Art Deco in Miami

Not being people to spend time on beaches, the main attraction of Miami for us was the abundance of art deco buildings along the South Beach area.  And we had been pleased to find that we could coincide our stay with the annual Art Deco Weekend.


When we worked out the bus systems and got our two buses into SoBe, we certainly saw a lot of great art deco architecture.  Some of it was the classic white style that you often see along beach fronts in the UK, which I have to  admit to being my own preferred type, while some had gone for more colour.

Art Deco gets its name from the 1925 Paris Exhibition of 'Arts Decoratifs', which focused on displays of modern art of the period.  As this was one of the biggest viewings of these new styles, the abbreviated name of the fair was adopted as an easy description of this post WW1 modern style.

Some of the art deco style uses a lot of Egyptian inspired imagery and colouring.  This came out of the rise in popularity of all things egyptian following the 1922 discovery of King Tutankhamen's tomb.

There is a lot of this more ornate style here in Miami, as well as the simpler, more common influence of the pyramid in the stepped levels of building structure and decorative lines.

So we enjoyed looking at the buildings.

We didn't do the Art Deco tour though, preferring instead to do the 'underworld' tour, which promised stories of crime and mafia that happened in these parts.

Sadly the tour was a bit disappointing.  For a city that was - and possibly still is - so steeped in mafia connections, it was a bit thin on underworld stuff.

 

He did tell us that the decorative lines and arrows built into the flooring of some hotels probably pointed to the direction of the prohibition era speakeasies.

He also said that when the speakeasy got a tip off that they were about to be raided by the police, they would take most of their stuff to the Wolfsonian, which at that time was a storage company, to hide it until after the raid was over and they could get back to business.

 

Aside from those two points, and showing us the spot where Versace was shot, the only things we got were film and TV references, such as the fact that the neon work inside Club Deuc, the oldest pub in Miami, was brought in when they filmed some of Miami Vice there.

He did repeatedly tell us that everyone was corrupt during those mafia days, which was probably rather unnecessary for a group on an underground tour.  But if you were in the market for an expensive property, he did tell us that the house that Al Capone retired to in Miami is up for sale.

 

And unfortunately the market was a bit of a let down too.  As markets go, it wasn't bad.  There were some nice antiquey bits, some jewellery, and lots of other things, but it wasn't really art deco.

 

We had expected that there would be a lot of art deco related stuff here.  Obviously not all original, but we had thought we would see some good reproduction bits and other things that were clearly inspired by the art deco period.  There was a little bit of this, but not much.  The vast majority was what you would expect to find at any flea market.

 

We went along to the Art Deco Welcome Centre to see the 'bounty of Art Deco furniture' and saw about ten pieces.  Though admittedly one was a rather large and elaborate light which I though was pretty amazing.  Still, not much of a bounty, more of a smattering.

 

The parade of vintage cars was interesting to a point.  There were some nice old classics.  But even then, they were stretching the idea of vintage.  It was bad enough that they included cars from the eighties, but some of the cars being driven must have been from within the last ten years; I think a couple towards the end were just showing off their latest acquisition!

 

We had hoped for a bit of canine amusement with the Arf Deco parade of dressed up dogs, but they were a bit thin on the ground and very few really dressed for the occasion.

 

So overall we weren't especially impressed with the Art Deco Weekend.  A bit like Miami as a whole really.  It was alright, there was some stuff to see and do, but it wasn't as good as we'd expected and we not really sure what all the fuss is about.  Perhaps it really is just all about the beach here.

But hey, we had a couple of huge cocktails at a bargain happy hour price, so we were contented enough!

Miami design and graffiti

From St Pete we took the bus down to Miami.  We are quite used to long bus journeys, so at just over seven hours this one would have been fine, had it not been for one woman who managed to spend the entire six hours that she was one the bus speaking loudly on her phone in Spanish.

Goodness knows who she was talking to for that long, but it was most irritating.  We all we relieved when she got off, only to find another woman start up.  Thankfully she only spoke for part of the remaining hour.


Once in Miami, we had another Airbnb to stay at. No coffins this time, but they did have a dog that liked to play, a couple of mostly friendly cats, and some slightly crazy chickens.

 

 

We had thought that we would do the Everglades while in Miami, but in the end we didn't. We discovered that although there is a lot of talk about the importance of the environment in connection with the Everglades National Park, there is no way of getting there on public transport - everyone either has to drive themselves or arrange an expensive private transfer.

 

 

The one alternative is to go on an organised tour. We considered that, but they just give you a short trip on a large and environmentally unfriendly airboat, and then take you to gator land to watch them wrestling with the alligators. That wasn't really what we wanted, so we decided to leave the Everglades to a time when we can come back and do it more as we would want to.

One of the things we did do, was take a walk around the design district and the Wynwood area. The design district was OK, but unless you have a big budget, you're not going to find too much to take home with you.

We did find a place serving good beers and pizzas though.
 

We also wandered amongst the warehouses of the Wynwood area. I know that that this sounds a bit strange, but in fact this is where the graffiti artists have come to do their thing. And they do it on a very large scale, often taking up a whole wall.
 

A few of the designs were mediocre or not to our taste, but most were excellent. I especially liked the black and white ones I think, though the Roy Lichtenstein inspired one was amusing too.

Off to the White Continent again

With my sister having been over from Hong Kong for the funeral too, all three of us were flying out on the same day, so my mum drove us up to the airport.  With only going for the couple of weeks this time, we had lighter than usual rucksacks which was rather nice. 

Our route through to Ushuaia was in three stages.  The first was a ten hour flight to Miami.  We arrived there at 16:05 local time, which is 21:05 UK time.  But then we had to get through immigration and customs.  It seemed to take forever to walk from the plane to passport control, but we were pretty lucky once we got there as we got moved over to a shorter queue.  It still took forever, but not quite as long as it might have done.  We went through the rigmarole of fingerprinting and photos being taken, but made it through OK.

We then collected our rucksacks and joined another queue to pass through customs, before making our way outside to try to find the shuttle bus to our hotel.  Just about every hotel's bus passed us at least twice before ours finally turned up, and then it was a good half hour out, so by the time we actually got to our hotel it was about 8pm, or 1am UK time.

The next day was Thanksgiving, but we didn't get to see any of it as we were straight back to the airport for our next leg, a nine hour flight to Buenos Aires.  Because we we flying on a connecting flight the next day, we had a free transfer to our hostel, but it was slow going.  The bus from the airport to town was OK, but then we had to wait quite a while while they ferried us all on to our final destinations in taxis.  So having dropped off our bags and washed up, we were just in time for an argentine time dinner at 10pm.  We decided to hit one of our favourite places from before, so walked the few blocks over to Don Julio and enjoyed a good steak.

 

In the morning we took a cab to the airport for our very early three and a half hour flight down to Ushuaia.  A quick cab to the Antarctica hostel which we had used before meant we were soon relaxing in the same room that we had last time.

 

It was a long trip, but it was made much easier by the fact that we knew BsAs and Ushuaia, so we could relax and just fit back in to those places.

 

We went back to a couple of good places we'd been to before in Ushuaia, a buffet asado and a nice bar, and then in the morning had a long relaxing brunch and a few beers in the hostel before walking down to the docks in the afternoon to pick up the Ortelius.

On board we found we had been upgraded into a suite which was rather nice, and soon discovered that we had three of the same staff on board as last time, Delphine, Jim and Katrine.