a few pix, posted in 2011 or so. Since then, however, we've become Art Deco fans--travel is so enlightening, seriously--and South Beach has the largest concentration of Art Deco in the US, maybe the world. 800 buildings. Most of it is later Art Deco, from the later 30s and then the later 40s. Just search "art deco" in the blog's search box, and you'll see some of our previous Art Deco experiences, on six continents. But none compare with South Beach.
Monday, March 14th, thanks to the use of brother-in-law Jim's car, we spent the better part of the day doing South Beach, on foot, Collins and Ocean Drive, from 22nd St. to about 7th Street. I took something on the order of 200 pix, brutally edited in this and the next post. Only the best, and excluding such things as my Cuban sandwich and coffee at Estefano's, Vicki's Cuban bread pudding, the huge bike lanes on Ocean Drive, and a number of assorted curiosities. The buildings pictured are mostly hotels, still, and well identified, so I won't comment much about their names and locations. Click to enlarge, since the small pix often don't do justice!
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| Ocean Drive public bathroom facilities |
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| The Carlyle, setting for Birdcage |
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Something you just don't see anymore;:
the "cigars, cigarets, cigarillos" babe |
