VACATION: Miami Beach & Its Art Deco

SOUTH BEACH STOPOVER


I confess to being among those Californians who snicker in their sleeve about Miami Beach and Florida. Too many old duffer and comedian jokes, and an unmerited sense of superiority for living in California.

Duane Hansen, Tourists, 1970 i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg62/witchyhoy3/AAA/AAAAAANEW/duane_hanson_tourists

Who go-eth to South Beach? I go-eth. Why? On the way back from the Caribbean,an unplanned stopover, after watching all those TV shows with such beautiful long shots and pans of Miami and fun in South Beach.

It was a whim. I'd been to Miami a few years ago for a convention; written it off as a banal place. Hotel web selection put us on Collins Avenue amidst a wonderful collection of Art Deco buildings. Art Deco design seems a collision: yearning for turn-of-the-century Art Nouveau Louis Sullivan ornamentation dumped by Modernism, and aerodynamic-curve inspired, Art Deco is a luxurious, elegant synthesis. South Beach has got it. What an unexpected delight. (For more information, go to Miami Design Preservation League's website: www.mdpl.org/).

In LA, you'll find a radius-curve corner of a building or a neon sign on an old building in Hollywood, or a flaring sign with that Art Deco typeface. There's the old Coca-Cola plant, the Oviatt Building, yes. And Wright's concrete block homes. You can go to the Shangri-La, newly renovated, a lone Santa Monica Art Deco hotel, wishing it could go live on Collins Avenue with the rest of its buddies.

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But not the enveloping walk-the-street quality find plenty, as is Miami's extensive Art Deco district. A lesson in why design matters, how an environment is enriched visually and psychologically when nostalgia and a seminal/fin-de-histoire architectural style birth a distinctive intense visual experience. And, it's still a bit glitz-y too. Like mad dogs and Englishmen - it's the tropics, admit it, you know you love it.

Do not go to The Fontainbleau- it's BIG. You want to pretend to be gay-er than you are and go stay down on Collins in the Art Deco district. We stayed at the National, most luxurious and comfortable, despite its icebox air conditioning. Elevators like jewel boxes. Long narrow pool.

Collins Avenue beach hotels are like railroad apartments in New York - they have a narrow front entrance on the avenue, extending deeply back to an ambling beach sidewalk and wide, (are they always windy?) beach. Lobbies tend to be dark, saved by Art Deco's superb evening-glamour sconce lighting. Then, after the traverse through the hotel's apps, you find a restaurant, tucked to one side, and a swimming pool seemingly conceived for debauchery. Circular upholstered lounges, chaise-longues that extend to infinity, palm fronds waving like they were automated. The roots of Vegas.

The Raleigh was my quick-choice; most visual buck-bang, a bit more boutique-like, and dinner on this patio was about as dreamy and delicious as the Mauna Kea patio on Hawai'i's Big Island, (before the hurricane) which remains my fondest dining memory. Though we didn't work at dining, we had exceptionally lovely meals in the hotel restaurants - fresh fish, vegetables, and of course, a key lime pie.

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Afternoon pastry and coffee here!

A bit institutional, I think

The Sagamore, another stop, was unique because, walk into the lobby, tourist-cruiser that you are, and behold, an art collection that is quite impressive. Who knew? I wandered about the lobby and cocktail lounges bemusedly, suddenly challenged by art when I'd only been architecture-grazing.

Black and white, white and black - the color scheme of bold, difficult, aloof, sharp,cool, elegant. Along with softened tropical tones, I saw this scheme enough to note its frequency, puzzling over the choice, so hard in a soft tropical climate.

And those Art Deco stucco and concrete decorative flourishes: how integrated they are to the integrity of the facades they grace.

Hard to banish Louis Sullivan, even with the gravid pronouncements of Le Corbusier and Van der Rohe. Think Ionic and Corinthian vs.

Doric.

What I loved more than the incredibly tacky women's clothing was the menswear. Much more fun, casual, framed even in the shop windows by art deco curves. Now I know where all that color in fashion is really coming from - Miami's gentlemen's haberdasheries, of course.

This tourist seems to have acquired extra upholstery material from the seat cushions to fashion her hat and purse. She did have a sense of humour about it, permitting me to photograph her and then asking me to take one of her too!

Tropical weather isn't always sunny - the days we spent in Miami were overcast, humid, and rainy. Beachgoers and pool lounge lizards kept at it, anyway, with a lot of sympathy from me for their determination to enjoy the marginal amount of sunshine. Back home, bright 80-degree sunny days follow one upon the other, and I confess to thinking yesterday, " yes, but it's a dry heat...", to console myself as I think of the hot summer to come.