A Patch of Dirt

For most of the southern portion of the MetroRail, US-1 runs alongside the train, including between Coconut Grove station and my apartment. Every day, I exit the station and walk down the sidewalk to the street light. No one else does.

While I wait for the light to change, 20 yards away people dart from the roadside to a thin concrete berm that bisects the eight lane highway. Once traffic backs up from the light to where they stand, they weave between cars to the opposite sidewalk. Foot traffic has worn their waiting spot down to a patch of dirt.

The first person I saw make the dash was a bum—causing me to write it off as a fluke. But in the weeks that followed I watched teenagers, workmen, nurses in scrubs, men in suit and tie and even a few young professionals use the route. I haven’t seen a single close call or even heard a horn.

I imagine all those people started just like me. Every day they walked to the light, pressed the crosswalk button, waited for the pedestrian light and then took their life into their hands. I guess they figured they could do that just as well further up the road.

Maybe it’s the anonymity. Cars in Miami are allowed to darken their front windows to opacity. Many take advantage. Then they try to run over your toes.

Sometimes they are courteous. They stop for you—with their wheels on the line of the crosswalk.

But they never honk at you. They wouldn’t want to warn you.

I’ll be glad to be back in Cali.

Miami Moments

15 Minutes in Miami: When I catch the MetroMover at Bay Front Park on my way home, I usually choose the rear car, which places me closest to the stairs at my next stop.

But today, I arrived on the platform with barely a moment left and only had time to slip through the closing doors of the first car. Once again, in the back of the car there was a gun, but this time it was attached to the bench of a Miami Mounty. Naturally, I went to the back bench.

I couldn’t read the name on his ID card, but I could read the description: Security Contractor. Wait a sec! What? Didn’t they read my post? Mounty Contractor, maybe.

And yet they can’t seem to decide on one title. Embroidered above the shirt’s pocket is another: Custom Enforcement Officer. Guess they’re all one of a kind!

###

15 Seconds in Miami: Later today, while walking home, I heard a middle-aged man describe himself as an “abandoned waif,” watched a son with a sneer getting his picture taken by his mom, and then saw the same son conspicuously grab his crotch as I passed. A magical stretch of pavement.

Beauty, Youth and the Professional Life

(from Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary:)
youth, n.: The Period of Possibility, when Archimedes finds a fulcrum, Cassandra has a following and seven cities compete for the honor of endowing a living Homer.

Youth is the true Saturnian Reign, the Golden Age on earth
again, when figs are grown on thistles, and pigs betailed with
whistles and, wearing silken bristles, live ever in clover, and
clows fly over, delivering milk at every door, and Justice never
is heard to snore, and every assassin is made a ghost and,
howling, is cast into Baltimost! --Polydore Smith

###

On Friday night, I went to a Red Cross Recruitment event at a health spa. Out front, the organizers had strung a banner around one of the plaster columns of the strip mall: “Together, We Can Save Lives.” The window behind the banner listed the treatments available at ‘Sutera Medical Spa’: Massage, Peels, Laser Hair Removal, Laser Vein Removal, Botox. This fits perfectly, of course. In Miami, beauty is a matter of life and death.

Inside the spa—really a corridor done up in the tasteful austerity that is so desperately in vogue—were nearly 25 people, packed ever more densely as you approached the open bar. Wait, did I say people? Allow me to correct myself: Young Professionals.

In Miami, every working college graduate, each aged-high-school-dropout with a job and just about anybody who hasn’t yet received a card from the AARP is a Young Professional. Email announcements for museum nights and other social functions always promise they will be in attendance, but no need to worry if you can’t make it, for one can always join the Young Professionals Networking Association.

Of course, you will be kicked out eventually. One can’t remain a Young Professional forever. When are you out? At 42. That means I have 20 more years of professional youth ahead of me. Frankly, I’m afraid I won’t make it all the way through, especially if I keep taking advantage of the open bar. But then I remember that I’m young. And I’m a professional. And there is always the Botox in the backroom.

No Treasure Here

Sturdy white awnings filled the parking lot, sheltering countless vendors. Customers were present, but not in droves. As I walked down the first row, I passed stalls selling cell phone accessories, t-shirts and soccer jerseys, women’s underwear—with panties stretched onto plastic rings on display—CDs and videos, assorted toiletries, those bug-eyed sunglasses, and great jumbles of sneakers. Then I turned into the next row of tables and walked past all the same goods. Next row, same thing.

It seemed everyone at the swap meet had gone to the same handful of wholesalers. Every few yards I saw the same chintzy sun shades, the same leopard-print cell phone covers, and the same cheap Italian jerseys. Some stalls, those with owners that had likely visited two separate wholesalers, offered services in two areas: perhaps you would like some giant panties and a cell phone charger?

The exceptions were a relief. One stall, heard before seen, was atwitter with hundreds of birds. Housed ten to a cage or more, they begged for buyers. On the outside edge of the awning, were the vendor’s only furry critters. Four rabbits huddled in one cage and three weasels lay prone in the other—seemingly floored by heat stroke.

I got a kick out of the pair of boy’s briefs I spotted among one stall’s collection of toiletries (suggesting men consider underwear just another toiletry?). Labeled “Super Boy” in large bold letters, they sported a fair skinned kid thrusting his skinny chest forward. Amusing, but not treasure.

Eventually, growing tired of the heat, I headed to a permanent structure that housed still more stalls. The cool air inside was a treat, despite the stale smell—which oddly reminded me of the scent carried by the air-conditioning of a restaurant I visited in Little Cuba. I strode quickly past the vendors and found myself in a empty area, near the opening of an overflow fence that snaked across the building’s linoleum. To my right a small man sat on a stool next to an old and equally-small turnstile. Making to move through the gap, he motioned me through the turnstile instead. As I passed through, I realized what I was entering: the Dog Races.

I had seen the sign after I got off the bus: Flagler Dog Track. I was intrigued, but didn’t think much about it. And once I entered the swap meet, it dropped from my mind. But now here I was, free from the disappointing banality of the swap meet and walking wide-eyed into a spectacle that I thought had gone out with the cockfight.

At some point in the past I’m sure I saw dog races, perhaps on late night TV while flipping through the back hundreds or possibly on those betting parlor screens that stare conspicuously out the window. But they never were truly real. Yet, twenty minutes after I entered, the dogs emerged to race, strutting their way out of myth.

Each was led by a handler—all in their middle teens—and sported a doggie vest emblazoned with a number from one to eight. They line up along a grassy border of the track, facing the benches and betting counters, where they are held so their muzzles can tested and, presumably, to be admired by the bettors. Few seemed interested. But I was enthralled.

I picked out my favorite from the first group easily. As the eight were being led away, this hound—whose deep brown coat was complemented by the rich green of his #4 jacket—pulled to the left to clear his bowels. No racing on a full stomach. (The lighter load would not significantly help his cause—he finished at par with his assigned number.)

[final segment tomorrow...]

Of Mangoes and Swap Meets

Last Saturday, I took the train one stop south to Douglas Road, read the bus routes posted in the station, waited ten minutes for the 37—long enough to sweat through my shirt—and then rode it for 20 minutes in the wrong direction.

I intended to go to the International Mango Festival, a yearly event to celebrate the fruit that most of Miami seems content to let fall and rot. The festivities are in their 14th year, according the Miami New Times, a longevity undoubtedly fueled by visiting Mango fanatics like myself. Of course, a true fanatic would be able to read the bus schedule.

What did I miss? Hundreds of mango trees, mango lovers, mango workshops, mango cooking demonstrations and more than 150 varieties to aid you in reaching mango-assisted (induced?) orgasm.

Instead of such trembling delights, I rode north into the outskirts of Coral Gables—City Beautiful, as christened by the residents. Approximately at the point where I decided that riding the whole bus loop would be neither aesthetically stimulating nor time-effective, we passed the Coral Gables Swap Meet. I got off the bus.

I blame excessive early childhood exposure to flea markets for my low resistance to all things bazaar. I remain convinced that treasure always lurks in the musty boxes of the fresh-air antique trader, among their yellow comic books, their bins of bicycle parts and chipped and mismatched dishware. At one time I carefully assessed every moldy sofa I encountered, prompted by a Roald Dahl short story about a priceless chaise lounge discovered by a restoration expert. (Clearly I missed the moral—the antique was rendered valueless when the sellers cut its legs off in an attempt to help the greedy and prevaricating buyer.)

The old fire rose again as I strode into the maze of stalls that stretched across the parking lot. Mysterious treasures were surely waiting to be discovered. Alas, that day I was disappointed. (The hope, of course, lives on.)

...to be continued