Category Archives: Miami

Maureen Dowd, the New York Times's drama queen of frivolity, takes a vacation in SoBe and pens Canyon Ranch in Miami Beach – What Recession?.

Choice bits:

To find out if spa guilt is rampant, Alessandra and I spent a long weekend at the new Canyon Ranch in the old Carillon Hotel in Miami Beach, which bills itself as the first condo, luxury hotel and wellness spa “of its kind!”

Like other spas, Canyon Ranch hopes to alleviate spa guilt by stressing the holistic benefits of “a deeper wellness,” “a healing energy,” “a Shamanic journey” — rather than simple exfoliating, waxing and cycling. It boasts a sensual 70,000-square-foot spa “where body meets soul” (while money leaves wallet).

But wait, it gets better.

I’d seen someone execute a daring escape from a spa once. Many years ago, when she was single, Nicole Miller, the pretty red-headed clothing designer, had broken out one night from the puritanical Golden Door in Escondido, Calif., and shown up the next morning with a cute guy and a satisfied smile.

At some spas, going AWOL produces a Mother Superior scowl from management. Here, the easygoing staff seems to expect it, even enable it. There’s a hair salon that will wash the massage oil out of your hair, give you a great blow dry and reasonably priced sun streaks, and send you on your way out into the warm night with some cheap dangly earrings.

I called the only person I knew in Miami and asked him to bust us out of there on Saturday night. Fortunately, he was chief of police, my pal John Timoney, so the great escape from Canyon Ranch went flawlessly in his white getaway S.U.V.

Gosh, that sounds familiar. Where have I heard something about Chief Timoney and his SUV? Could it be The Lexus Leprechaun in which the New Times wrote about his unethical and illegal acceptance of a free SUV from a local Lexus dealer? Could it be Miami's Top Cop Breaks the Law in which they described his stonewall when asked to testify about it? Or maybe is was when he had to buy the car at its $54K sticker price? Or that his ethics case was settled for a weeks pay and a $500 fine — which isn't much, but was the largest ethics fine in the history of the county (don't say it)? Or that there were suggestions the Chief might have committed perjury in a sworn statement in the case?

Not that MoDo lets on any hint of all that in her article. And why should she? The Chief took her somewhere nice:

Chief Timoney took us over to the most over-the-top spot in this over-the-top city: the leopard-skin-swathed, stained-glass-filled, Medusa-head-branded Versace mansion, a testament to what one man accomplished by reducing antiquity to a throw pillow.

The mansion, Casa Casuarina, had been turned into a private club but is now open to the public, with a restaurant on its patio that started out in September, and tours of the mannerist upstairs suites. We had a drink in the ornate bar with the owner, Peter Loftin, a mountain of Southern charm, a retired telecommunications mogul who bought the house for $19 million in 2000. Then we ate a sampling from the kitchen: a mound of succulent Kobe beef, fried pork belly, sea scallops with osetra caviar, black grouper, blue prawns cooked at the table on a salt block, foie gras with a riesling-pineapple-coriander emulsion and Meyer lemon tart and crushed amaretti mousse with vanilla-bean meringue, washed down by Champagne (Krug, Clos de Ambonnay 1995), at one of the outdoor tables under a tent by the elaborately tiled pool.

… did the NYT (or the Chief) really buy a champagne that costs $3,500 / bottle at retail? Somebody, or two somebodies, seems seriously overpaid. But then the Chief has long been known for high living and bashing into protesters and others. And it seems he makes $4,300 per week, so I guess he can afford it.

Having been fed and watered (no word about whether “Alessandra” came along), MoDo went back to work:

I had a massage where a woman walked on my back while holding on to rails in the ceiling — not relaxing — and another where I was rubbed down by a cute young Latino massage therapist wielding a mushroom-shaped ball wrapped in linen.

Aren't you glad that Maureen Dowd had a good time? And, in case you are wondering, we never do find out if “spa guilt” is “rampant”. Perhaps next time.

My hometown regularly gets written up in travel magazines, especially this time of year. It's usually amusing to see what travel writers choose to emphasize.

Here's one with a particularly odd and sexist leed: Coral Gables – The Hidden Gem of Miami

South Beach might be the party girl that you stay out with until the sun comes up, but its neighbor Coral Gables is much more like the girl-next-door. A bit more quiet and reserved, yet classy and upscale with substance and style, while showing off its classic beauty.

How should one anthropomorphize Coral Gables? Some kind of (sub)urban professional who likes a good time, but in moderation?

[Comments re-opened]

It's sort of a family joke, but every so often — not that often, but every so often, maybe a few times a year — I get a hankering for a Cobb Salad. For the past decade or more, when that happens I've dragged my wife, or sometimes the whole family, off to South Miami's Beverly Hills Cafe. I don't know how long it's been there, but 15 years at least. It wasn't expensive, and if wasn't super-cheap either, well they made up for it with big portions, fast and attentive service, and very nice hot rolls while you waited. And it was usually busy. Sometimes you had to wait. I even forgave them for expanding into the space formerly occupied by Joe's News, which, pre-internet was the best place to get out-of-town and international newspapers and magazines.

I got that Cobb Salad feeling today, and I took myself off to South Miami, just on the other side of US 1 from my neighborhood, but when I got to the Beverly Hills Cafe, so long a feature of Sunset Ave, there was a sign on the door that they're closed due to the recession. I don't know if it's the whole seven-location chain, or just the one near me, but either way, it was a surprise.

Then again, maybe it shouldn't have been a surprise. Most times over the years when I went there for lunch on a weekday, the place seemed full of local business types — especially real estate and banking folks. I guess they don't eat out so much these days.

(The parking lot behind the restaurant that used to have a guard and charge by the hour seems to have been taken over by the City of South Miami, and turned into city metered parking, which I suppose is the only tiny silver lining in the story. But they meter even on Sundays.)

Next best Cobb Salad that I know of in the area is at the Coral Gables Diner, in downtown Coral Gables, but it's further away and harder to park, the salad is smaller, not as nice, significantly more expensive ($15!?!), and their honey mustard dressing is lame.

Not to mention a lot of people must have lost their jobs, as the Beverly Hills was pretty big.

The New Times reports that this could be the Last Year for King Mango Strut? — a victim of red tape and increasing costs imposed by the City of Miami.

The King Mango Strut is a local tradition — a wacky parade for no discernible reason, about not too much, with lots of silly floats and marchers satirizing local politicians and current events. It's good pointless fun.

Dec. 28 at 2pm if you want to catch what might be the last, historic, Strut:

The strut route begins at the corner of Commodore Plaza and Main Highway. It turns left onto Main Highway and then turns left onto Grand Avenue at Cocowalk and turn left again at Commodore Plaza. If we are having too much fun we will go around again until we all fall down. Right after the strut, there will be parties all around the Grove.

So today is the “Winter Solstice”. Apparently in other places that means it is dark and cold. Here, it means that it's warm and sunny.

UM should market itself as the 'Law School in Paradise'….

A pollster called last night, wanting to speak to the “youngest male in the household who is over 18.” Which turns out to be me.

All the questions were about relations with Cuba — should we allow relatives to travel, everyone to travel, relatives to send remittances, foster cultural exchanges etc. The only two somewhat surprising questions were at the end: Would support for relaxing the embargo make me more likely to vote for a Congressional candidate? And, which is more important, the Cuba issue or health care, education and the economy?

They never tell you who sponsored the poll, so I don't know if this was for a news organization, or — it seems much less likely it being so early — for someone thinking of running for Congress in 2010.