Ode to Miami History. Roasted Nuts & White Chocolate, Caramels & Cashews. Cocaine Cowboys. Films Music & What We Learn From History as we Deal with Covid 19.

Roasted nuts and white chocolate.

Caramels and cashews...

Music from the carousel 

off in the distance out of view.

In a half empty mall...

in my memories bright but small.

Deep in the recesses of my mind..

sharing them with my brother

one memory at a time.

Once upon a time ...
and what a time it was...
There was a Mall next to a Hotel.
The rooms over looked Biscayne Bay.
In the mall parents shopped and kids played.
Teenagers hung out in record shops buying music.
Cocaine Cowboys made deals out in the parking lots.
Miami Vice came to down riding neon lit streets outside.
Miami was a boom town once again and then......
Time moved on, bigger hotels and fancier malls.
Aventura Florida was built in the early 1990s
They drained a swamp..
They paved paradise and built a bigger mall.
People drove up Collins Avenue to shop and dine.
Luxury Hotels were built in nearby Sunny Isles
And Omni Mall became a ghost town.
A has been waiting to be torn down.

For me Omni was a place to escape to after work before the kids came home after I moved back to Miami from LA and I loved that it was quiet and I could wander through the adjacent Jordan Marsh department store that I grew up in as we went there at least twice a week after my Grandma went to the doctor across the street and the store was our treat for being quiet in the waiting room. The Ice Cream Parlor, the Raggedy Ann and Andy Dolls suspended from the ceiling on swings during the holidays or the ever popular Biscayne Dining room looking out of beautiful Biscayne Bay. For my younger brother it was a happening alive place that he escaped to just across the Venetian Causeway that he watched go from popular to closing up one store at a time a decade latter.

A little bit of poetry here to start off the morning, mixing it up a bit as I'm looking back at a little bit of Miami history after a long talk with my brother this  morning as we shared memories of the Mall closest to Miami Beach in the 1980s. Lincoln Road wasn't popular then as a shopping, dining venue it was where our father worked in his office and we played pinhall in Mike's Cigar Shop that father said was probably a front for a bookie joint; not sure but something was going in that busy room behind the curtain behind the Ballyhoo Pin Ball Machines ;)

My brother wrote a book, buy it on Amazon online it's good and germ free ;) he lives in Greece in a city locked down he could use the money and you could use the poetry and prose to get you through another day in Quarantine ... whatever day this might be as we all have lost count. He used the "roasted nuts and white chocolate" line this morning in Messenger and it inspired me to write this morning's blog. The rest of the poem above is mine ;) but inspired by our talk.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1980911312

History repeats and whether you are studying the history of dead, defunct malls before Big Box Houses like Macys and Sears currently dying even before people started dying from Covid-19  that came along putting the final nail into a world that we grew up in and thought would last forever. Spoiler alert: Nothing lasts forever. We are born to die. Enjoy the moments, the hours of fun in the sun and love ever lasting ... enjoy your moments while you got em cause time never stands still.

Then Miami became popular again as another BOOM TIME hit the city as we painted every building on Miami Beach in shades of Art Deco colors (the City Council seriously had to approve the shade of paint you chose for your house) and the party moved back to Miami Beach and Lincoln Road now a popular place to play, dine or just hang out under the palm trees where the parrots squawked and Miami moved again to another rhythm.

Bayside was built bit by bit and my ex-husband and I would take long, slow rides across Venetian Causeway always ending up at the old Bayside where Sonny Crockett's boat was docked and Hard Rock Cafe was the only show in town before they kept adding on bit by bit. Tracing that ride we watched on TV so often driving back and forth at night across the Venetian Causeway, windows down, music up as we stared out at the neon lights of Miami. The first time I saw the scene below I lived in LA and our night time drives were down Santa Monica Boulevard to La Cienega to Sunset Drive past the Chateau and back again... but now I was home in my Miami.

Fast Forward to 2020.

There's always a little bit of history repeating.

New song, new movie.

Miami popular again as always.

Amazing.

That movie nailed every one of my favorite place...

...where I'd go to wander and get lost and hide.

How did they do that......

.......but I digress.

What we learn from history is this.

Viruses are not just a computer hack....

....they change everything.

Some people die, some people live.

The Spanish Flu hit and things shut down.

Then in the Roaring 20s we roared back.

Dancing the Charleston and having fun again.

A good blog on genealogy teaches us this.

https://larasgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/03/my-family-in-cholora-pandemic-of-1848.html

If you do genealogy, and I do, you will notice that many ancestors lost family members from the measles and cholera as if it was the most normal thing in the world and it was back then. But, hey a little bit of history repeating and then "we beat on, boats against the current borne back ceaselessly into the past" and we look back, remember and we smile. We learn from the past, we get inspired from the past and then we move on creating a new future, a brave new world.

Time Magazine (remember that one?)

Wrote off Miami as Paradise Lost.

The news media said Miami was dead.

And then it roared back again.

Wrapped up in neon pink.

Ecologically odd.

Aesthetically beautiful.

One of my favorite people.

Paul George the Miami Historian.

And an incredible friend always says..

Miami always has a 2nd Act!

So be like Miami!!

Stay inside, stay home, stay healthy.

Stay alive and then..

Have a Beautiful Second Act!

Again and again.

Besos BobbiStorm

@bobbistorm on Twitter and Instagram.

Ps. If the nonstop news gets too much for you. Turn it off.

Put on some music. Let go, relax, breathe and enjoy.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/miami-beach/article225472800.html