Miami – Riveted

One Night in Miami

Laura Domela — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 11:53:35 +0000

We stopped in Miami last night for one more visit with Kevin's brother and his family before we head north. (We're back at the Larry & Penny Thompson Campground near the Miami Zoo.)

Last night we all went back out to Monty's in Coconut Grove for some dinner and margaritas. After dinner we went for a walk down around the waterfront.

These several-story power boat storage racks looked pretty cool at night.

Craig took us around to check out the Miami City Hall — it used to be the Pan American World Airways Seaplane Base and Terminal (built in 1933).

Once you know that, it's easy to notice that many of the other buildings there on the waterfront were previously seaplane hangars. I found this image from an old postcard that shows the terminal in the foreground, and the supporting hangars in the background. Now it's all marina, restaurants, boat storage, and City Hall.

It's a cool area with interesting history…check it out if you're down there sometime.

We're doing some work this morning, and pretty soon we'll head out for a quick stop in Orlando. We figured we should do the Disney thing since we're this close (the theme of this trip, apparently).

Wynwood Arts District, Miami

Laura Domela — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 18:33:00 +0000

After our Cuban lunch yesterday we took a drive and walk around the Wynwood Arts District. Wynwood is an area with a large number of art studios and galleries and is home to the Wynwood Walls — an outdoor permanent mural exhibit featuring some of the worlds most renowned street artists. There are hundreds of other street art and graffiti murals around the area as well.

The Wynwood Walls is at the center of it all. From their website:

The Wynwood Walls was conceived by the renowned community revitalizor and placemaker Tony Goldman in 2009. He was looking for something big to transform the warehouse district of Wynwood, and he arrived at a simple idea: "Wynwood's large stock of warehouse buildings, all with no windows, would be my giant canvases to bring to them the greatest street art ever seen in one place." Starting with the 25th–26th Street complex of six separate buildings, his goal was to create a center where people could gravitate to and explore, and to develop the area's pedestrian potential.

I took a ton of photos. Here they are, starting with a few of the Wynwood Walls:

Shepard Fairey:

HOW & NOSM:

RETNA:

Airstream graffiti:

The Wynwood Building and its Dazzle paint job:

I love how this piece moves down onto the sidewalk:

And hey look! Another Airstream:

It's a pretty remarkable place with some incredible street art. If you're down this way, we highly recommend exploring this area a bit.

Versailles for Cuban Food

Laura Domela — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 14:34:36 +0000

Yesterday we'd planned to go sailing with Craig, but the weather didn't cooperate. We all did a little work (while the thunder roared) and then headed to Calle Ocho/Little Havana for some Cuban food at Versailles Restaurant. According to their website:

Versailles Restaurant, The World’s Most Famous Cuban Restaurant, has been serving tasty Cuban cuisine and culture to the South Florida community and tourists from around the world for four decades. Soon after it opened its doors in 1971, Versailles quickly became the gathering place and unofficial town square for Miami’s Cuban exiles. Today, it remains the unrelenting gauge of the community’s pulse. Not surprisingly, Versailles is typically the first place politicians visit locally to garner support from the Cuban exile community, and the restaurant is equally a favorite among the media for gathering commentary and footage of the community’s take on social and political issues. It is not uncommon to see local, national and international media set up camp in Versailles’ parking lot, where they’re sure to get a flood of local viewpoints.

Versailles is a cool cross between local hangout and tourist attraction. Food was good (cuban sandwiches, plantain soup, vaca frita, cafe Cubano) but the people-watching and the environment was even better. The restaurant apparently started as a French restaurant (hence the name and extraordinarily non-Cuban ornate decor) but didn't do very well and ended up as a Cuban place instead.

New World Symphony in Miami Beach

Laura Domela — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 12:09:03 +0000

Saturday night and Sunday day, Kevin's brother Craig was playing a concert with (while coaching the trumpet section of) the New World Symphony for their 25th season opening: The Russian Musical Soul. The first half was Stravinsky: the Circus Polka (1942) with a super cool animated film by Emily Eckstein, followed by Petrushka. The second half: Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4.

Saturday night we sat outside on the lawn for the Wallcast, where the concert inside is projected onto a 7,000 square foot projection wall, and people bring picnics and wine and beach chairs and watch from outside (free, and a fantastic idea!). This was far better than we thought possible. The sound was fabulous, the audience seemed quieter than audiences typically are inside the hall, and the video and editing was meticulous and spot-on when it came to the solos, etc. Great idea!

You can get a feel for the scale if you look in the lower left corner at the size of the people. Also, that tall pillar to the left of the screen is a giant speaker.

There's Craig in the middle!

A little still from Emily's film that accompanied Circus Polka:

On Sunday we saw the same concert, but from inside the hall. The hall is gorgeous (Frank Gehry designed) and the sound was incredible. This is just inside the main entrance:

Also, the design of the upper interior surrounding the stage was a perfect place to project the film during Circus Polka, and it was much better to see it in full "surround view." This is kind of a bad iPhone photo before the performance…it shows the ceiling, and a little bit of the surrounding walls:

It's a great concert hall and was even better the second time. Craig took us upstairs with him while he talked for a few minutes (and introduced us) to Michael (Tilson Thomas), then we headed back downstairs via the roof deck. Nice view of Miami Beach from up there:

Here we're basically standing on the roof directly above the wall where the concert is broadcast, so you can get a good view of the park where we watched the night before:

We did a little drive around Miami Beach before heading home for a nice dinner at Craig & Karen's house.

South Miami Heights

Laura Domela — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 12:18:02 +0000

Our spot at Larry & Penny Thompson Campground (right next to Zoo Miami)

Yesterday we found a cool little hole in the wall spot for lunch that wasn't too far from our campground and had good reviews on Yelp and Urban Spoon, so we decided we'd give it a shot. It was called Enis Seafood. It's right down the road just before you get the Turnpike at the end of a strip mall, and has security bars covering the entire front of the place. It's definitely not the sort of spot you'd ever see and say "Hey! That looks cute! Let's try it." Luckily, we have the internet.

The decor inside was all blue and white with a beach/seafood theme, with a ton of those four dollar patio chairs, a 2D/3D ocean mural running the length of the place, and lots of cool signage hanging from the ceiling advertising their specialties.

We had lobster croquettes, shrimp ceviche, and both of the specials of the day (langostine enchilado, and fried fish). The specials came with small sides of sweet potatoes and plantains and everything was fabulous. Recommended…even if you don't speak Spanish. And even if it looks kind of scary from the outside.

**Enchilado: A Cuban dish (different from a Mexican enchilada) of seafood cooked in a mildly spicy tomato sauce. Served usually with rice and fried plantains. Here's a recipe.

Why are we in Miami?

Laura Domela — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 12:08:21 +0000

(Posted by Kevin)

You may wonder why we're here – in Miami, Florida – just about the farthest place in the U.S. from our home base of Portland Oregon. Nope, we're not snowbirds. And, if we were, this would be way too early to be leaving a place with Octobers as beautiful as Portland's.

No, this time, the blame must at least partly go to my family. When we were in Colorado, I looked at a map and said "Hey, we're more than halfway down to where my mom lives in San Antonio. We've never taken the Airstream down there." Laura was an easy sell – with the prospect of adding some new state stickers to our map – so down to Texas we went.

While in Texas, I sent a a message to my brother Craig in Miami "Hey, guess where we are? Texas!"

Craig replied "Where are you going after this?"

"We are planning to probably make our way back to Portland."

"Well, I assume you're going back to Portland via Miami?"

I'm no genius in geography, but I was a bit skeptical about how much "on the way" Miami was as a stopover between Texas and Oregon.

We looked at the map and – guess what? AGAIN, we were more than halfway there. We decided that this would be a great time to visit Florida, which we'd wanted to do for a long time. After all, we were already more than halfway there. (This "we are more than halfway there" turns out to be a dangerous travel-planning trope.)

We plotted a leisurely course down through a lot of places we'd wanted to visit – Lafayette, New Orleans, the Florida panhandle…

While we were poking around in the Florida panhandle, we got another message from my brother in Miami.

"Hey, when are you planning to get to Miami?"

It turned out that he was performing at some concerts in "Festival Miami" (a huge annual music festival held at this time each year). Those concerts started Friday, and we were in the Panhandle on Thursday. Oops! Time to make some miles!

My brother is one of the foremost trumpet players in the world. He is currently the trumpet professor and chair of the instrumental music department at University of Miami. He is also the former principal trumpet in the Chicago Symphony, former associate principal in the San Francisco Symphony, and has played concerts and solo performances around the world as well as on numerous recordings. On Friday night, he was doing two solos as part of "Nuevo Tango in Miami" a concert of music by Astor Piazzola. The first solo, "Milonga sin Palabras" performed on a custom-made, rotary-valve German flugelhorn was a beautiful lyrical ballad. The second "Tres Piezas Breves" (three short pieces) was performed on the much-less-conventional Electronic Wind Instrument (EWI) – a remarkable breath-controlled synthesizer that allows him to use many of the skills and musicality he has developed as a trumpet player on a much more flexible electronic instrument with a six-octave range, an incredible dynamic range, and a huge diversity of sound production options.

Soundcheck at the Maurice Gusman Hall

Both solos were inspired and musical – exactly the kind of sensitive and emotional performances that have defined my brother's career. Afterward, we lingered in the lobby for awhile as fans asked to have their photo taken with him (this never seems to happen to me). Then, we went with Craig and his wife to "Two Chefs" – one of their favorite restaurants and bars – for a late night drink and chat.

Juan and Craig

The bartender, Juan, who was originally from Puerto Rico was a genius with his cocktails and was also a fascinating conversationalist on just about everything from politics to baseball to the history of the world. We laughed, listened, and chatted until after midnight.

p.s. Here are two videos of Craig playing the EWI, if you're interested. They're pretty cool:

(Posted by Kevin)

Hey! Let’s go to Miami! (via New Orleans of course)

Laura Domela — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 11:05:09 +0000

Last night after I picked Kevin up from the airport (he had a quick business trip to San Diego this week) we met up with his mom and her husband for dinner at La Hacienda de los Barrios. We sat outside in the large patio area…it was warm with a slight breeze…there was a guitar player…the food was good…cold margarita…it was just perfect.

We stopped on the way back to the Airstream and got some gas (not at Buc-ee's) and added a touch-free drive-through car was onto the tab. So now the truck is clean (the Airstream is not) and today we're heading to Lafayette, Louisiana, then New Orleans, and then to Miami to hook up with Kevin's brother. Oh. Didn't I tell you? We decided to head to Miami before going home…since it's, well, not on the way at all. (Get ready with those map stickers!) I think we'll be about as far as possible from home at that point.

We'll stay in New Orleans for a few nights and then not sure of the route we'll take to Miami yet. If you have any favorite spots on the way, let us know!

Also, I thought you might like to see the photo I took last night while we were sitting in the car wash. These are our cool lighted cup holders in the new truck. And by "cool" I mean six different colors of cool. Change the color of the cup holder light to suit your mood. An important feature, don't you think?