The South Beach Undiet, and other stories.

So here I am in Miami Beach. We went walking all over the place this morning, looking for local color. I wish I had my camera with me, particularly when we passed the house with fish all over it--and an octopus door.


We're staying in South Beach, at one of those amazing looking Art Deco hotels on Ocean Drive. I'm sitting here listening to a band play across Ocean Drive.



It's "Art Deco Days," so the street is cordoned off and no cars are allowed. There are a lot of little booths selling art and jewelry and vintage clothes and antique prints and such.

This afternoon we had lunch with the Jokes. We went to this place in the Lincoln Road pedestrian mall, Le Bon, that specializes in Belgian food.



We all ate mussels (Is this place really "mussel beach" and no one's telling? Hee!) and drank Belgian beer. They had many kinds, both on tap and in bottles. It's very strong stuff.

So after lunch, we walked along the Lincoln Road mall looking for things to mock. We found plenty:




so many that I became fixated with the horrible gaudy shoes:



Those are rhinestone snakes squiggling all over the vamps. Joke called them "shoes for the Slytherin Prom."





Either I'm becoming inured, or that last windowful wasn't so bad. Just ... very elaborate.

Tiring of shoes, I began to document Bad Miami Art--both the municipal



and the kind one admires in the privacy of one's boudoir.



I guess it's hard to see this far away, but some of these statues were sort of prurient, in a "September Morn" sort of way. Upon noticing the extremely detailed and realistic nature of these carved glass nudes, that rascal Joke remarked: "I'm betting the sculptor took regular, brief breaks."

An excellent day--if only it had lasted longer. Too soon we had to go back to our (lovely and luxurious) hotel room, get dressed up, and go out to dinner and the ballet.

When really, what I should have been doing is investigating the whole"dirty Mojito" phenomenon:



Had you ever heard of them? Me either.

--P.

p.s. Dirty Mojito sounds like a conflation of Joke's and Badger's blogs.