aka Vice City, Little Cuba, Magic City, the MIA, the 305
image via karenkeithdesigns.com
The dramatic, chunky necklaces by 27-year-old Miami jewelry designer Karen Keith are certainly not for wallflowers. One piece might be designed to sling halfway across the body in an elegant tangle of different-colored and -textured chains. Another might rework a vintage cameo with very 2011 hardware. Another still might work vintage bullet casings or even tiny Matchbox cars into items that almost look like personal talismans.
image via sousvidesupreme.com
My current favorite piece of technology isn’t a new gadget for the sake of being a gadget, but rather one with practical applications in the kitchen! It’s the Sous Vide Supreme, the first appliance meant for the mas market that brings the technology of vacuum-sealed, immersion circulator cooking to the home. Read More
An old installation at Bar by Dave FTL; image via 28ne14st.com
The most dramatic (well, for a certain segment of nightcrawler) change to the downtown nightlife landscape came last month. Bar, the simply named, hard-to-Google dive bar run by tri-city gallery OHWOW, suddenly shuttered. The reasons are unclear, and the stuff of much clubland gossip. This much is public: Bar had long shared physical space with the Vagabond, a popular club next door whose owners also own the building that houses both venues. Bar’s lease went up at some point, and nobody could reach an agreement on how to continue the relationship, and everyone announced Bar would cease to operate. That marks the end of the undisputed facts.
A scene from the original 'Rock of Ages' musical; photo CC by 2.0, via Meglet127 on Flickr
Miami is already a city with a bizarre, disjointed sense of place, where often surfaces and surroundings seem not quite real. Thanks to some movie magic, that sense is currently even more heightened in the club district around NE Fourteenth Street in downtown Miami. For the past month or so, South Florida has been the filming site for the upcoming Tom Cruise movie Rock of Ages. Read More
As Miami’s underground music scene continues to thrive, the tradition of genre-crossing continues. Crossover acts that blend Latin and other world sounds with rock have long been a staple of the city’s live music circuit, and even the downtown cool-kid acts tend towards the danceable. In other words, even in the “indie” scene, as such, “indie rock” is usually thin on the ground. That is, “indie rock” in its ’90s-perfected, college-radio-favored form of (mainly) dudes with guitars, specializing in heartfelt, distorted, jangly rock — no chasers.
As I write this, one of the hottest web tickets (besides Spotify!) is Google+. Both share in common the fact that you have to enter by invitation, giving, initially, a sort of exclusive feel. Read More
Image free by Copyleft, via Jean-noon on Wikimedia Commons
I may be one of the last music fans on the planet who hasn’t been totally enthralled by Lady Gaga; in fact, I can continue to say I’m not a fan. I find her music to be generally insipid — though I like dance music and some dance-pop — and her look to be largely derivative of past artists. I don’t find her to be particularly “freaky” or “different.” She is, after all, a thin white woman selling music that is palatable to Top 40 radio, apart from the visual trappings of “otherness.”
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Bryan Ferry in 1973; public domain image via Wikimedia Commons
South Florida’s been having a decent run these past few months of performances by up-and-coming and mid-level musical acts, which in the past was pretty unheard of. For this, we can credit a host of factors, among them currently very important venues like the Fillmore Miami Beach, as well as the city’s cultural renaissance in general. Blah blah blah. But while we are pretty good at attracting indie bands and left-field electronic acts, it’s unusual for old cult legends to bother making this way this far south.
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The main library branch in downtown Miami; photo CC by 2.0, via Phillip Pessar on Flickr
With museums and other public institutions in Miami making a bid for new, younger audiences, why not libraries, too? A new summer exhibition at the Miami-Dade public library system’s main branch, in the heart of downtown, is a bid for the same kind of renewed relevance. Called Enter the ’90s, it’s a love letter of sorts to zine culture, and takes a new twist on the library’s annual summer art show.
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On a recent trip to New York to attend a wedding and visit some friends, I made a specific pilgrimage to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to check out the current Alexander McQueen retrospective, Savage Beauty. When I arrived on a Saturday morning, I had to stand in a 45-minute line that wound its way through the museum’s galleries, and then battle crowds within the exhibit itself.
Despite my earlier protests on this blog, I caved in and started using Foursquare. I previously had little interest about advertising where I was or where I was spending money. The former, I figure I could just Tweet when I wanted, and the latter, I still find a bit gauche. Read More
image via facebook.com/pages/Lil-Daggers/52530612026
Though the two bands are pretty musically and philosophically unrelated, the recent breakout success of Surfer Blood and Jacuzzi Boys prove there’s wider potential for underground rock from South Florida. The former signed to Warner Brothers and are westward bound to record a sophomore disc in L.A., while the latter just finished yet another national tour, capped off by signing to indie great Hardly Art.
Last month I was lucky to attend a private screening of the new documentary Bill Cunningham New York, held at O Cinema in Wynwood. The event was sponsored by the Society, a local group that throws one-off cultural/social events for a young, urban professional crowd.
image via facebook.com/pages/MIAMI-CHUM-BUCKET/314715166530
The loss of the Firefly — a collective house, resource center, activist meeting group, and alternative performance space — dealt a huge blow to Miami’s d.i.y. scene this past February. However, a new venue has appeared to fill in at least the performance-space aspect of that void. Miami Chum Bucket opened at the end of March, and over the past month has started hosting regular shows.
The crowd at this year's Ultra Music Festival made for great sartorial observations.
I wrote about Ultra Music Festival and the informally dubbed “Miami Music Week” already in the music section of this site this month. Still, music events never come without fashion, and street fashion in the dance music world has always been some of the most exciting to observe.