Letter from Ocean Drive: You May Ask, 'What? Is That All There Is?' But Include Lots of Art Deco In Your Trip, And It's Worth the Flight

A Sunday afternoon stroll not long ago down South Beach’s iconic Ocean Drive reminded me of Mark Twain’s crack, “If it’s tourist season, why can’t we shoot them?”

Not that I should joke about shootings along the eight or nine mostly commercial blocks of Ocean Drive--there have been too many incidents of violence late at night, when alcohol-fueled fights at the outdoor bars have gotten ugly.  And, of course, ten years ago fashion designer Gianni Versace was gunned down on the doorstep of his mansion on Ocean Drive, Casa Causarina.

But my point is this: If you remember the Ocean Drive of 12 or 13 years ago, when it was something of an outdoor catwalk for buff male models sans shirts and pouty, curvy women in impossibly tiny bikinis, well, that was yesterday.

And yesterday’s gone.

Today on Ocean Drive, you’re more likely to find Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch America tying on the feedbag at TGI Fridays (yes!) or visitors looking for a place to park so then can lift suitcases out of their cars--bellman are almost nonexistent at Ocean Drive hotels.  That lack of service is a great introduction to the guest experience at many of those hostelries, where the main attribute is their great, neon signs at night, not their shopworn guestrooms with barely enough space for a fat guy and a laptop.  (Which is not why I inserted my shot of The Clifton here--I just love that deco sign.) 

Listen, I know the tune: Nothing is ever the way it used to be.  Everything changes.  Stretches of the fabled French Riviera have all the charm (and summer traffic) of the condo-lined beachfront of an American beach town gone to hell.  Tour busses hold up traffic in July and August along Italy’s Amalfi Coast as they try to maneuver hairpin turns on its single coastal road.  Starbucks passes for the local café in dozens of countries around the world.  And there are Cartier, Tiffany and H&M stores just across the street from Islam’s holiest site, the Kaaba, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

But the myth of Ocean Drive lives thanks to television shows and glossy, oversized magazines such as, well, Ocean Drive, the thick bible of club life and double-truck ads for men’s watches the size of Big Ben, Italian sports cars, and high-rise condos whose computer-generated images always portray unaccompanied women lounging provocatively poolside.  (I’ve always believed sex sells, but are there really that many women available by Miami pools for men who can afford thin-walled condos with floor-to-ceiling windows and stainless-steel kitchens?)

I’ve watched the transformation of South Beach’s Art Deco district as an accidental tourist.  For five years, beginning 15 years ago with the first issue of Ocean Drive, I wrote a monthly Washington, DC, gossip column for the magazine and took every opportunity to visit the neighborhood when the weather in DC turned chilly.  I even co-hosted the pilot of a weekly lifestyle television show that Post-Newsweek Television proposed with a home base of South Beach.  The show, which never made it to the air, was titled, “Cool People, Hot Places.”  Or was it “Hot Places, Cool People”?

No matter--you get the idea.  Hipsters everywhere aspired to the South Beach life.

And many still do.  I called several days ahead of time to secure a reservation at Prime 112 for Sunday night but could only score a 5:30 table.  By Miami standards, 5:30 p.m. is considered brunch.

Prime 112 is the scenester steak house where valet parking is $15 on weekends (before the $5 tip to the valet), a side of Brussels sprouts costs $12, and a bottle of bubbly water adds $9.50 to your bill.  The lobsters started at four-and-a-half pounds Sunday night, at $25 a pound.  I like Prime 112 because the people-watching is first rate, and the food is very good in that over-the-top, American steakhouse kind of way.  As a dinner party pulled up to the valet parking just behind me in a sleek Maybach, I was well aware I was out of my league in my Grand Am from Avis.

It was a gorgeous, warm night, so my two business associates and I asked to be seated outside.  Prime 112 is located at the southern end of Ocean Drive, just a couple blocks around the corner from the legendary Joe’s Stone Crab, and life in these parts used to be much quieter than the street’s more northern blocks with their hotels and bars.

But the ‘hood is about to shift from second gear directly to fifth gear very soon.  A couple of low-rise, faded residential buildings across the street from Prime 112 are now empty and fenced off; a banner announces that a new development will soon replace them.  Prices for the new, 28 oceanfront condos begin at . . . six million dollars.

Oh, my. 

“All anyone can talk about in Miami is real estate,” said my friend Alex Gordon over lunch.  She’s in public relations, which is a good thing, as the real estate business in Miami is only limping along after several years of a buying frenzy.

And simply driving along the edge of downtown Miami from the airport to South Beach explains why: Too much product.  Glass towers of condos are everywhere, and cranes promise more to come.  But no longer do lines form before dawn on the day a new project’s sales office opens.  In fact, a developer who intended to convert the Royal Palm hotel--up Collins Avenue in the neighborhood of the Delano and The National--into interval home ownership recently defaulted on the mortgage.  Converting hotel rooms into suites that building owners can sell (and continue to rent out when not occupied) has been all the rage in Miami the last couple of years.

Today, that's so over.  One of Miami’s premier developers, Jorge Perez, CEO of Related Group, saw the sales of condo units drop so alarmingly between 2005 and 20006 that he’s now looking for other opportunities in Mexico and the country of his birth, Argentina.

But still the conversions and tear downs and building continues--beware the slick ads with the women in bikinis.  Alex says too much money goes into the glossy exteriors and stunning lobbies of marble and glass and sculptures and fountains, while the walls between units allow owners to listen to their neighbors’ breathing.   

Of course, few owners in the million-dollar-plus aeries live in Miami year around; the heat and the humidity during the summer is so oppressive that those who can afford it escape to the mountains of Colorado or south to Argentina or Chile to ski. 

I did walk across Ocean Drive after my lunch with Alex and was pleased to see the wide beach on the Atlantic Ocean was well populated.  There were more women sunbathing topless than I recall, but that same turquoise sea beckoned, and to turn around and look back on the pastel colors of the Art Deco buildings of Ocean Drive against an azure sky brought a feeling of pleasure. 

The celebs--the Hiltons and Trumps--still come to South Beach.  But they know which clubs are hot, and they're often paid to show up, the better to fuel the paparazzi photos that will lure paying customers to clubs where a private table the size of a waiter’s tray can cost $1,000 to rent for a night.  It’s the celeb set who gets the white suites at the Delano and, at least until recently, signed deals with developers to lend their names to new high-rise developments. 

But I don’t think it was just because I was in South Beach during spring break that I felt the place had grown uncomfortably less authentic.  Sure, there are still a couple of model agency offices along Ocean Drive.  But the News Café, where the early adaptors talked deals 24/7, is huge now, its tiny outdoor tables filled with folks who don’t look the least bit local.  Real business is done elsewhere now, and Ocean Drive is more a Disney World set than the historic neighborhood it is. Which is, of course, what happens when magazines and television shows and movies glorify few blocks.

Should you avoid Miami and South Beach?  No.  But don’t feel that you’re missing much except for bumper-to-bumper traffic if you stay at the lovely Four Seasons or Mandarin Oriental in Miami proper.
 
Stroll Ocean Drive early on a weekday morning when you’ll be able to admire the buildings without the crowds.  By all means spend half a day at my favorite design musuem in the world, the Wolfsonian on Washington Ave.  (But keep in mind it’s closed, oddly enough, on Wednesdays.)  For good deli, there’s still the durable LA-transplant, Jerry’s, on Collins Avenue.

Walk through the lobby of The National day or night and admire the impossibly long swimming pool lined with palms that suggests Humphrey Bogart might emerge at any moment in a white suit.  In the hotels around The National, there are lots of hard-to-get-into restaurants, such as Ago at The Shore Club, and the food is even edible in some.  But book early for Prime 112 and go for lunch or an early dinner at Joe’s Stone Crab to avoid the lines.

Top-drawer hotels such as the Ritz Carlton South Beach and The Setai succeed in creating an oasis of quiet and luxury even when South Beach is a pulsating, non-stop party scene, as it was two years ago on Memorial Day when my girlfriend and I unwittingly arrived during a hip-hop convention.

For Northerners in the winter, stepping off a plane and into the sunshine of Miami is a marvelous balm, an abrupt change of channels that sets everyone to wondering, “What would it be like if I lived here?” 

And there’s still just enough beautiful people, enough energy and, of course, enough beach to entertain.  But like the ill-timed downpour during January’s SuperBowl, sometimes the realities of paradise intrude--the drunk kids on Ocean Drive after midnight, the mediocre food and high-priced hotel rooms, the crowded sidewalks and assembly-line feel of some eateries. 

And like a planeload of gamblers on an early morning flight from Vegas--the city I think closest to Technicolor Miami in sex appeal and style--you’ll probably have no difficulty returning to your own life, even if there’s no beach outside your door.