It was January 2025, and I had the urge to go away. It had only been a couple of weeks since my Christmas trip to Cyprus but I suppose I felt like I needed something exciting to kick off the new year. A friend had been to Miami a few months prior and was sharing with me what a wonderful trip it was, and so I decided I would go for the weekend.
Miami, and particularly Miami Beach, and even more particularly South Beach, is not unfamiliar to me. I visited there countless times and I lived there for a year, back when a certain presidential election had the world focused on South Beach and its hanging chads and just before 9/11 when travel between the two countries was a little easier. I’m not going to retell what brought me to Miami in the first place all those many years ago, or why I stayed, or what I got up to there, but there are a lot of good stories.
I loved Miami. There are a lot of reasons to not like Miami and a lot of those reasons resonated with me when I lived there, but I really think it’s a very special place and I have very fond memories from there.
As much as I love it, I hadn’t been back in many years. Not since 2007 (that’s when i started this blog and there is an early Miami Beach post here). My sister moved to Los Angeles, and the boy that I loved moved back to New York and almost everyone else that I knew there then moved away or died, and I just hadn’t been back in many years.
Time to change all that.
I flew to Miami and landed midday and took an Uber to South Beach. As soon as I got there the smell was overwhelming. That way where you smell something and you are instantly transported to a time or place. The way that when I smell decaying apples in orchards in the autumn it smells like my youth, or for some reason Giorgio Red perfume in the autumn smells like London, but there’s a smell that South Beach has, created by the heat and the humidity and unidentified sources that I’ve never smelled anywhere else. I was so happy to be back.
I didn’t really have a plan. I just wanted to wander around my old neighbourhoods and see how they changed and just see what things were like, and of course I wanted to check out the cigar scene. I did both of those things. What I didn’t do was I didn’t go to the Wynwood Arts District or to the new Institute of Contemporary Art there, neither of which were things when I lived in Miami. I wanted to go, but I simply ran out of time. I’m already certain that I’ll have to go back again before too long.
South Beach
I feel like a lot of people might roll their eyes at South Beach as a place to visit. I certainly did before I ever went there. And it is a place of vapid beach-goers and party people, criminals, wannabes, retirees and the people that prey on them. But I love it. And to be clear, I don’t like the beach at all, and I don’t enjoy parties. I don’t really fall into any of the other categories either, but there’s just something very special to me about South Beach. Maybe it’s because it’s the first place that I ever experienced a subtropical climate or saw that many palm trees. But I still think it’s kind of magical. The weather is always perfect, and it’s such a great place for walking and bike riding. And then there’s the architecture. This perfectly preserved Art Deco architecture that is so sweet and charming; little apartment buildings two-three stories tall, in pastel hues with Art Deco lines and little insignia of seahorses and flamingos built into the doorways. Like little pastel cakes. I never get tired of it.
And because the weather is perfect and because there are all these charming postcard-perfect hotels and restaurants, almost every eatery has a patio. And sitting on that patio and ordering, admittedly massively overpriced coffee, and watching people go by while smoking a cigar is maybe one of my favourite diversions. Because of the beach-goers and the party people and the wannabes and the plastic surgery addicts, little dogs, weirdos, muscle-heads, gold-diggers, misfits, and people from all over the world in Miami for a fresh start (or running from something), South Beach is just top-notch people watching. And yes, the patios are cigar friendly.
And then there is that Cuban influence, in the food, the music, the cigars, and the friendliness; it feels special. It doesn’t even feel like you’re in America half the time. I’m not even a fan of Cuban food or Cuban coffee but I love hearing the music and smoking the cigars and generally being around Cuban culture.
It’s underrated, but Miami has a pretty good arts scene. I think a lot of artists from New York migrated down there or go back and forth, or maybe it’s the multicultural aspect of it, or the annual Art Basel art fair, but there are some good art galleries and museums down there. Back when I lived in Miami I was much more dialed into that scene, but it’s worth it to seek out some good art galleries down there. And I don’t mean the awful paintings depicting Ocean Drive or tropical fruits, I mean the people that are doing the kind of art that puzzles the viewer or causes them to say I can’t believe they get paid for that. I visited The Bass, a small but satisfying art museum showing interesting contemporary art. Since it’s small and in South Beach, I walked down there and enjoyed the visit.
So much of what I wanted to do in South Beach was just walking around to places that I knew. I was delighted that so much of it looked exactly the same. Ocean Drive was unchanged. The residential streets generally looked the same. All the heritage buildings remained intact and the roads looked the same. It could have been 2000 all over again.
Even some of the main commercial streets looked familiar. Many of the businesses had changed, but not all of them. My favourite little pizza place Pizza Rustica was still in business. A couple of classic dive bars like Mac’s Club Deuce were still operating, and most of the hotels were the same. I saw ads for strip clubs that I visited back in the day and was pleased to see that some of them were still in business. All of this filled me with intense comfort and nostalgia as I walked around and was flooded with memories.
But not everything was the same in South Beach.
There were fewer cigar places. Maybe just two proper lounges, both of which were new from when I lived there, but there was neither the number of cigar lounges or stores that there was in my day.
The only thing that really bothered me, was seeing what had happened to Lincoln Road. Lincoln Road is a mostly pedestrian thoroughfare in South Beach that, when I lived there, was my favourite place in South Beach. It was lined with cute little local shops and restaurants and cafes, a cigar store, a bookstore, a theatre – all delightful and charming. The street was lined with palm trees and had quirky little fountains and seating areas down the middle bit. When I first moved to Miami Beach, I lived with my sister a block off Lincoln Road and it was where I started and finished every day, enjoying a cigar and the New York Times drinking coffee or having a bite to eat. It was peak people watching and after I had been there for a while it was always the place where I would run into people that I knew.
Lincoln Road has fallen on hard times. The road is still there and the trees and the quirky fountains, but with one exception, all of the old businesses have gone. Most of the storefronts are empty and boarded up and the ones that are open are just boring mall stores selling sneakers or capsule coffee or bath bombs. It’s lost all its local charm. Even the restaurants and cafes are different. The Van Dyke Café, which was my absolute favourite place for my morning coffee, is now a big brand sneaker store. Very sad. The only exception was a little Italian restaurant called Spris, that I used to go to sometimes for pizza. It’s still there and looks exactly the same (right down to the flowers on the tables) and, yes, I went there for a pizza. But it was sad to see what’s happened to the rest of the street. (There is a Miami New Times article here about the closing of the Van Dyke and the changes to Lincoln Road.)
On a positive note, however, when I was there the Sunday flea market was still operating. On Sunday morning people from all over South Florida would come to Lincoln Road and put out their wares for sale. This is a quality flea market. I would say the vendors are largely split between middle-aged gay men and older Jewish women displaced from New York. Both delightful to talk to and everyone has quality things for sale. An Art Deco tea set? A full length fur coat? Mid century modern furniture? They’ve got everything. It’s the perfect way to start a Sunday in South Beach.
Another thing that had changed was Española Road. Another pedestrian street in South Beach, but this one very short and narrow. I remember that back in the day it had a couple of little cafés on it and was quite charming. A true hidden gem. Well, hidden no more, Española was shoulder to shoulder with people and lined with packed restaurants. That was fine, but what I was excited about is that there’s now a bustling cigar store / lounge / restaurant there: Española Cigar Bar & Lounge. A little pricey, but a wonderful place to have a cigar and cocktail. I went there twice in two days.
I rode a bicycle down the paths along the length of the beach and felt the sea air, just as I did in the past. Heavenly.
So overall, I was amazed at how much South Beach was exactly what I remembered. Just a couple of small changes and still one of my favourite places on earth.
Miami & Calle Ocho
Leaving Miami Beach, however, things were very different. Downtown Miami, when I lived there, was a place to be avoided. It was a place where you would change from the bus to the train if you were heading to some other part of South Florida, and you wanted to do it as quickly as possible at night because it never felt safe. Well those sketchy neighbourhoods are now replaced by massive high rise apartment buildings and high-end financial district companies. It is completely unrecognizable. This time there were two reasons for me to visit downtown Miami; one was to change from one bus to another as I visited Calle Ocho, and two, there is a very classy cigar lounge in that district (Empire Social Lounge (Brickell Location), as one would expect in a financial district, and I went there and had a cigar and a martini. But what a change; seriously, it’s just a completely different place.
Calle Ocho, or Little Havana, was certainly there when I lived in Miami and I went there to visit some cigar factories, my first cigar factories, and buy cheap cigars, but it wasn’t really a place to visit otherwise. Well it has leaned into its Cuban culture and now attracts busloads of tourists there to browse around, but it seems no less authentic. If anything, it’s better. For countless blocks down 8th Street in Little Havana there is business after business selling cigars. Some are just cigar stores selling a collection of non-Cuban (New World) cigars, but many of them have their own brands and rollers and it was incredible to be able to go into all these little shops and sample their house brands before moving on to the next. All along the way were little restaurants serving Cuban food and playing Cuban music, and with cigar ashtrays on the tables out front. I was in heaven. Honestly it felt a bit like I was in Cuba. The domino park is still there where old Cuban men get together and play dominoes, gossip, and enjoy the odd cigar. Some things never change.
I had an incredible weekend in Miami revisiting familiar places and discovering new ones. Although some things have changed, I was happy to see that it is still, in most respects, the place I remember. And I still love it.
I’ll be back.
But my next trip would take me much farther south, to Argentina.
