Brooklyn in miami and the hot hot heat

Another hot and steamy weekend living in the tropics... Friday after work, Nicole and i went up to 69th and biscayne (right near the beloved eco-car wash and dogma hotdogs) to wine 69, a little wine-shop and wine-bar for a classy happy hour. In an effort not to sound like an alcoholic, ill be brief with this one but say we had a lovely time: they let you try a ‘flight’ of wine, three at a time, and then also conveniently sell the same bottles, which is really a super idea (especially since you can barely trust people in liquor stores about good wine– and ive yet to actually go to a wine store down here).

After that, we stepped over next door to michy’s, for the miami spice menu– a bunch more people met us there, and while i had so-so expectations, it was really delicious. Dinner oddly enough lasted about 3 hours. We were all having a great time so i didnt really notice, until we got up to leave and it was like 11.30pm. Who knew. I figured it was best to simply go home & to bed since Saturday rachel & I have our repeat-plans to do ballet & stretch..

But all night Friday i had these horrible calve cramps. My legs were killing me– so i woke up early on Saturday, told rachel i would only make it to stretch, and then decided i should take a super long run to get my calves moving– except apparently this was overly optimistic, being that it was already 88 degrees, sunny, and hot as hell. I almost had a heart attack. No joke. After about an hour of running i made it to stretch class– only to find that rachel didn’t make it– which turned out to be fine, since i really needed it at that point, and we ended up doing more yoga, which was lovely. Then of course, i had to run home- another 2 miles or so- still in the heat. My body was basically saying ‘wtf’ in every possible way. After I changed, headed down to south beach for lunch with rachel- we headed to the big pink for big salads- but of course it took like an hour to find parking. So I ended up paying $20 to park in a lot. I mean…you can just imagine: I was hot. Hungry. Fussy. I couldnt have been more cranky. We still managed to have a lovely time, and then dealt with the annoying parking sitch all over again when we headed over to a friends house for a minor-pool party (a lesbian pool party. Where apparently we had already missed the “power hour” at 4pm…).

Didn’t stay long, then headed back to rachel’s for some iced tea before we got ready to go out for the night to the wynwood art district– miami’s version of hipsterness. When patty was in town, we headed there for a while too– this time, it was rachel, carla, and justin and i – walking about, drinking our free wine, seeing the art, and marveling at the scene. The best part was one block, literally teeming with people: two dudes were playing bongos, a third was doing spoken word/rap into a megaphone, and a hippie chick was dancing in front of them with a rope that was on fire- swinging it around, doing her interpretive dance thing. It was like we had suddenly come upon a phish show. Next to them were these kids with several typewritters, who, in an effort to raise money to publish their poetry anthology, were asking for donations to write a poem (dont homeless people in ny do the same thing?). we signed right up, but were told to come back in 30 minutes– im sure we dillydallied somewhere else too long, and ended up missing them. Ah well. Hopefully next time...

After checking out the art for a bit, we stopped by joey’s for dinner- the one restaurant in wynwood, literally. It was packed but eventually emptied out, and we got a nice table, ate a bit, and the waiter loved us so much he brought us out desert: some kind of cocktail involving prosecco, strawberry flavoring and…. Milk. It was like a milkshake. I didn’t quite know how to say thank you, or rather, no thank you, but that’s the way it goes. We briefly stopped next door after dinner, at the ‘wynwood social club’- a cool concept really: the place just charges $5-10 cover, you come in byob, and it basically looks like someone’s antiquey livingroom- and there’s live music. So you just hang, they sell food snacky things, and listen to the music. Pretty novel concept for Miami, but we we’re into the scene so we headed over to check out a place called: the electric pickle.

Oddly enough, we had driven by there earlier in the night, before it was open, and I looked out the window and said: I want to go there! It looked like a warehouse from the outside, no windows, nothing, painted black, nothing around- and totally unrecognizable except for a cheesey neon sign above that said “liquors.” You would have never known it was an actual hang out spot at night—reminded me completely of those sketchy bars you see over by port authority, 8th or 9th ave in the 40s around there- no idea whats going on inside. Inside though, its like I had returned to the motherland: for all practical purposes, the inside of the bar looked like any place you might walk into in new york- for some reason im thinking specifically of the magician, but it could be anywhere- the entire layout rang that way, something about the lighting, the placement of things, the décor. Not shabby chic, but almost like that, with a twist of industrial or club, but not quite. There was an outside as well- which makes it as Brooklyn as it felt: its basically a parking lot with lots of picnic tables, where everyone is just hanging outside; theres a silver van or something of that nature in the corner, which is actually a bar- the side of it is opened out; and there was a dj in the corner spinning music. Totally chill, totally random, totally not Miami.

Upstairs there was also a dance floor and some live music, but we were pretty beat so didn’t stay for too long. After some more debate and hemming and hawing, we considered going to several other places in the downtown Miami area- but all of them were charging cover or empty, so we headed back to the beach—yet another random night thrown together, with no one making too many plans, or having too many objectives for the night, just exploring and seeing whatelse is out there.
Sunday was the lazy day of course: lots of cooking, some sun time—the sun time was particularly jarring, because after just laying out for a handful of minutes I started to sweat profusely: it was incredibly hot. Everytime id get in the pool, Id expect to cool down- but it wouldn’t last that long. So intense, and yet, its only may… still, much more enjoyable than a grey grey winter, so ive got to keep these moments while they still last…

Tomorrow is our officially inaugeral “book club”. Im not sure exactly what this entails other than like, 10 girls going to rachel’s house for wine and talking. Both of which I am a supporter of. Ive also heard a rumor that stone crab season ENDS (*gasp*) may 15… this Friday. So hopefully pre-book club, we will grab some joe’s takeout to relish the treasures of our shelly friends one last time…For now though, im totally wiped out- its going to be a long intense week at work for sure, but that’s fine—rumor has it, the boss will be out for most of the rest of the month, so I’ve got to grin and bear the hecticness while its around... honestly though, business is nice from time to time: it gets me going full speed, although has already left me with a major headache… time to go drink more water. xoxo