Miami Ink

We rolled into Miami about 5:00 last night. Three days from Phoenix, not too bad.  If I can return in six days driving by myself without being too beaten up, I will feel pretty good.  We have rented a South Beach condo - a deco affair above a busy restaurant.  Stopped by a real estate office and picked up the key. Hooked up with my buddy Nathan and walked down the crowded street to get dinner. 

Miami is beautiful right now - perfect balmy weather - lots of young girls showing off lots of skin. Many joined by men many years their senior.  There is a mercantile aspect that seems to emanate from their contract - meat for dough, but maybe on a long term basis.  I have never been truly comfortable in Florida, don't know quite why.  There is a schmaltzy, loud Las Vegasy boardwalk cheesiness to the place.  Very multicultural, cuban, israeli, italian voices are all overheard in the din.  I feel old and fat.

The dinner was lousy, my fault for ordering paella in an italian joint. Whatever I received bore no resemblance to the spanish dish that shares it's name. My companions meals similarly sucked.  We were pigeons on a fence and won't make the mistake again.  I knew the old owner but as Dylan says in the song, things have changed.

We have no room to park near the condo with hundreds of thousands of dollars of merch in the van and managed to find a parking garage.  I slipped the security guard a twenty to keep an extra eye out.  I will see if all is copacetic in an hour or see and start the arduous load in with my thousand fellow dealers.

Have stayed clear of most of the inaugural hubbub in the media, preferring to listen to old radio shows on the radio but caught Colin Powell's speech last night and was very impressed.  People are so giddy over the prospect for change and I think that their expectations will ultimately have to be quenched a little bit.  Unless he can do the loaves and fishes bit.