Bahia Honda

In July South Florida is a hot and humid place. It is not recommended to go out side for any reason. They say necessity is the mother of invention and I believe that air conditioning was developed by someone who lived down here. Even the Mosquitoes sweat in July.

In New England summer is a time to get outside and enjoy the sunny weather. People head to the beach and play outside any chance they get. In Miami it’s the opposite. The entire population huddles inside next to the air conditioner. We only leave the house to buy hurricane supplies, and we wait to the last minute to do that. None of the locals can be found on the beach, and no one plays sports except the crazy Brazilians, who play soccer 24/7.

With this in mind it is an oddity for ExtremeMiami to have a camping trip in July. July 8th we went down to Bahia Honda State park for an overnight adventure. This park is located in the Florida Keys, just above Key West at mile marker 38. It very hard to get reservations for a site, which is why we ended up there in July instead of April. We figured it’s totally worth it because the campsites are right on the beach and the cool breeze from the water would keep our shorts from melting.

Saturday morning dawned grey and overcast. I was psyched because this meant it wouldn’t be too hot. It’s amazing what a difference it makes when the sun is out vs. behind the clouds. I got picked up at 9 for the long ride down there. It’s about 3 hours form Miami. We stopped on the way down at Robbie’s. This is a keys institution located on a small inlet where you can actually feed Tarpon in the water. It’s like a marine petting zoo. They hang out underneath the dock and you just throw in fish. They go crazy! These are huge fish, too! One was about 6 feet long. He actually jumped out of the water to get at a fish I was holding!

We arrived at the campsite to find that we weren’t in the beach spots. We were around the back of the park in a dredged out inlet where we weren’t allowed to swim. Supposedly there were manatees in the area, but we sure didn’t see any. The campsite was not great, it was pretty much rock clearing where we pitched our tents. We had to build the fire in a metal grill up on a post, no ground fires allowed. Despite it being overcast we had a good turnout, about 15 people. We played some football and Frisbee in the water at the beach in the afternoon. I wish I had video of us trying out the skim board! It remained overcast for the whole day, but it was warm, not hot and it hadn’t rained on us.

As the sky began to darken we headed back to camp for dinner and some drinking games. Kings was the game of choice and I was living large with my Milwaukee’s best! Unleash the Beast! Now after my experience in the Badlands I make sure not to drink too much alcohol while in the wilderness. So I was the first to realize it was starting to rain. Within three minutes it was pouring. One of the tents collapsed under the onslaught and those guys had to sleep in their car!

The next morning the weather was beautiful and clear. We headed back to the beach and it was easy to see why it was consistently ranked high among America’s beaches. We snorkeled and swam and played more Frisbee on the sand. On the way home we stopped for lunch at little café and had seafood and authentic key lime pie, which is never green!

Off the Beaten Path

Alright, let’s get back to the purpose of this Blog. Here’s a good tale of a crazy night in the 305!

Last weekend Laura and I took a step off the beaten path. I’m trying to cut my spending for the remainder of the summer. I’ve gone to 25 hours a week at work to get time to work on my capstone project, the final part of my Master program. It’s going well, but they also cut my paycheck. So I’m looking for a cheap way to entertainment. In Miami that means stay off of South Beach!

Fortunately Miami has a pretty good underground arts scene. It’s taken me almost four years to tune in to it. This Saturday there was a show opening at the Faktura gallery. The place is run by a girl who waitresses at a bar I’ve been known to frequent. The gallery was up in Liberty City, the setting for the latest Grand Theft Auto game, if that means anything to you. It was a sketchy area, but the gallery was hopping! It was in an industrial park down an alley in a space that looked to be an old auto body shop, complete with grease and oil stains.







The show is called “Sit on It!” The show was a compilation by a bunch of Miami’s underground artists. They all put their own brand of art onto toilet seats. They had a bunch of the seats on the wall in the gallery. They ranged from paintings, to wood burning, to sculpture. All of it was done on toilet seats and lids. I took some pictures of my favorites. In addition we enjoyed free beer and freshly made sushi while we appreciated the art.

Outside they had a movie playing on the wall of the warehouse across the alley from the gallery. That was my favorite part. It was montage of bathrooms. They were all public bathrooms, some gross, some clean. Fortunately they focused on the writing in the stalls, and not the contents of the receptacles. Some of it was full scale graffiti and artwork; other was just scribblings in magic marker. My favorite one said “I love writing in bathrooms”! It ended with a scene from the Big Lebowski. The Dude has just been doused in the toilet and is pulling his sunglasses out of the water. “Come on, no women live here! The toilet seat is up, man!”

Next stoop for the evening was Churchill’s pub. This is an authentic English pub located in the Little Haiti neighborhood. They were having a psychobilly music night featuring a few bands form NYC. Psychobilly is a sort of thrash rock/rockabilly fusion, with the lyrics tending toward horror movie plots. Sounded weird to me, but Laura said she’s heard it before and it was cool, so off we went.

Now Churchill’s itself is a unique place. Its way off the beaten path, so it draws a dedicated crowd. Think English punk rockers. I think it would be a great place to watch the World Cup games, but I’m too chicken to go out there and face drunken Brits if the English side loses. It has a clientele mainly of Miami’s punk rockers. They were out in force last Saturday, it was awesome!

Laura and I settled in at the bar I front of the stage for the bands. There were six or seven bands on the bill so we ordered pitchers of ale. Opposite the bar there was a movie screen. It was playing Halloween 2 when we got there, then switched to Dr. Frankenstein and the Demon Monster, and was halfway through The Return of the Living Dead when we left. It really set the ambiance for the night. It was pretty dead when we got here so I had a good view. I watched when the bands were setting up between sets.

We stayed for about five bands, but I think we missed the main act. I was new to the music, but every band sounded the same. All hardcore thrash metal. I couldn’t really decipher the lyrics to tell if they were horror inspired or not. I can tell you that there were lots of F-Bombs. The only rockabilly we heard was over the PA when the bands took a break.

The best was the third band. The lead singer was girl with a huge Mohawk and spiky hair. She informed us at the start that their drummer had stayed in New York. So there was a stand in drummer who had learned their music in two days. They kept messing up their songs, starting and restarting them. Pretty funny. By that time there was a pretty good crowd. The members of the earlier bands were the most into it, and they got started a kicking mosh pit! It reminded me of the infamous Green Day concert in Boston. I didn’t partake, but I enjoyed watching it. We left around 3am for home and bed.




It was great night and I spent about 15 bucks. That’s phenomenal for Miami. I’m going to see how long I can go with mostly free parties. That should make for some good blogging!