Murals, Mangos, Martin And Muhammad

No, Miami doesn't have something for everyone. There are no mountains. If you like the cold, pass. Loneliness? Less and less, unless you can go out to sea.

Short of that, from nightlife to culture, dining, history, outdoor recreation, beaches, shopping, sports, if you look close enough you can find the your miami

murals

Miami's Wynwood neighborhood was once one of the most dangerous places in America. So, too, was the entire city during the “cocaine cowboy” era of the early 1980s, when he happened to see cars riddled with bullet holes while driving.

Wynwood began as a working-class neighborhood in the nineteen-teens evolving throughout the 1920s.^th century in Miami's Garment District, a haven for Puerto Rican immigrants, a haven for pan-Latin immigration, became industrial, filled with warehouses, then drug-infested before being transformed by a artistic community.

In 1987, a former bakery in Wynwood became Florida's largest artist space. In 1993, Don and Mera Rubell purchased a 40,000-square-foot building formerly owned by the Drug Enforcement Agency to house and display their growing collection of contemporary art. A few brave galleries followed.

When Art Basel came to Miami Beach in 2002, the world's most prestigious contemporary art fair, it meant that something globally important was happening around the arts in Miami. Wynwood was a part of that and continued to create art.

The Big Bang came with the opening of Wynwood Walls in 2009. Real estate developer Tony Goldman's open-air urban art museum captured the artistic energy of the graffiti and murals that had increasingly covered all those warehouses without windows in the neighborhood.

Wynwood became the model for how to reinvent downtrodden industrial areas into cultural destinations through art. The Wynwood playbook has been used around the world. Where street art has led a community renaissance, it owes a debt to Wynwood.

The neighborhood now has the highest concentration of street art and public murals in the world, and the highest quality too. Wynwood is the measuring stick for other cities and artists. The world's top muralists routinely move to Wynwood to create wall-sized masterpieces.

While Wynwood Walls is a ticketed experience, the blocks and blocks of street art and murals surrounding it are not. Walking is recommended if you can stand the heat. Wynwood Buggies offers artist-guided tours of the neighborhood in fortunately shaded golf carts that show guests artistic highlights, share the history of the neighborhood and the movement, and give newcomers clues about the language and culture of graffiti.

Street Art: History, Language, Ethics

Today's modern street art and mural movement grew out of the emerging graffiti culture of New York in the early 1970s. The history of graffiti, from outlawry to the world's most popular art form, is shared at the Museum of Graffiti in Wynwood.

Graffiti writers, the taggers, start by tagging their name in visible public spaces. Spray painting your tag (your signature, your graffiti name) is a way to see the invisible youth. These labels are rudimentary and consist of stylized letters. The basis of graffiti is letters. This is vandalism and illegal.

The most talented taggers evolve into “votes”: signatures still, but bigger, more creative, more involved, often with bubble letters. Sometimes “fills”, sometimes “empties”. Street art has a fascinating vocabulary.

“Wild style”. Ultra stylized votes with complex lettering that makes them almost unreadable to anyone without an eye for reading street art.

Vomits can also include images beyond letters (characters, icons), but are quick, only lasting three to five minutes

After mastering the vomits, the street performers move on to the “pieces”. Pieces require more colors, more skill, more time and more scale. This is where graffiti writing is recognized as art creation. Parts can be illegal or made to order.

Wynwood is covered in basic labels, quick and dirty vomit, and beautiful pieces, but it's the opportunity to produce massive “productions” that brings the world's best street artists here.

“A production is when you have multiple pieces and then there's a background and maybe a theme with characters or images versus lyrics,” legendary Miami street artist Atomik (Adam Vargas; b. 1981–Miami) told Forbes. how. “A production, in terms of graffiti, is basically a full-blown mural.”

Atomik's smiley orange face character can be seen around Wynwood and the city. He used to be a member of the MSG “crew,” Miami Style Graffiti, formed in the early 90's. Keep an eye out in Wynwood for the MSG acronym.

In addition to a language, taggers have a code of ethics.

“You're not supposed to label someone who has died and worked, (or) the monument that was painted for someone who has died,” Atomik explained.

The pieces of deceased street artists remain untouched by Wynwood's contemporary taggers. Tagging churches and houses is also prohibited. A novice painting a rough label on a strong garment is frowned upon.

Wynwood 2024

The remnants of Wynwood's gritty past are dwindling. The neighborhood is gentrified. quick Several high-rise residential buildings are under construction. Trendy shops and restaurants, especially since the pandemic, now populate the area.

All of Miami has exploded since the pandemic, accelerating growth and development that had already occurred at a breakneck pace.

On a weekend night, Wynwood feels like an open-air nightclub, a Las Vegas strip for 21^St century

The best way to experience Wynwood is by staying at Arlo Wynwood Miami, the neighborhood's first hotel, opening in November 2022. Wynwood's best restaurants and street art are right outside the lobby, less than 10 minute walk in any direction.

The hotel also rents bicycles for free, in order to explore further.

Be careful with those selfies and look both ways before crossing the street – this is still a business district and it's easy to forget about the traffic framing a perfect IG photo.

mangoes

At just 22 years old, David Fairchild (1869–1954) created the US Department of Agriculture's Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction Section. He, along with his companions, began to travel around the world in search of plant species that could be brought to the States to serve a growing and industrializing nation.

Over the next 30-plus years, he found hundreds himself.

alfalfa nectarines dates soy bamboo

The famous cherry blossom trees in Washington, DC

mangoes

After retiring to Miami in 1935, Fairchild collaborated with a group of local collectors and horticulturists to establish a botanical garden. In 1938, the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden opened in Coral Gables.

The highlight of its summer schedule has become an annual Mango Festival, which showcases the garden's unrivaled collection of nearly 400 mango varieties.

During the weekend of July 13-14, 2024, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden will share the mango madness with mango tastings, not all 400, but flavors and textures not available in any grocery store, mango cooking demonstrations by chefs recognized, mango-inspired cocktails, etc. The sweet and refreshing mango margarita with chunks of mango floating on its icy surface, served year-round in the Fairchild Cafe is to die for curator-led tours of the mango collection, a sale of 'mango trees for gardens, live music and more.

There will even be dinosaurs!

Kids and aspiring paleontologists alike will tour Fairchild's Jurassic Park installation, which will bring T-rex, triceratops, velociraptor and other famous dinosaurs to a portion of the 83-acre gardens through September 2, 2024.

Fairchild is more than fruit trees and fruit drinks. There is also serious research and conservation going on there, best exemplified by its tropical fruit program and the National Orchid Garden, which is valiantly trying to return native orchids to all of Florida through its Million Orchid Project.

Martin and Muhammad

Don't let it twist. Miami was not always the celebration of multiculturalism that it is today. This is Florida, and Florida, all told, was as segregated as anywhere else in the Deep South during Jim Crow.

It wasn't until the late 1970s, when Miami began looking south to Latin America and the Caribbean for its future rather than north to Tallahassee and the state capital, that it began to to remove this sinister skin and take another one, cocaine. The whole story of Miami sometimes reads like a crime novel. Famous Miami authors like Carl Hiaasen regularly talk about how they have to cut their fiction writing short of what's really going on because it's just unbelievable.

Either way, the best place to relive Miami's segregated “glory” is at the Historic Hampton House, a former Green Book hotel that catered to top African-American celebrities for generations when they weren't welcome as guests in Miami hotels Beach. .

Sammie, Aretha, James Brown.

Josephine Baker, Nat King Cole, Stevie Wonder.

Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown.

Martin and Malcolm.

Pictures throughout the restored property, now a museum and event space, commemorate their visits, including a notable image of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Hampton House pool. Most people have never seen a photograph of him in anything other than a coat and tie.

The room where King stayed has been recreated, favored by its side exit at the back of the property and a car and driver waiting for him should he make a quick escape from assassination attempts. It had a kitchenette, private bathroom and even air conditioning, like all the rooms.

Ali's suite, right next to the pool deck, has also been recreated with its double beds.

incredible

Enter directly.

By the early 1970s, after desegregation, Hampton House was out of favor. In 1976 it closed, never to reopen.

Its decline accelerated during the 1980s. By the 1990s, sections of the roof had collapsed and trees were growing through the foundations. By the turn of the millennium, it was barely standing. In 2002, its demolition was scheduled.

At the last minute, Enid C. Pinkney led a group of local preservationists to convince the city not to demolish Hampton House and help preserve what could be saved. In 2015, Historic Hampton House reopened as a cultural center.

Most of what would have greeted Malcom and Muhammad has been replaced, but the lobby floor, floating stairs and black railings are original.

Hampton House has a starring role in 2020's “One Night in Miami” on Amazon Prime.

Whether it's looking at murals, tasting mangoes or following in the footsteps of Martin and Muhammad, one night in Miami is not enough.