FL Day 3 - Exotic Plants, Erotic Art, and Exciting Walls
Today started in the town of Hollywood where our Air BnB was. There may have been a lot fewer celebrities than the other Hollywood, but there was some pretty good coffee. We started out by going to the Scandinavian Bakery and Coffee House. I got the coffee, which was very good but not particularly different than non-Scandinavian coffee. I had my brownie from yesterday for breakfast so I didn't partake in the bakery aspect, but my dad got a croissant which he said was pretty dang tasty.
After breakfast, we set out for Miami to see the big city. Before making our way to the big city proper though, we actually started at small botanical garden in the Coconut Grove neighborhood called the Kampong. The gardens serve as the only National Tropical Botanical Garden in the mainland US (the rest are in Hawaii) and it belonged to Dr. David Fairchild, a botanist who traveled the world and single handedly introduced over 200,000 exotic plants to the US. You have to make a reservation to get in, which we did not do, but we just made a quick call and they buzzed us into the gate.
It was absolutely jaw-droppingly beautiful in there. There was a huge variety of plants from all over the world, and the property was situated in the perfect spot to have an incredible view out over Biscayne Bay. Some of the plants had been damaged by Hurricane Irma, but the majority of them weathered the storm admirably. The garden includes one of the largest salt-water mangrove forests in the country, 100s of species of mango, avocado, and palm trees, a koi pond, and some statues of endangered birds made by a local artist. If we'd paid a little extra, we could have also gotten a tour of Dr. Fairchild's lab but we weren't sure if we'd have the time for a full tour after our self guided one.
My favorite thing I saw there was a massive Banyan fig tree, affectionately referred to as the Wedding Tree because people like to have wedding photos taken among the hanging roots. I think this is kinda funny though because the banyan fig is also known as the strangler fig, because it initially latches onto a host tree an uses its longs roots to deprive it of nutrients which is an absolutely terrible metaphor for marriage. To be fair though it is absolutely beautiful in a sort of alien-looking way. The banyan is also a source of natural rubber and considered very holy in Hinduism.
Once we decided to make like a tree and get out of the there, we drove into the neighborhood of Little Havana for lunch, because my friends from Miami said we had to get authentic Cuban sandwiches and coffee while we were down here. I wish we'd had more time to just spend wandering a around the neighborhood, because it was filled with cool shops, good music, and colorful statues of roosters, which naturally I was a big fan of. We went to El Exquisto, because it was the place in the TripAdvisors Top Ten Lunch Spots in Little Havana with the name I liked the most. The restaurant completely lived up to its exquisite name. The meal started with fresh made garlic bread which was perfectly crispy around the edges and soft in the middle with tons of flavor. For the main course, I got a steak sandwich, and my dad got a fish. The steak was thin sliced and cooked to perfection but once again the real treat was the bread which had been press grilled panini-style and was some of the best sandwich bread I've ever had. The fact that the whole thing was liberally covered with fried potato straws wasn't too shabby neither.
After lunch, I went to La Colada for some authentic cuban coffee. Their sign advertised themselves as the official coffee of the Miami Marlins so I figured if it was good enough for them it would be good enough for me. I got a cafe con leche, which I don't normally drink hot but I didn't wanna spoil the authenticity. The thing that makes Cuban coffee special is that it is sweetened with sugar during the brewing process not afterwards, so it has natural darker sweetness to it than coffee that's sweetened after the fact. I can see why the Marlins like it. I also picked up a Cuban cigar in the cafe. I don't really like cigars very much, but I figured it was something I had to do.
Our next stop was the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens. This was a pretty incredible stop. The Vizcaya was the home of James Deering, wealthy scion of the Deering Harvester Company and designed by asrtist and curator Paul Chafin. It's completely insane what limitless wealth is capable of accomplishing because every surface of the mansion is a work of art from floor to ceiling. Each new room was like walking into a different museum gallery. Rooms were decorated in different styles ranging from rococo to Italian Renaissance to Ancient Greek to Chinese art traditions. The rooms would then be filled with decorations and paintings curated by Chafin. There were paintings, tapestries, musical instruments, and furniture of the finest quality. One room even had a ceiling that had been purchased from an ancient temple and imported to Florida. There was also different animal cages designed by contemporary artists in a variety of styles to celebrate the history of different animals that had been on the property. One of my favorite sentences I've ever read was talking about the monkeys that had lived there and it was this "At least one monkey was named Irene". There's just so much information in that sentence that exists solely in implication. It should be the the new "for sale: baby shoes never worn."
Out back behind the mansion was my favorite thing in the compound: a giant statue of a sinking barge. It was never an actual ship, but the estate needed a breakwater to stop the waves from getting to big or active and damaging the property so rather than make something purely practical they took this opportunity to include another grand and whimsical work of art. As an added bonus, my picture of the breakwater also captures my dad being asked to take a picture for two other tourists. I'm no great photographer, but I'm gonna just go out on a limb and say mine probably came out better than his.
The gardens component of the museum and gardens was just as lavish as house. The gardens included tropical plants, fountains, pools, a labyrinth, and renaissance statues. It was incredible.
One of the coolest things in the garden to me was the Casino, which was not a place for gambling but an older architecture term for a pavilion off the main property. It was on a large Garden mound with fountains on either side of the stairs and a man-made waterfall going down the stairs. The pavilion area had a gorgeous mural painted along the ceiling, and all the fountains and shrines around it were made out of a combination of marble and coral giving it all a really cool and unusual texture.
Again it's crazy to me, that this was just some rich guy's house, and not even his permanent house, but his winter house. I loved getting to see it and I thought it was so beautiful and impressive, but I can't imagine just doing regular house things there. Like you can't take craps and eat soup in a work of art. In case you were wondering what kind of guy would own all of that, here he is:
From there we moved on to see Miami Beach. The thing I loved about this area was all the art deco buildings which to me look like what people in the 20s thought the future was gonna look like. I loved how there would be such a cool looking building for something as mundane as a CVS.
In Miami Beach, I went to the World Erotic Art Museum. I saw the museum pop up on both the Atlas Obscura and TripAdvisor, and it didn't initially interest me at all, but then I read that they had works by some big name artists, like Dali, Picasso, and, most surprisingly to me, Rembrandt so I had to see that. Thankfully, my dad didn't feel like going for some strange reason so he just walked around the city while I did this museum solo. Not all of the works were explicit, because eroticism covers a wide net of implications, but just a fair warning that some of the pictures in this next chunk are pretty graphic. I tried to only include things that were either pretty tasteful or interesting to me though, but I get that that line will be different for everyone so my intention is not to offend.
I liked this museum a lot more than I expected and I found their intentions to be really admirable. Part of the goal of the museum was to destigmatize and educate about the vast spectrum of human sexuality. Some of the artwork dates as far back as 200 BC and it comes from all over the world, so sex and artistic representations of sex are about as natural and human as it gets but for whatever reason art that crosses a certain line is deemed "filthy" as opposed to "beautiful". That line between what's art and what's pornography becomes super blurry after spending any amount of time there, especially considering how much nudity is in supposed "fine" art. My thought is if the penis is already in the museum why does it make much of a difference if it's flaccid vs. erect? I will admit some of the work did shock me initially even though I consider myself generally open minded and I grew up with the internet, but after a while you can only see so many shocking images before you become desensitized and you just kinda stop even seeing the work as sexual at all and just start looking at it like any other art museum. It's a cool feeling of normalization of things that are frequently considered shameful. I especially liked the really old artifacts depicting homosexual or transexual imagery, because LGBTQ people are still struggling for acceptance as normal worldwide but they've been with us since the beginning.
The big name artists that drew me there in the first place didn't disappoint, and it was really cool to see their distinctive styles used to essentially make dirty little doodles like every 15 year old boy, except much much better. Here's works by Dali, Rembrandt, Joan Miro, Picasso, and Paul Cadmus. The Rembrandt probably stick out the most to for being technically impressive, but with the more surrealist works I almost don't know how you can see those as anything other than works of art because they're not exactly effective as clear representations of sex.
Some other cool highlights for me were the actual penis statue from A Clockwork Orange, a painting that seems to be a normal barn scene but when you crack it open and unfold it there's people having sex in the hay (that way you can have normal picture up for display but keep the smut to yourself), some carved walrus penis bones because why not, and a photograph entitled "Penis Envy, My Ass" featuring a naked woman positioned so that her body is in the shape of a penis, because damn if that isn't a lot of work to go through for a very silly pun.
After the erotic art museum, I met back up with my dad and took in some natural and much less controversial beauty by going for a nice walk on the beach.
After the beach, we stopped at a place called Mammamia Gelato Italiano for some gelato. Apparently they're a worldwide chain, but this location is the only one in the US. My dad didn't get anything, but I got one scoop of their award winning hazelnut gelato and one scoop of their Kinder chocolate ice cream because I'd never seen that before. Kinder chocolates are huge all over the world, but they took a while to catch on here in America we seemed to be more concerned with kids accidentally eating the prizes inside their chocolate eggs than other countries even though those prizes would take serious effort to swallow.
After the gelato, we went to a really cool area of Miami called the Wynwood Walls. Developed by Tony Goldman in 2009, he decided to turn a bunch of unused, windowless warehouses in the Wynwood neighborhood of Miami into giant canvasses for graffiti and street artists from around the world. It was a brilliant revitalization effort, because these ugly ugly buildings are now incredible works of art and a celebration of global community. These paintings and sculptures were all massive and vibrant, and it was incredible to see the variety of skills and styles different artists employed. It also didn't hurt that it was a beautiful day, and we got to look at everything while enjoying the great outdoors. And it was all free!
There was also two indoor galleries which were pretty great. The first one was a special exhibit called Excerpts from the Taj Mahal: The Truth Always Happens by an artist named Peter Tunney. Tunney took all recycled materials from Trump's grand, opulent, wasteful failure the Taj Mahal Hotel and Casino, including a 15 foot chandelier, and rebranded them with his own messages such as "Don't Panic" or "We Live in a Beautiful World". My favorite part was a theater marquee with a picture of an atomic bomb labeled "Now Showing" and a poster for The Planet of the Apes labeled "Coming Soon". I like that because if you're gonna be making political statements you might as well be clever and you might as well make it pretty because then even people who don't agree with the sentiment can be like "well I've gotta give him that".
The other indoor gallery was there to highlight more works by the artists who made the wall murals. I am so bad at drawing with something as straightforward as a pen or pencil, that I was just constantly floored by what people were able to accomplish with something as unwieldy as a spray can. I get that stencils exist and are big part of the process but I still can't even wrap my head around with how impressive and creative some of these works were.
My two favorites from this gallery were the dreamlike surrealist paintings of a guy named Dasic Fernandez, and the highly photorealistic street scenes by a guy named Logan Hicks
When we were walking back to the car we were momentarily distracted by a cool place called Walt Grace Vintage which had a pretty wide selection of classic cars, guitars, and comic book styled art by a featured artist named Andrew Reid SHEd. Everything was super aesthetically impressive, but I have to say it does look like the perfect place to go for a DIY Midlife Crisis.
After our last art sojourn of the day, we made our way to Boca Raton for the open mic. The mic was in a place called the Funky Buddha Lounge and Brewery. I'd already had one of their beers and liked it from a different bar, and the comedians I'd met the night before had said this was a good mic so I was pretty excited. While we waited for the mic to begin, my dad and I split a pizza which was unreasonably good for a bar pizza, and I ordered a flight. The five beers I got were the Doc Brown brown ale, the Red Dawn red ale, the Ron's Scotchy Scotch Scotch scotch ale, the Cream Abdul cream ale, and the Doctor Gourdon Freeman imperial pumpkin stout (I only just got that gourd pun as I was typing this). The Cream Abdul was probably my favorite name but my least favorite beer, and I think the pumpkin stout was my favorite beer for having the most interesting flavor profile and the red ale was my favorite for just being a good easy drinkin' beer. My dad tasted all of mine too, and his favorite was the Scotch ale. All and all a real solid output and variety for a small brewery.
The mic itself was a real blast. The host MIke Citron was very funny and couldn't have been a nicer guy. He also did a great job keeping the audience's energy up for what ended up being a fairly long show. Part of the reason the show was long was that there was a lot of comics, but also because there was a mix of musicians in there too. I think the variety helped with the energy though and for the most part people stuck with the show through the end. I liked having the musicians there, but the one thing that both my dad and I got annoyed about was that while the host was talking business with someone one of the singers took an extra song after his allotted time. This would have been a little bit annoying but nicer than silence, but what put it over the edge for me and the old man was that extra song he did was Hallelujah which is a great song but super long and overplayed as hell. If you're gonna be a dick, be an original dick please. That song is so overplayed that growing up one of my dad's classic catchphrases was "If I hear one more teenage girl sing Hallelujah, I'll blow my brains out".
Minus that one minor complaint, the rest of the show was really solid. The most impressive performance of the night for me was by a comic named Randy Vega. I'd seen his act at Dada and thought he was pretty funny, but what he did this night really blew me away. There was one really drunk girl in the front row who had been making noise and heckling all night, so Randy just didn't even try to do his set and just talked to her for his five minutes. He was never mean, he let her speak, he cracked jokes on the fly that were really funny ("How come drunks girls always close their eyes when they tell you to look at them?"), and at the end of his set she wasn't a bother to anyone for the rest of the show. It was a real good class for anyone watching on how to handle a heckler. If he had gone after her aggressively, I think it would have pissed her off and made her act out more, but because he did it conversationally and respectfully everyone stayed on his side, even her by the end. He sort of fell on his sword by taking the risk of not doing anything he'd prepared to do, but he ended up pulling an Obi-wan and coming out stronger than we could have possibly imagined.
My own set went really well tonight as well. I'm not entirely sure what I did differently, but I did a really good job keeping the audience's attention. One new thing I tried was cutting down the longer story I've been doing to just the punchline and opening with that, and I think that worked really well for giving me some momentum which I used to add the new bit that did well in Atlanta to my go to set. It did pretty well again so I think that means I'll keep it in the rotation.
Some other highlights for me:
Leon Arp (a comedian in his 70s)- My girlfriend got me anal beads. At my age though that's a security measure.
Nico Prada - I think if we want to get conservatives and liberals all on the same side we need a law that all abortions should be done with rifles. Then we get pro-life gun control. (I thought this guy's whole set was really brilliant but he prefaced it by saying that it was all being tried for the first time so his delivery was really shaky. I worry then that some of the audience wouldn't have noticed how good the underlying jokes actually were, but I'd be excited to see him performing this set in couple weeks with all the kinks worked out)
Hennessy Williams- I used to work at an old folks home and this one guy would always brag to me about how much pussy he was getting. So I asked him what his secret was and he said, "Easy. I'm the only one with a car"
Kaleel Rashad - Donald Trump is a gangster. He tried to fire the Feds, that's a drug dealer's dream! (this was a younger crowd and political material went over a lot stronger than the night before)
Danny Braf- I used to work at a grocery store giving out free samples. I was at this counter with a big sign that said sparkling water, and this woman came by and tried a sample. She drank it made a little face, and then got another sample. She did it again. And again. and then finally she just said, "Oh! It' sparkling!"
Favorite Random Sightings: Food Place; Dank Medspa; Clog Hunters; Bacon Bitch
Regional Observations: Miami is such a big sprawling city, even compared to Orlando it totally stand out as not really being like anywhere else in Florida.
Albums Listened To: The Most Lamentable Tragedy by Titus Andronicus (Probably the best three hour punk rock opera about bipolar disorder ever); Mothership Connection by Parliament (a masterpiece); Motown 1s by Various Artists (just Mr. Postman by the Marvelettes; Mount Ninji and Da Nice Time Kid by Die Antwoord (just Wings on my Penis because it's so stupid); Mountain Moves by Deerhoof (they used to be donating the proceeds from this album to ACLU, not sure if that's still a thin but it's a pretty solid album to get for a good cause); The Mouse and the Mask by Dangerdoom (the Adult Swim cameos can be a bit much but the beats and verses are all fire); Mouth Moods by Neil Cicierega (a really funny album of mashups by one of the interent's first Meme lords and the inventor of the Harry Potter Puppet Pal. He also grew up like two towns away from me)
People's Favorite Jokes: I didn't get any today so here's one from the internet.
A teacher wanted to teach her students about self-esteem, so she asked anyone who thought they were stupid to stand up. One kid stood up and the teacher was surprised. She didn’t think anyone would stand up so she asked him, “Why did you stand up?” He answered, “I didn’t want to leave you standing up by yourself.”
Songs of the Day:
This song is such a weird mix of fun energy and really sad lyrics.
First song from a whole concert. What an entrance! Between the musicianship and the pageantry this must have been an absolute blast to see
Bonus Stupid Stupid Song I think is Funny Every Damn Time: