In worn areas of most world mega-cities, there is street art, some commissioned, some spontaneous.
This art can occupy an entire wall like our sixteen foot lady. It can be part of a series of images on a parking lot wall like our two faced head. Street art has no pretensions. It doesn’t care about frames, security guards, tickets or reviews.
Street art is a delight. Street music is a delight. Street food is delicious. Street people are full of edges and angles. Street talk is coarse and poetic.
Art and artists fight around the world to move into public places so the public can enjoy their muse. Gallery walls are too small, too exclusive.
What is sad is so few of these people walking and driving past pause and admire the images, touch them,or have arguments about them.
You can look at this street art for free, as long as you want. You can linger. You can scratch your head. You can laugh at the boldness.You can even write your name on the wall if you wish.
Why are people, these days, too busy to stop and look at what is right in front of them?
There is much concern in this country about skin damage.
There is, on this beach, a lot of skin that will be damaged and this is a perfect poster for a Dermatology convention in Miami Beach.
Two big bodies are prone on the sand, turning their backs to the world and telling it to go to hell.They have claimed their part of the beach but there is still room left for the rest of us on a day like today.
The sun is warm, the breezes are cooling.
What else would one want to do on a balmy afternoon than lay on the sand and show the world their best side?
For all I know, people who live, visit and work in South Beach look this way all the time.
It is the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday and skies are threatening rain.
One side of Ocean Drive is dedicated to tourists and locals who want to walk, ride bikes, stroll hand in hand down a concrete promenade that parallels the Atlantic Ocean. The other side of the street is left to those who want to eat, drink and be merry. This afternoon there are cobwebs and skeletons as far as my eye can see. You can bet this scene will be crackling this Halloween night – like a light bulb in a power surge. The girls are already being party girls but an older man takes the cake when he strolls down the sidewalk flaunting his bare butt.
It is all in bad spirit and even hardened old timers seem pleased with this guy’s boldness, chuckling and saying ” this is messed up. ”
Girls, loving him, chase our bad boy down the sidewalk and pose with him while their boyfriends take their picture with him.
What this says about their relationships is suitable for Cosmopolitan, or discussion on ” The View. ” This experience gives new meaning to the phrase ” End Times. ”
Oceans, at the end of land masses,seem to bring the crazy out of people.
I order a drink to meet this place half way.
The Hotel Element is close to the Miami International airport.
Their standard room has a refrigerator, a color flat screen TV, acceptable wi-fi, hot and cold running water, a door that locks, a clean bathroom, clean sheets, and, especially important in Florida, air conditioning. I don’t see ghosts and goblins running the halls but Halloween is coming towards us right on schedule.
I take an elevator up, slip my plastic card key into the hotel room door handle and let myself in, test the bed, get horizontal and slip into a car chase dream on a twisted road to Uruguay across a world map like the one on the first page of Scotttreks.
The next morning, for breakfast, us hotel guests are greeted by a diminutive She Devil with horns who is busy making sure we have our drinks, muffins, breakfast sandwiches and sweet rolls. Even in Hell you have to eat.
She poses for me and wants to change back into her cute red devil shoes for my snapshot. I tell her I am okay with her the way she is, part in our world and part in her demon world.
I get a few more scary Halloween photos after breakfast of two hotel desk clerks who are dressed to kill. Both of them suggest I visit South Beach since my rescheduled flight leaves late tonight and I have time on my hands.
God’s and demons, or fate – if you prefer, is always part of a traveler’s life.
I let the killer girls call me a taxi.
No respected travel blogger would pass up a chance to go to South Beach.
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