rakontur

[Read more →]

via Google:

[Read more →]

South Florida is known for nasty political campaigns and sleazy ads, but we were struck by congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart’s attack ad against his opponent Raul Martinez, particularly because it features Cocaine Cowboys. (see the clip after the jump)

(more…)

[Read more →]

We’re working on the 1980s Miami photo book and came across the website of Carolyn Robbins, who designed the infamous Mutiny Hotel.  Check out her photos of the Mutiny after the jump and then grab a Mutiny t-shirt at the rakontur Stash House.

(more…)

[Read more →]

[Read more →]

Ebb Tide at Miami Beach

Hyperbolic drumbeaters still proclaim Miami Beach as “the sun and fun capital of the world” to big spenders from the North. The reality, as first-time visitors will speedily discover during the tourist season that opens this week, is startlingly different. The sun is still there (temperatures last week were in the 80s), but not the fun. So rapidly has the seven-mile-long island degenerated that it can be fairly described as a seedy backwater of debt-ridden hotels, gaudy condominiums and decaying apartments. It has a permanent population so old (median age: 68) that lifeguards spend more time assisting heart-attack victims on the sand than pulling foundering swimmers out of the surf.

During the 1968 Republican Convention, Norman Mailer visited most of the big hotels and concluded, “All the rivers of the very worst taste twisted down to the delta of each lobby in each grand Miami Beach hotel . . . There was every color of iridescence, rainbows of vulgarity, aureoles of gorgeous taste, opium den of a middle-class dollar, materialistic as meat, sweat and the cigar.”

[Read more →]

A movement is underway by Doors fans to convince Florida governor Charlie Crist to issue a posthumous pardon to Jim Morrison for allegedly exposing himself at an infamous 1969 concert at Dinner Key in Coconut Grove.

Thanks to our new partnership with the Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archive (which supplied most of the archive footage in Cocaine Cowboys), we’ll be posting video clips in our Classic Miami posts.

[Read more →]

A significant F1 tornado, with wind speeds estimated at 100 to 110 mph, produced an estimated $526,000 in damage as it moved through the downtown area of Miami around 1800 UTC (2:00 P.M. EDT) on May 12, 1997. The tornado developed just southwest of the city and first touched down in the Silver Bluff Estates area at approximately 1753 UTC (1:53 P.M.). The tornado moved east-northeast at 20 to 25 mph and cut a 30 to 150-yard wide path, 8 miles in length, and was on the ground for about 15 minutes (Figure 1) (Lushine 1997). After the initial touchdown in Silver Bluff Estates area, the tornado crossed interstate I-95 and then moved through downtown Miami before entering Biscayne Bay near Bicentennial Park and the MacArthur Causeway. The tornado then continued northeast and crossed both the MacArthur and Venetian Causeways and moved over Biscayne Island. The visible funnel lifted from the water as it crossed Biscayne Bay, but touched down again briefly on Miami Beach near Collins Avenue and Arthur Godfrey Road.

National Weather Service report
USA Today

[Read more →]

Fontainebleau Hotel
built in 1954 on the site of the Harvey Firestone estate
designed by Morris Lapidus

[Read more →]

1111 Brickell Avenue - The Perry Nichols Building
WCIX Channel 6 headquarters
demolished in late 1970s / early 1980s

via magic-city at Skyscraper City

[Read more →]