Miami / Vice

The digital age and all its wonders has produced a new mental state. I call this low-grade sensation of weirdness digi-vu; the feeling of having seen something or been somewhere before by electronic means.

Example: seeing your friend's party photos online, and then later visiting them for the first time at the house where the party was held. You recognise some of the wall decorations and the furniture, and you know what that innocent-looking umbrella stand was used for in its dark and sordid past.

Example: this past weekend, when Krissa and I were driving around Miami. I don't even want to tell you how strange it felt driving across the causeway to Miami Beach, just like I didn't want to tell Krissa, who was driving, because it would have made her tut and possibly roll her eyes and think, "Video Games!" in a sort of disapproving yet still loving way, which is a complicated emotion to have and involves a lot of effort, and hell, I get nervous enough when she gestures and drives at the same time (especially when she uses both hands to get her point across), so I just kept quiet.
I digress.
Let me show you two maps:

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a map of Miami as pertains to the said area, vis a vis, South Beach, causeway, et al. City of rollerskating, relaxing, streetside hookers, sunbathing, tourists, boats, gorgeous beaches, wide roads, 80s TV shows, and warm, choppy seas.






This, ladies and gentlemen, is a map of Vice City, including inconvenient aqueous environs, Vice Beach, causeway, et al. City of rollerskating, sun, tourists, boats, helicopters, streetside hookers, rather monotonous beaches, roads that aren't quite wide enough, 80s music, machetes, rocket launchers, buckets of drugs, understandably forceful police officers and constant, relentless background gunfire. I have 'spent' quite a lot of time 'here'.

I knew Vice City was based on Miami, but I didn't realise quite how much until I looked up our South Beach hotel on google maps, and the pattern-recognising part of my brain said, 'Oh, that's just a few blocks down from the first save point hotel'.

As we drove into South Beach and promptly got lost, my brain was doing slow, lolloping backflips.
South Beach is real and Vice City is a mere ghost of it.
Fair enough.
But when you've been in a place long enough you develop a sense of where you are in relation to everything else; in Manhattan and in Miami Beach, that sense relies heavily on the water.
Miami Beach and the right-hand island of Vice City are almost the same shape and the causeway comes in at the same point, so despite never having been to Miami before, that half-baked navigational sense worked.
Sort of. It was straining and my brain was trying to use it.

Thankfully we managed arrived at the hotel without the need for me to evoke a supernatural panpipe soundtrack, solemnly point down a road and say 'My gift tells me this is the way'.

We parked across the street from the hotel as it began to rain, and a store next to us was pumping radio out into the street.

"You're tuned to 97.3 The Coast, on our all-80s weekend! Fifty minutes of the BEST 80s music EVERY hour."

As I ran back and forth from the parking meter to the Pay & Display machine, an Harley-Davidson motorbike crackled past, its driver in a black leather waistcoat on bare skin and a girl in jeans and a white t-shirt with her arms around his shoulders.

We duly listened to the All-80s Weekend at every opportunity, speeding across the causeway to Duran Duran, W, and Blondie, driving up Miami Beach on the wide roads past the tall palms and spotting the beach between the tall pastel pink and blue hotels.

Krissa has put up a few cameraphone pictures from our trip down south on Flickr.

It was was great fun, and if you get the chance, I would heartily recommend visiting Florida. The graphics are fantastic.