Tuesday, March 10th, 2009
Note: Shortly after posting this in its original form, I received an angry phone call from one of the protagonists. So I’ve obscured certain details, which, hopefully, don’t detract from the story.
It’s amazing how much better life gets when your primary concern is enjoying yourself rather than parking your car. If Day 1 was a referendum on the ill-conceived infrastructure of a once-wretched city, Day 2 was a far more revealing and meaningful look at the character of its people–not just permanent Miamians, but anyone who comes here at all.
On one hand, it was full of redeeming experiences with treasurable people that justified my entire trip (no, I didn’t spend all day eating Cuban sandwiches). And on the other, I saw, to varying degrees, some really miserable shit. So here’s what happened:
Picked up The Swede (TS) at 8, when she was just getting home from work. More–much more–on this in a moment. Said she had to transfer money back home, so we went to the bank. We pull up to the teller counter and she pulls out a grocery bag full of money. Like, a cubic foot of assorted large bills. A variety of thoughts went through my mind:
- “Did somebody’s crazy uncle who doesn’t trust any kind of large institution so he keeps his money in pickle jars inhabit this pretty young Scandinavian’s body?”
- “Poor bank teller, having to line up and count all these bills.”
- “Wow, you can really make a lot of money as a ‘waitress in a South Beach nightclub.’” Ah, so naive.
Walked along Ocean Drive, where an overzealous restaurant hostess implored us to try the $3.99 breakfast. We relented, and our reward for capitulating was amazing French toast. I ordered the Kid’s Breakfast (strangely, an upgrade at $4.25), which was pancakes, French toast, bacon and 6 bite-size pieces of fruit. Not much food, but like I said, the French toast was…how should I put it…the balls.
At this point, I’d known TS for maybe 78 hours, so I hadn’t gotten around to asking all the usual getting-to-know-you questions. Here’s a priceless little excerpt from the post-breakfast dialogue:
Me: “So, what do you do back in Sweden, when you’re not globetrotting?”
TS: “You don’t want to know.”
Me (suspicions aroused): “Oh? Maybe I do want to know.”
TS: “I’m, uh, yeah, like, a dancer.”
Me: “…”
Me (eventually): “Why didn’t you mention this before?”
TS: “I didn’t know what you would think. In America, isn’t there kind of an attitude towards strippers?”
Me: “Well, I would say every American father’s number one goal is to keep his daughter(s) off the pole. But other than that…”
Okay, why do strippers insist on calling themselves dancers? I want one, just one, to say, “I go to a club where I don’t wear very much clothing. Then, I take off what little clothing I’m wearing, for which strangers pay me lots of money.”
So, armed with this new knowledge, we drove back to Nikki Beach to finish the $64,000 mojitos I purchased the previous day. Because the place was just opening, there was no one on hand monitoring the parking facilities. Free Parking! Super score. Once inside, it was time for major relaxing, which goes like this:
- Lay around.
- Drink mojito.
- Rotate rum-addled body.
- Ow, it’s hot. Go for a swim. (Take note, Southern California: The beaches here are more crowded than yours and 25 times as clean. The water is clear, there are tropical fish swimming offshore and oh, sometimes there’s boobie.)
- Repeat previous steps.
- Order salade niçoise. I’m a sucker for salade niçoise. I even pretentiously say it in French when I order it. Alrgghlrgharlgh…
I also spent the afternoon peppering her with questions about her being a stripper, making sure to ask every 5 minutes, “It doesn’t bother you that I’m asking you all these questions about being a stripper, does it?”
TS mentioned earlier that day that her roommate/co-worker was going to be along soon. Given the day’s earlier revelations, I had two coinciding thoughts:
- Sweet, I’m going to party with two strippers and I can hang on to all my singles!
- Agh, fucking hell, I’m hanging out with two strippers. I’m already at the “…and then things turned tragic” part of my Behind The Music and I didn’t even get to experience the thrilling highs!
It turns out her roommate is, well, I can’t reveal her identity. We’ll call her Ostensible Dream Woman (ODW). Just know that she *might* be a Miss Universe contestant from South America.
So, ODW, TS and TLMFITW (that’s me, The Luckiest Motherfucker In The World) head back to my hotel room to plot a course of action. ODW calls a friend, who invites us to a churrascaria a few blocks away for dinner at 9. With an hour or so to kill, we go to the bar downstairs, only there’s a problem–ODW doesn’t have an ID. Meanwhile, TS is quite obsessed with getting drunk, so I take MB back to her apartment to fetch her passport, leaving TS to her own devices.
During the ensuing car ride, I discovered a few really surprising things about ODW. She’s NOT a stripper, apparently–she’s a cocktail waitress just working there on a lark. Okay, that’s a bit dodgy, but whatever. She admits to being kinda broke, a stark contrast to the disheveled bag of money TS produced earlier.She’s completely normal and down-to-earth, caring, and, as impossibly gorgeous as she is, that’s how much I want to be friends with her. And I never want to be friends with ANY woman. Hell, anybody period.
Interesting Subplot of the Night: Shortly before we go out, ODW gets a call from her boyfriend (IPC – Insanely Possessive Cockblock), who asks to speak to TS. Warns TS that if she lets anything happen to ODW, IPC will “hunt her down.” I fought off the urge to yell out “Hey ODW, can you get on top? This is hurting my back” in the background. I’m too young to die. There will be several more such phone calls from IPC, each one giving me a perfect opportunity to sarcastically and charmingly chide ODW in Spanish. Flirting with supermodels is the best.
Speaking of flirting, that’s what TS is doing with some guy who looks like Sean from Tool Academy when ODW and I return to the bar. That’s right, the girl I flew across the country to see, who lied about being a stripper, is flirting with an über-douche within 30 minutes. And you know what? I couldn’t care less.
So, we get to the restaurant, where ODW’s friend is hosting a party. ODW’s friend owns a modeling agency, so there’s an entire Beowulf mead hall-size table of smoldering, statuesque and mostly vapid women, me, and maybe 4 other dudes. This makes Gaslamp look like a sausage fest, which, come to think of it, it mostly is these days. Anyway, we’re treated to free dinner and drinks and an afterparty in the lounge next door. At said afterparty, TS is again off flirting with some other guy (who actually invited us all to the Bahamas), so ODW and I go to the bar, where she orders…
…two Coronas with lime and salt.
And pays for it.
So, to recap, a kind, sincere Miss Universe competitor is buying me drinks. Go on, take a minute to process that. I’ve had almost 24 hours now to process it and I’m still not quite sure that this happened. In fact, I made it a point to drunkenly profess to ODW that I believed her to be a super-sophisticated love robot sent from another planet 1000 years in the future to rock my world.I think I said half of it in Spanish.
After a couple hours there, the DJ at the lounge tells us about a party up the street, so ODW, TS and I get in the car (ODW has ascended to the front seat by now), and as we’re about to pull away, a new wrinkle joins our group.
You know the scene in Boogie Nights where Dirk and Reed go to the coke dealer’s house and he’s got that guy lighting firecrackers in his underwear? Okay, now imagine if that scene were a person. Well, that person just hopped in the back seat. We’re going to his apartment.
Joining us tonight are the DJ and his girlfriend (2 absolute sweethearts), who tell me that this is NOT the party, and that we need to pretend like we need to make a graceful exit and follow them to the real party. So I spent a few minutes talking with the DJ (who’s actually kind of a big deal) about techno/working with Logic/other shit I don’t know about but hey, I’m just happy to be there. We were only at the apartment a short while, but that was long enough for the host to show us the latest Hustler, featuring pictures of his ex-girlfriend (whose tits he had done–”twice”) and to bring out a really fancy coke tray. So yeah, it was time to jet. I don’t care if it’s “93% pure.” I fake an emergency phone call to ODW, and we set off to the other party.
Well, turns out that the party got called off. So we debated where to go next, leading to this unforgettable exchange:
Me: “There’s Cameo, B.E.D…”
TS: “No, there’s just a bunch of black people there.”
Me: “…”
Well, ODW and I decided by majority vote to go to B.E.D., and yeah, there were *gasp* black people there. There was also good hip-hop spinning, and there was some guy who latched onto TS like a remora (except without the symbiotic benefits). Maybe you can tell that TS hates hip-hop, and she desperately wanted to leave, so we again left her to her own devices, and she left with the remora, not to be heard from again until 12 the next day. Apparently, he drugged her, but thankfully some guardian angel woman noticed and took TS back home with her to Fort Lauderdale. Good times.
At 4:30, after about an hour in B.E.D, ODW and I decided to call it a night. I drove her home, we had that adorable kiss-kiss routine, and that was that. No explosive orgiastic ending, just gratitude that I made this trip and met the awesomest supermodel EVER.
Tags: miami
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Sunday, March 8th, 2009
“Why you at the bar if you ain’t poppin’ the bottles? What good is all the fame if you ain’t fuckin’ the models?”
- Nelly
As it turns out, it wouldn’t have mattered if I were driving a Tonka truck, because as it turns out, cars are just about the most useless things you can have in Miami. In fact, they go beyond useless, into the realm of being pathologically burdensome. I’m here to report that Miami Beach has the worst vehicle-related infrastructure of any city I’ve ever been to. Think Sunset Strip at 10:30 on a Friday night, increase the car-to-space ratio by factor of 50 and add one idiot swerving in front of you every block, one asshole double-parking every 50 feet and one complete and utter bag o’ douche STOPPING TRAFFIC TO GET OUT OF HIS CAR, WALK ACROSS THE STREET AND BACK every quarter mile. Oh, and all the spots are metered–no chance of a freebie anywhere.
But eventually, I found a parking space in front of Nikki Beach, which is this rather hedonistic place (aren’t they all here) where you pay lots to lounge on these large outdoor-friendly mattresses drinking delicious mojitos. So I did the unthinkable. I bought a stupid bottle of alcohol. Bottle service. Ugh. Just saying the term makes me feel like I’m overcompensating. Yes, the mojitos are delicious. Yes, there was 2/3 of the bottle left over that I can come back and enjoy later, presumably with no further charges. But I had a dream of owning a small pony, and I was damn near all the way saved up for it. And now, that dream is dead, the pain numbed only slightly by minty refreshment.
Can someone tell me why the fuck we're embargoing these guys?
On to the third discovery of the day: After wrangling with the Miami parking system again in the afternoon (the parking permit dispensers consume dollar bills more voraciously than those recovering addict single mothers of 4 at Deja Vu), I found what’s purported to be the best Cuban sandwich around. For those of you unaware, the Cuban sandwich consists of ham, roast pork loin, swiss cheese, pickles and sometimes mustard grilled and pressed between special bread. It also has a sweeter, smaller cousin called medianoche, which has the same ingredients, but on a sugary bread. Dare I say it, the Cuban sandwich has passed the meatball sub in the pecking order of sandwich supremacy. What’s not to love? Four, maybe five ingredients, left alone, no fucking mayonnaise to bollocks it all up–El Sandwich Cubano (seriously, that’s the translation) almost single-handedly resurrected my shitty expensive day. In the 48 seconds it took me to devour it, I felt good about my decision to come here. Now, if I can just get some coke dealers to steal my rental car for me so I don’t have to deal with it anymore…
Tags: miami
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Thursday, January 1st, 2009
I was going to keep this little nugget all to myself, but for the good of mankind, I will share it. So, after the 40,312st time being bombarded with facebook’s “Want a girlfriend?” ad, I decided I was sick of being reminded of my tragic singlehood and that I would put a stop to it. If you’re a hip Mac/Firefox user (and if not, you should be!), here’s how to pwn facebook ads:
In Finder, go to your Applications folder. Ctrl-click (or right-click) Firefox and select Show Package Contents. Navigate to Contents/res/html.css. Open this file using your preferred text editor. Then place this line at the very top of the file:
.fb_content #sidebar_ads {visibility:hidden !important}
Save the file and restart Firefox. You’ll find facebook to be a lot less depressing.
The downside to this method is that it’s reactionary; you’ll need to change the html.css file every time you upgrade to a new version of Firefox. And if facebook changes its HTML structure so that the <div> containing the ads is called something other than #sidebar_ads, then you’ll need to change the code to reflect that. But still. This is pretty sweet. And it will work for Safari and Internet Explorer too, for Mac or PC–you’ll just have to locate where your chosen browser’s default CSS file is and insert that line of code. Yay.
Tags: pwnage
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