Images of Miami

Before I moved (part-time) to Key Biscayne, Fla., in 2000, I harbored a distorted image of Miami. The Miami of the early and mid-20th century was a place of racial segregation, luxury hotels, delicatessens; of Jewish retirees and rich vacationers.

More recently, another distorted image of Miami prevails. That is the Miami portrayed in a recent review of Miami, Babylon by Gerald Posner in The New York Times. The reviewer, Bryan Burrough, refers to Miami as a silly place, corrupt, druggie and hedonistic, “the slummier side of South Florida.”

Unfortunately, this description portrays only one part of the Miami that thrives today. It fails to mention the Miami that runs the country’s most extensive and interesting weeklong book fair every November. It is the Miami that created out of whole cloth a world-class ballet. It is the Miami that has a teaching and performing New World Symphony. It is the Miami that presents an international film festival each winter, and hosts a world-class tennis tournament every April. It is the Miami that developed the most extensive and successful community college system in the country, whose CEO is nationally respected as a leader in educational reform. It is the Miami of formidable college and professional sports.

That Miami is not portrayed in the Miami Vice version of the place that interests most chroniclers of Miami Beach. Brian Antoni wrote a popular hip novel about South Beach and its crazy, edgy world of decadence in Miami Beach. But Miami Beach is to Miami what Bethesda is to Washington, D.C., and about as comparable as the blubbery manatees that populate the local waters are with the sleek bonefish that share the same aquatic neighborhood. In fiction, that is understandable. But not in pseudo-sociology that Burrough proffers (not sure about Posner, as the review portrays a book I’ve not read).

Miami is an international, bilingual city of wealthy people from around the world who have found homes here, as well as Cubans and Haitians who escaped to Miami’s shores at extraordinary personal risk seeking asylum. Yes, there are things wrong with Miami, but the city more aptly described by Helen Muir in Miami, USA is lively, colorful, real and nothing like the distorted stereotypes that too often portray this city.

Did I say it’s almost always sunny here?

Visit:
www.RonaldGoldfarb.com
www.AFJ.org
www.TheConstitutionProject.org