Dear Miami, I'm Breaking up with You

"Dear Miami, this is tough for me but...I uh, gotta break up with you. Now-now wait a minute...don't get upset. It's not you, it's me....well...really, it's mostly you."

!KA-POW! - to the back of my head and a quick !BITCH-SLAP! to my right cheek.

"I'm sorry, I don't hate you or anything I just can't live with you anymore." 

One more !SLAP! to my other cheek.

"Okay let me explain..."

After living my entire life as a proud Miamian, I have grown to realize how things have obviously changed in this young-girl of a city. Rampant development, a lot of it positive and much needed improvements to what was always just a seasonal destination. Locals in the service industry used to have to wait for "season" to make any real money because the rest of the year it was pretty much dead and summer being the worst time of the year, it would become a veritable ghost town. Season would usually descend upon our playground city as soon as it would cool down and the snowbirds landed, sometime after Halloween and run until about April. Now, "season" has pretty much spread to most of the other parts of the year even the traditional summer drop in business is no longer noticeable.

I refuse to join the ranks of the mass of "Miami-haters" scattered around the globe and that bad-talk Miami for so many reasons but as a Miamian, I have slowly realized that something has changed with our magic city in the process of her being a big girl. I wil always be grateful to Miami. She has nurtured me in her bodacious bosom and I've had too many remarkably fun and hedonistic moments that my brain can remember. She has opened my mind with her eccentricities, feeding my addiction to her nightlife. 

When you compare 100 year old (about) Miami with other cities that have centuries more years under their belts, she doesn't compare with the diversity, depth and sophistication of the grande dame cities like San Francisco, New York and Chicago. They hold the allure and inspire as say, a Marilyn Monroe or Brigitte Bardot kind of lady.

Miami is like the girl that just turned 18 and just learned how to wear makeup and walk in heels, showing off her hot new body. The minute she gets into the club with her fake ID, she has a magnetism about her that grabs everyone's attention. All the guys want to sleep with her but that's as far as it goes. That is all she has to offer, for the moment, after all she is only 18.

After years of hearing, "That's so Miami" and wondering what these people really meant, I eventually discovered it wasn't a compliment. The top criticisms of Miami I have collected over the last couple of years (from locals and non-locals) have been: 

"Well, you know Miami people are not that educated and things go slower there." 

"People in Miami don't know how to carry conversation. They only keep it on the surface." 

"If you aren't attractive, you are ignored." 

"That place is super fake and the people are flaky."

"Welcome to Miami, a sunny place with shady people."

"People in Miami are too pretentious for no reason."

"When people from Miami come in to our restaurant in New York, we always seat them in the back because they are loud and obnoxious."

Yeah I know, it hurts to hear it. All this time I thought I was pretty cool to be in such a down to earth city where the world comes to party and the people really tell it like it is. The overly expressive latin mentality gives us permission to be brutally honest, so much so that there a lot of people who are just, well Dicks. 

But aside from that, when you compare Miami to all the other cities, it is the most colorful, esthetically appealing, fun and has the best weather this side of Los Angeles. Yeah, all those things count and that puts her at the top for destination cities, gaining her ranking alongside New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The problem is not with our city, mother nature made her just right. It is a virtual paradise almost every day of the year, it's a very comfortable life. You can survive with less here than other big cities. The problem is with her "people". 

Miami has evolved into a type of new Havana where the locals with their wits about them and ability to leave, all emigrate out as soon as they can. Why do they leave? They are looking for more affordable housing, better paying jobs, a more progressive, calm lifestyle that isn't as "crazy" or stressful and after your 30's if you aren't partnered up, it can get boring. 

The ones that migrate to Miami are looking for exactly that. They want color, craziness. They want to sow their oats, and sip on the sexy, spicy, latino gazpacho under a beach umbrella with a hot ocean breeze caressing their faces. 

The problem is when a city caters to that type of tourism or residents, it changes the dynamic of the city and the locals are left feeling like the city has turned into a place not of their making. Miami is a city that never slows down and is addicted to hedonism 12 months out of the year. There never seems to be a time to slow down and reflect. Miami doesn't afford time to it's residents for respite. There is always a festival or event to rush to get ready for. 

While i'm not absolutely sure when the disconnect that exists today first occurred or what changed the air here but I do have a theory. It happened some time between the release of Will Smith's cheesy "Welcome to Miami" video and when someone dropped a hot, steamy dump inside the fitting room of the Kardashian's Dash store on their equally shitty show; The Kardashians Take Miami. It was those two events that sealed our fate and when the subterranean, asshole magnet was turned on. 

From that point on, the "asswhole invasion" began. Douchebags from around the world started to come in droves driving their douchey sport cars, yachts and private jets and with their trophy wives or mistresses in tow.

Developers started building overpriced, high-rise condos that no local salary could afford and baptizing them with egomaniacal names like; Quantum, Icon or Epic that could easily double as names for a condom brand. 

As a result of this "asshole invasion" the people that weren't assholes ended up acting like them so they wouldn't feel left out of this apparent, new normal. This is what I like to call "AAD" or Asshole Affective Disorder. As a result, of the mass AAD epidemic with South Beach at it's epicenter, the rest of Miami has seen it's good people turn into zombies walking around as if they were on a never ending fashion show catwalk with their blue-steel gazes and nonchalant, poker faces acting as if their milk shake is better than anyone else's. 

If you attempt to break rank and connect eyes or dare to greet one of these zombies with what is normal in other cities, with a simple "Hi", you will be guaranteed a quick roll of the eyes or a turn away as if you were a paparazzi trying to take their picture. 

I know it sounds like an exaggeration but the next time you are in Miami, give it a try. 

Is Miami really the coolest place to live as it's sold to be? The only way to answer is to go to other cities and really look at how people treat each other and what the vibe of a place is. 

After feeling like my home was no longer home, and no longer blaming myself for the alienation I was feeling, I decided to believe the old adage; when things no longer go right, it's time to go left. I made the painful decision to break with my hometown to shift gears, exchanging the partying life of molly for an earthy-crunchy, granola, zen existence on the "other coast" in the more gracefully matured city of San Francisco. 

After all, it is in my genes to migrate to find a better place. My parents emigrated to Miami escaping Cuban communism to get a piece of the American pie. I am blessed with a less painful option to emigrate and try another city inside this diverse and still beautiful country. We enjoy the freedom to explore other cities, to burst out of one bubble and plug into another. Sometimes home isn't where you are born but where best suits you at any given time.

"Now Miami, I ain't hating, i'm just telling you, if you're gonna play with the big boys, you're gonna have to be able to take some constructive criticism to be a real, big city one day. Don't hate me for this but it's adios for now, I hope you'll miss me when i'm gone. 

I'll probably fall back in love with you and chase you down one day, after you get over this weird, growing phase thing. For now, I am fulfilled with the eyes of kinder, warmer strangers greeting me with good mornings and hello's. Instead of an eternal tan, I enjoy basking in a softer sun and the crispy-cool pacific breeze of "fog city". 

My only hope is that in your rush to get noticed and become a big girl, you don't forget what makes a city great is not only it's great clubs, buildings or infrastructure but it's charm, sense of peace and humanity. 

Without that, you'll just keep attracting the wrong kind of people into your life."

*Tips on how to avoid and clear infection from Miami's AAD.

*A recent New Times profile of Miami's socially conscious change makers. They are the finest examples of the resistance to the invasion. It's people like these that just might save her.