For Art Basel 2008 coverage, visit Buildings and Food.
Monday September 1, 2008
Hey, after more then a month off, I made a post at the new place, about the Hurricanes and whatnot. Just letting you know. Been a long time, and I have some aspirations of beginning to do stuff over there on the regular.
Thursday July 24, 2008
Dino Felipe reviewed on Pitchfork. 7.2: not bad.
Monday July 21, 2008
A front page article in today’s Sun Sentinel pities the poor weather reporters at local TV stations, who have to decide whether to interrupt your programming with hurricane updates or wait for the commercial. Poor babies. You know what? Wait for the frigging commercial. I don’t care how close the storm is to Bermuda. All I care about is is we are actually in a hurricane watch. It’s just not that hard.
Sunday July 20, 2008
Coast Guard target practice boat. The drawbridges on the Venetian Causeway instantly go up for the Coast Guard boats that cruise the neighborhood regularly, but this was my first time seeing this boat, presumably used for deep-sea target practice.
Saturday July 12, 2008
Wow: the mayor of Miami met with the participants of Critical Mass today. (via SFDB)
Friday July 11, 2008
What's up with Norman Braman's lawsuit?
Quick recap: Norman Braman is suing the city of Miami to try to stop the “megaplan,” which includes the port tunnel, museum park, marlins stadium, and a couple of other multimillion projects. Most recently, a judge ordered the parties to try to work out their differences out of court.
Braman’s argument, that some of the money the city is planning to use for the plan is intended to fight “slum and blight,” is not without merit. But honestly, why does he care so much? Does anybody else suspect that maybe he’s doing this as a publicity stunt? Here’s a guy who’s name is very closely associated with his business — every time he gets it out in the news, it helps his bottom line. And to the extent that at least one element of the city’s plan is seen as wasteful/unnecessary/stupid by almost everyone, he’s ostensibly fighting a pretty popular fight. How does the cost of his legal fees compare to the cost of running a series of those tv ads? Is this a win for Braman regardless of which way the court case goes?
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Friday July 4, 2008
This is the old blog. Go read the new blog, Buildings and Food.
Monday June 23, 2008
That's all folks
I guess this is as good a time as any to make it official: I’m putting this ‘ere website on the bloggy mothballs. I’ve been giving this a lot of thought, but the truth is that the decision isn’t an intellectual one — I’m sort of just over it. With the pink accents, the paisley background, the local news: it’s all gotten a little restrictive. The truth is that I started this site because I thought there was a need for it, and today the need is well covered by dozens of excellent sites, from Covert Overt to Miami Art to TM and EoM, and they’re all held together by Rick’s daily grind. I just don’t have desire to keep up with it all anymore.
SO. Thanks to everyone who’s been checking in regularly over these three years. It’s been a ton of fun, and the support has been really really overwhelming.
Where we’re at as of now is this: I have a new thing, More Blog about Buildings and Food, that I’m putting together. It hopefully will be more open-ended, less locally-obsessed, and more infrequently updated then CM, but will hopefully also dovetail pretty well. I still owe you a slideshow of FOOD from the Georgia/Florida trip, and that’s going to pop up there in the next day or two. I also have a Twitter lest you forget, and you should totally subscribe to my updates. Further, friends and people that I actually know should get their own Twitter accounts post-haste. (No eye-rolling. You’ll thank me later. And btw, I’m reforming myself and will be regularly checking voicemail and e-mail from now on.)
My goal is to keep Critical Miami up in perpetuity. I’ll probably make some final adjustments to the linkroll, and some other tweaks becoming of a defunct blog (ie archives easier to access, etc.). That’s about all, folks. Hope to see you at the new place.
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Amid news of Carlos Miller being found guilty of resisting arrest in his police-photographing case, we have this: Artist Momoko Sudo harassed and intimidated by Coral Gables police for looking funny and photographing their motorcycle. (via Artblog)
Wednesday June 11, 2008
An illustrated demonstration of the new optical voting machines and accompanying article. It’s like taking a test in college, with multiple-choice bubbles you fill in with a #2 pencil. But so then why do the scanners need to be at the polling stations? Why not a big fast scanner at election headquarters?
Somebody heard my bitching and the Herald has a re-spiffed Twitter feed. If you’re still listening, what we’d like is a feed that updates 2 or three times per day with the cream of the local news.
Friday June 6, 2008
Old school weekend
- The Miami/Bahamas Goombay Festival, a celebration of the first black settlers to arrive in South Florida from the Bahamas. Music and activities in Coconut Grove all weekend.
- Ongoing: City Theater’s Summer Shorts theater festival.
- Coral Gables restaurant week. Preset menus for fixed prices at some of the CG’s posher joints.
- Royal Poinciana Festival.
- Club stuff.
- Saturday: All the way in Pompano, but Paid Dues brings the old school, including Blackalicious and Rakim. $30.
- Pure Imagination radio show broadcasts live from Sweat Records, 9 pm. Then, bands at Churchill’s, presented by Nastie.
- Open casting call for The Amazing Race. No idea what that is.
- Sunday: Sunday Afternoons of Music concert #8, a recital for piano and violin.
- Steely Dan, Hard Rock Live.
- Wednesday: by the way, Ladytron at Studio A.
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Thursday June 5, 2008
Lookie here, the Herald has a few Twitter feeds: main, Cuba, weather, and Dolphins.
Wednesday June 4, 2008
Georgia and Florida, manmade
More photos from the trip, this time hopefully in contrast to the previous “nature” shots. To answer some of the practical questions I’ve been getting: I took the train up to Savannah last Friday. Upon getting to the train station at 8 pm (just as the sun was setting) I had to put my bike back together (it was boxed for the trip) and search for a camping spot for the night. I began pedaling the next morning, and arrived back in Miami the next Sunday. That’s nine days on the bike, including three night stays in motels and five nights of camping. My speedometer was once again on the fritz during this trip, but my daily mileage averaged over 80 miles, with at least a couple of 100 mile days. Other then an almost-constant headwind, the weather was cooperative, with no rain to speak of, and comfortable days and cool nights (at least until the last few days in South Florida, where the sun laughed at my SPF 30 and cooked me to a crisp).
As a bicycle tourist, I was able to tap into an abundance of goodwill from motorists, truckers, pedestrians, convenience store clerks, waitresses, other cyclists, bike shop workers, park rangers, law enforcement officials, and just plain everyone I ran across. There is a whole taxonomy of friendly waves that I discovered which unfortunately I cannot express in a text format (but ask me if you run into me).
One story I can share is the thing about the dogs. Folks in rural Georgia sometimes have loose dogs hanging around outside their homes, and a cyclists is exactly what these dogs love to chase. In fact, for the first few days of the trip, I’d be chased by dogs several times a day. Usually, a little adrenaline would kick in and I’d hustle a bit and soon pass out of the dogs’ territory, at which point they quickly give up chase. Two occasions stand out. Once, two dogs ran after me and straight into the path of an oncoming minivan, which came to a screeching (and honking) halt, within a hair’s breath of death. The other time, two good sized dogs saw me coming, and ran out to meet me, barking, growling, and blocking my path of escape. I got off the bike and tried to use it as a shield between myself and the animals, but they wisely spilt, each circling me from one side. I fended them off for a bit by yelling and squirting my water bottle in a wide arc, and walked down the left side of the road, my bike a sort of shield. They escorted me, and whenever they got too close I again squirted water and yelled at them (my yelling got gradually friendlier as the threat seemed to subside). Once I was passed their territory I was allowed to get back on my bike and ride on.
So. Anyway, here’s the slideshow of photos of man-made stuff from the trip.
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Tuesday June 3, 2008
Scenic Georgia, Florida
In Miami, a dense urban and suburban strip of communities borders the Everglades on the west and the Atlantic on the east. So it’s easy to forget that most of the rest of the country is rural — a web of roads connecting scattered homes, farms, and the occasional small town. This is commingled with lots and lots of largely raw nature, with forests, prairies, rivers, and lakes, many of which look exactly as they have for thousands of years.
Or rather, on some level we’re aware of it. You can’t leave the state via I-95 without driving through stretches of forest, but it’s always seemed like an abstraction to me that way. And of course the best thing about riding a bike, even around the block, is for the slow way you experience your surroundings. Here then, the first of a few slide shows from the trip. I edited out anything with overt traces of humanity, trying to convey the varied and primal nature that’s still out there.
The route I followed started in Savannah and followed Section 6 and Section 7 of the Adventure Cycling Association’s Atlantic Coast series of maps. Through Georgia the rout heads about 60 miles inland from Savannah and meanders through the interior of the state, then follows the coast for most of Florida. Here’s the slideshow.
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Sunday June 1, 2008
Home safe & sound. Thanks to all for the good wishes, and for keeping tuned. Blogging resumes tomorrow, with all the trip show and tell and whatnot. Meanwhile, welcome back our weather map, in honor of the first day of hurricane season, and see the twitter updates resume their modest old spot on the sidebar. Unless they keep slowing down the site, in which case maybe gone for good. Also, bear with me while my handlebar-numbed hands reaccustom themselves to a keyboard. It’s been a long ten days.
Friday May 23, 2008
& i'm out (again)
Well, folks, I’m off on the trip originally mentioned here. The route is different: I’m catching Amtrak to Savannah GA first thing in the morning, and pedaling back according to routes suggested by the ACA, via maps that finally arrived Wednesday.
My only contact with this site will be by cell phone, which is why the twitter updates have once again taken prominence. Should be back in 1 week and some change, barring unforeseen circumstances, in which case all bets are off. Stay tuned for updates from the road.
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Wednesday May 21, 2008
Manola gets hassled and bullied at the Raleigh hotel. Idiots.
