A Wet Welcome

Miami greeted me with heat and humidity, then rain, thunder and lightning.

My apartment sits at 3226 Mary St in Coconut Grove. According to my guidebook, the neighborhood was once called the “Haight and Ashbury” of the southeast but now is the domain of chains like Banana Republic, Gap and Hooters. Andrew, my new roommate, agreed with the book’s verdict, but noted that there are still a few outposts of that earlier time, small homes amidst the more typical suburban surroundings where residents eat communally and go to the same Hare Krishna temple.

I won’t make any generalizations based on my single walk through the neighborhood, but it seemed the street fair—or ‘block party’ as my roommate and his friends termed it—showed the curious mix of the area. Black women in traditional African garb mixed with kids in oversized basketball gear, as food booths gave way to temporary basketball courts with ongoing 3-point competitions. A woman on stage sang an old jazz tune to a scattered audience. Attendance was majority black.

I made my way through the fair to CVS—which Roshni tells me is funding the expansion of Elephant Pharmacy (for the unfamiliar, both are pharmacies, though of decidedly different varieties)—to pick up few things I forgot. As I went to check out I looked toward the doorway, where an employee had been posting a “No Restrooms” sign earlier to the complaints of many ‘block party’-goers, and noticed a large crowd milling about. It was pouring outside.

Moisture hangs in the air when it is humid and in this early summer rain, water pelted down through already moist air. People huddled under awnings as I walked back to my apartment through the rain, shielded—rather superficially—by a windbreaker. It was the last thing I’d packed.

So, on my first day in Miami I sweat, I got wet, I heard big lady singing jazz and I heard the crack of lightning.