aka Vice City, Little Cuba, Magic City, the MIA, the 305
Pubbelly, an unlikely but delicious and stylish Asian/Latin-fusion gastropub (photo via facebook.com/pubbelly)
Miami has long been a place where the lines between eating and drinking establishment were pretty clear-cut. While “resto-lounges” have regularly popped up on trendy and expensive South Beach, nobody really eats at them past a certain hour. Otherwise, with few exceptions, you usually go to a bar/club/drinking establishment after you’ve eaten a restaurant meal at a different place.
Vegan bakery Panpespa recently hosted a brunch at Sweat Records. (photo via facebook.com/panpespa)
In another post on this topic on this site, I talked about the over-saturation of the food truck scene in Miami. It’s true that these massive round-ups featuring dozens of parked trucks are falling in popularity. But the more creative trucks themselves are still welcome in other contexts, particularly those of DIY concerts, outdoor festivals, independent art/crafts events, and so on. At every, say, local outdoor festival, it’s now a given that at least a few food trucks, or other kinds of independent food vendors, will be on hand to provide refreshments.
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The Blueprint Cleanse was one of the first programs to establish the juice cleanse trend in Miami. (Photo CC by 2.0, by Lydia Fizz via Flickr)
Yet another trend to which Miami is arriving relatively late, but which is currently kicking into high gear here, is the juice cleanse. Yes, again, what has been popular in New York and L.A. for years first arrived here, unsurprisingly, through chains from those cities. The popular Blueprint cleanse was among the first to show up here via a downtown Miami outpost of the Exhale Spa.
A lobster roll from the Rusty Pelican, Miami, from my own Instagram feed at @ariellec.
I can’t think of an app that’s been better for conspicuous food consumption than Instagram. Other cities have robust participation in specialized sites and apps like Foodspotting, but in Miami, Instagram reigns as the number-one source for food porn.
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The free festival took advantage of this, sponsoring an afternoon and night of free shows at a few selected venues on the strip. An entry bracelet, which was free with an RSVP in advance, got you into all of the shows with no catch. Following Scion’s lifestyle/entertainment branding wing, Scion AV, on Twitter got you a special wristband to jump the lines. (The crowds were well-managed, though, so there wasn’t any need for this bracelet, but it was still a fun touch.)
Since I started blogging here, there has been one dramatic change in how I use my home. When I first started posting, I still had a traditional, full-time job, at the local weekly newspaper. In January 2011, though, I decided to strike out on my own and write freelance full time — so now I work from home, and this is where I pretty much do everything now.
This isn’t specifically Miami-centric, but it’s about a label with which I have been obsessed this year: Lazy Oaf. This is a U.K.-based streetwear (I guess?) label that started out in a market stall run by founder and designer Gemma Schiel. Their designs are bold and fun, centered on bright, attention-grabbing prints on knits. As an example, I first discovered them via a post reblogged on Tumblr, in which a girl was wearing a form-fitting mini skirt printed to look like a slice of watermelon.
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Over the summer, the Fitblr community was one of the few corners of the web that closely followed women’s weightlifting. (Photo CC by 2.0. by simononly via Flickr)
I’ll use this space to write about fitness, since it’s become more and more of an interest over time since I started contributing to this blog. For better or for worse, though, it’s not necessarily the number-one interest of a lot of my friends, so I’ve been using the Internet to find other like-minded people who share my interests, either locally or wherever else. So far my favorite site for healthy lifestyle motivation is Tumblr, where I keep a blog devoted to fitness and healthy food that has a decent number of followers without me trying to do much. That is the great thing about the Tumblr fitness, or “Fitblr,” community — more so than on any other blogging platform, the audience is built in right on the site, and super engaged.
Image CC by 2.0, via Flickr
I was hesitant to embrace Foursquare, as I didn’t see a need to share my location when I could do so via Twitter, or via text message if I really wanted to. I still think it’s silly or pointless when people check in at home or at routine places (nobody cares if you’re at the Fed-Ex store!). However, I have found it increasingly handy to find people I might know at big sports or music events, which is about the only time I use it.
Claire’s March post a couple months ago about Perrier vs. San Pellegrino got me thinking. I, too, am a Perrier fan, largely, as she said, because I enjoy drinking the whole bottle instead of getting stuck with a huge Pellegrino bottle with leftovers that will go flat.
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A couple of months ago, I attended several screenings during the annual Miami International Film Festival, which becomes more and more massive and influential each year. Read More
I’ve previously blogged here about using my iPhone and various apps to keep track of a healthy lifestyle. Over the past year, I have gotten to love many apps for preparing, shopping for, and tracking consumption of healthy food, as well as others meant to design and track workouts. As I type this, though, I’ve discovered possibly the most innovative so far: Zombies, Run!
SBTRKT was one of the most interesting artists on the lineup. (Photo by Dan Wilton)
In late March I attended the Ultra Music Festival in Miami as I usually do, for three days of electronic music-fueled insanity. Overall, there were several clear patterns. Read More
Public domain photo via Wikimedia Commons
As I type this post, it’s May 16, the 22-year anniversary of genius Jim Henson’s death. I found possibly the saddest memorial photo ever on Twitter — an image of Kermit the frog (the Muppet), wistfully putting his hand against a framed black and white photo of Henson. In the last 30 minutes or so since I posted it on Facebook, it’s got something like 45 likes — people are Muppet-crazy well into the grown-up years.
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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.