November 30, 2015...
This year Jackie and I decided to spend Thanksgiving 2015 in Miami Beach not eating turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes, in fact now that it is a few days after the fact, I can't remember what we ate, which was the whole idea, after all. The Royal Palm at16th and Collins Ave had free bikes on loan, my favorite way to travel, you can go slow enough to see everything up close, stop wherever you want, and cover a lot more ground than on foot. I was, therefore, able to continue working on my project of taking pictures of all the lifeguard stations in Miami. The one above is probably the most photographed and while I'm sure that mine breaks no new ground, you are now at least aware of it and its siblings. The weather was strange. It was warm, but partly cloudy most of the week and the wind blew almost constantly at about 20+ mph with gusts in the 30s, although we should count ourselves lucky because beginning the day after we left, the week of 12/3-12/7 during the annual uber Art Basal event, it rained incessantly for days, flooding Collins Ave. and putting a damper on the event and ruining a lot of Jimmy Choo's.
We were there on November 27th as you can see, Devora's birthday and she wasn't too happy about it but really it was for the best since going up to Ottawa would have been a burden on her given all the other goings on in her busy life these days. I think she did appreciate it in the end, at least I hope she did.
It is always a burden on me to present pictures in some kind of meaningful order and therefore this was the last lifeguard station I took on 11/30 as Jackie and I were taking our farewell Miami walk on the beach at about 5 pm, just before getting ready to catch a cab to the airport and wishing we didn't have to leave.
As I always like to say, there is something uniquely American about America, (and there is something magical about the lighting in late afternoon).
I read that a number of years ago the city of Miami Beach had some kind of competition in which they asked architects to design lifeguard stations, and these are some. Many of the earlier ones were washed away by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and this provided the opportunity to extend the deco theme to the beach front. These are some of the more interesting ones I saw as well a bunch of other sights seen during my walks on the beach and boardwalk. There is so much going on, this is only a sampling.
Depending on which direction you are walking, this lifeguard station is the first or last one, down by the jetty at 1st Street and Ocean Drive. It is one of the original ones deriving from the design competition which was not washed away by the hurricane a number of years ago and replaced by something a bit more generic. The next three pictures are objects if interest found along the way.
Not exactly sure what they were getting at here, but I didn't take the time to check it out. If water sports are your thing, Miami might be the place...
So that's the short report on my/our Thanksgiving in Miami. Not everyone was happy with our choice, but we had a great time...a lot of exotic drinks to fuel the excursion, lazing around a number of amenably interesting hotel lobbies for happy hour, and late afternoon pina coladas at the News Cafe enjoying the sights, heavy on the floaters....Cheers!!!
Pablo
