Archive for the ‘Miami MetBlogs’ Category
Bravo TV’s newest docu-drama series, Miami Social, starts tonight at 10 pm EST. Here’s the show description from the website:
Miami is an international cultural melting pot filled with the young, gorgeous and wealthy looking to live the good life. South Americans, East Coasters, native Floridians…everyone comes to Miami for the sun and fun – it’s a city that specializes in people that work hard and play even harder. In Miami Social, Bravo will follow a successful group of friends who are some of the most connected and interesting young professionals in South Beach, as they go from the city’s night life, to the board room, to magazine offices where they lead their intertwined lives.
Let me take a deep breath.
I honestly wish Bravo and the cast of Miami Social all the best in this new series, but I can tell you I am not particularly interested in the series. I don’t care one bit for the image of Miami as “party central home to the beautiful people,” and that’s all I’m seeing here, at least based on the info on the site and the promos on TV. I try my best to highlight the side of Miami that is more than that stereotypical perception, and a show that reduces the city merely to the socialite games of South Beach instinctively bothers me.
I’ll give the first episode a chance to be fair, but it has an uphill battle to gain me as a regular viewer. I mean, who knows, maybe there is more to it and I’ll end up having to eat my words (which I would happily do, so you’d read about it here as well). We’ll see.
Just a quick post from Puerto Rico, copied from the City of Miami website:
Grab the family and check out Grapeland Water Park, 1550 NW 37 Avenue. Luau Night means tropical fun for an affordable price $5 admission per person, the event runs from 8pm – 10pm and will include limbo contests, water games and at 9pm a special hula show that includes a hula lesson, fire dancer and Hawaiian music.
This is a great chance to relax in the park and go on a mini-vacation. For more information call 305-960-2951.
Also check back on July 18th for Jurassic Park, our monthly outdoor movie at Grapeland Water Park, you can dive in and watch the movie while floating in the pool.
The film “Food, Inc.” has now opened in various locations across South Florida:
- Fort Lauderdale, FL: Gateway 4
- North Miami, FL: Intracoastal 8
- Palm Beach Gardens, FL: BMC PGA Cinema 6
- Miami Beach, FL: South Beach 18
Food, Inc. presents a documentary-style look at the food industry of the US, and what exactly is happening behind those happy farms that provide us all with our food. From the movie website:
In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.
Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield’s Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms’ Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.
I’ve been hearing about this film for a while thanks to some friends in Seattle who run a locavore website called CookLocal.com.Local foodie website Miami Dish also ran a story on the movie recently; I recommend checking this site also for local shopping info.
I intend to go see it, fully aware that it will affect how I eat, what I eat and how/where I shop from now on. I think everyone should as well (especially before it is bumped off the theatres by the latest blockbuster to come). Most people will ignore it, as usual, but if a small percentage can be affected and made to change their shopping/eating ways, I think we’ll be on course for a better tomorrow. Frankly, I hope many Miami/South Florida people go see and perhaps like that we’ll all work towards improving the availability of locally-grown foods.
I’m in Puerto Rico once more dealing with a family thing, so posts here will go on hiatus until I get back to Miami. Check the South Florida Daily Blog for your fix.
With yesterday’s Bike Miami Days, the last of the inaugural season, The Miami Herald reports that Miami becomes the top US city in regards to car-free cycling event days with a total of 7, one per month since November, 2008.
Booyah!
The last Bike Miami Day of the season was fun, even if less attended than any I have been to (mind you, I missed Feb, Mar and Apr). Those that were there, however, had a grand old time partying at the steps of the Courthouse and riding around Downtown Miami. It was hot, probably the main reason why Bike Miami Days will go into a hiatus over the next four months, and by 2 PM the event was pretty much over. The hiatus, I think, will allow people to build up excitement for the event once more when it returns in Oct, not to mention that it will give time to the Bike Miami team to do a post-mortem of the event so far and find ways to improve on what has been, by any account, a surprise and runaway success.
Many thanks to Mayor Manny Diaz and his entire team (especially to tireless Bike Miami online dynamo Kathryn Moore) for seven wonderful months of cycling wonderland, for giving me the chance to fall in love with Downtown again and for the first time, all on two wheels. You know I’ve already set the date aside in the fall.
After six awesome months of Bike Miami events, this coming Sunday we’ll have the May edition of Bike Miami Days, the last of the current season. It’s already getting way hot out there and in typical Miami fashion, Summer months are indoor months. In the Fall, the bikes come out again and invade Downtown.
In the meantime, it’s time to bike all around and enjoy a car-free Miami, so mark your calendars and fill up your tires.
You can find more information about May’s Bike Miami Days at the Bike Miami blog, or check out this pretty flyer designed for the event.
See you there!
Forbes.com, via NBCMiami.com, has just released their list of “America’s Most Overpriced Cities” and our dearly beloved hometown has ranked #3, right behind Los Angeles, California and Chicago, Illinois. The article explains that “the cities are ranked by average salary for workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher, annual unemployment statistics, cost of living and the Housing Opportunity Index.”
I’m sure this comes as a complete surprise to each and every resident of the Magic City (I’m still wondering who named it thus).
Florida should feel especially proud, since it has four spots in the Top 20: Miami (#3), Tampa (#13), Orlando (#15) and Jacksonville (#17). So pretty much every major urban center in the state is there (I don’t want to see you get smarmy, Fort Lauderdale, cause I’m sure you’re not that far behind). Are you proud enough yet?
I have to agree with the Forbes article, though: at least we have beaches and sunny weather (and heat, oh the heat) year-round; sucks for #2, Chicago, with their Siberian-like winters.
No better way to welcome me back to Miami from another trip to Puerto Rico than to read about this atrocity happening at the Grove.
The Miami Herald reports (with video!) that the oldest church building in Miami, the original 1912 Mission-style chapel at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Coconut Grove, is being demolished to add new classrooms for the school (ok, semi-understandable) and retail space (you’ve gotta be friggin kidding me). All this even when local historians asked for a one-week stay of demolition to seek a better solution and put it on the table.
I wish I could say I am surprised, but I’m not. In my experience, the prevailing attitude in the general South Florida area, and in Miami in particular, has been one of complete lack of respect for what little history we have left. When I walk the Grove, I continue to be amazed that The Barnacle is still there, so that this piece of Grove and Miami history has been demolished to build new classrooms that could have been, I assure you, built somewhere else on the premises, and (to add salt-loaded insult to bleeding injury) retail space — because the Grove needs more retail space! — is just another log to add to the fires of my apathy.
Why the heck did I not hear anything about this before today?
New Zealand “two-man novelty band” (name the song title) Flight of the Conchords will be performing at University of Miami’s BankUnited Center tomorrow Tuesday, April 7, 2009. Jermain and Bret are also the stars of a self-named comedy show on HBO, now in its second season, where they portray (strangely enough) a two-man novelty band from New Zealand trying to make it in New York City. The show is hilarious, as are the Conchord’s songs, all of them original though many done in the style of various pop artists, such as Pet Shop Boys (Inner City Pressure), Marvin Gaye (Think About It) and David Bowie (Bowie). You can check out their entire debut album at Last.FM.
Tickets to the show are $38.50 (ouch!) and there is assigned seating. See TicketMaster to purchase.
Seriously, why hasn’t this gotten any promotion? I heard about it on Twitter from my wife who saw the tweet from @UnivMiami. Then again, considering the geek cult following of the Conchords, hearing about it on Twitter is perfectly acceptable and expected.
If anyone out there goes, let me know how the show goes, yes?
Right now, though, it’s Business Time.
You might miss it if you blink or look the other way, but this Wednesday morning, April 8, will be a very special day for Jews all over the world, not only because it is the morning before Passover, but because it will be the time to celebrate one of the rarest mitzvahs (commandments), the blessing of the sun. As Chabad.org explains:
Every 28 years the sun returns to the same position, at the same time of the week, that it occupied at the time of its creation—at the beginning of the fourth day of creation. A special blessing – called Birkat Hachamah, “the sun blessing” – is recited to mark this event.
The last time this happened it was 1981, the next will be in 2037, so this is a pretty big deal. Wednesday morning (up until noon, at th every latest), if you see Jews standing outside, praying towards the morning sun, remember they are blessing the sun and thanking G-d for giving us that magnificent engine of life here on Earth. If you are a Jew, perhaps you could find a local synagogue where to take part of this momentous ocassion; if you are not Jewish, perhaps you can take a moment to reflect on creation as well.
