One piece of advice my father gave me is that you should probably never ever go to Miami. On your average week your are going to find yourself listening to top 40 mashups in overpriced clubs and feeling grossly inadequate about your abs. The women are all knockouts, but the dress code is high class hooker, which means that unless you have a Lambo parked out front and hair gel that is made from whale spooge imported from the Dalmatian Coast, you're already SOL with that set. What is overlooked by whatever blob in our brains makes us remember awful things [the nucleus amygdala--Ed], is that like any city, if you know a few good people you will quickly see what a sourpuss dickball you're being. Living in a shadow of hundreds of huge fake tits that you will never touch is a rapidly emerging art community, people that are scary-friendly because the sun is always out, cheap rent in good areas, and Cuban food. Combine all that with the unrestricted partying of Art Basel and try to go back to your normal life anywhere else on earth.
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I went down with Johnny. He is from Florida and has friends in the area so I followed him down there. One big mistake you can make is to go down with the rest of NYC and then it's just like when the entire cast of Mad About You or whatever would all go to Hawaii. We rented this beast of a car, but saved money on skipping out on a hotel room. We'd gone into the weekend ready for four days of couches and/or floors but within 10 minutes of getting to the first party we meet friend of friend of friend, Bunny. Two minutes after that she offered us the extra bedroom of her company's apartment right by the beach. Okeedokee. She also had the company convertible so she drove us around. Agains, this was all within the first 15 minutes of arrival.
This would never happen in NY, and even if it did I couldn't be bothered to care what the price was. In Miami it's probably a figure that would make you be like "Well, if I went in with Johnny, Dave, and… Julio or whatever we could have our own block."
Unless you're a pussy or on a strictly liquid and powder diet for the weekend, you have to go downtown to eat. This Cuban spot is in Little Havana. Your eyeballs will hate you on the drive in, but your stomach and heart will totally 69 each other and let your tongue watch once you sit down and are handed a menu. Our meal was like a few bucks a person and it's still working its way to my colon.
X-zibit b. Same story.
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A shocking highlight of Basel this year was the actual art. This was as an installation of a working meth lab. It's always amazed me how complex the whole meth making process is. How do West Virginians figure this shit out?
Here is a band that played downstairs from that.
We walked down the wrong street one night and minorly shit our pants when we came across a puddle of fresh blood. The camera flash later revealed that it was a dead cat.
The next day we learned that god is a minimalist and he's sorta just using his big name to get shows.
The "Friends With You" people had a fun house installation complete with bouncy castle and cotton candy. I can't tell you what a relief it was from the endless parade of boring political shit.
Like this, easily the worst thing I saw all week.
This was a bummer too. It's kind of hard to see but Patrick Mimran had banners pulled by airplanes flying around the city. This one said "No Angst For Art" and then his name.
The only person with more exposure down there was Puff Da/iddy who I think might be the mayor. His face is seriously on a Kim Jong-il number of buildings in South Beach.
The flip side to all the rushed together Obama crap was that an overwhelming amount of artists were going the color-overload route. I already miss it.
Even just walking down the street is well composed.
No Age Played a Nike Party.
Every party had a male and female 10, generally working in tandem.
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This guy was also at every party we went to. We finally met him and his friends on our last night and turns out they were from NY too. It was one of those "And we have officially done everything we needed to do" moments.
Aren't photos taken from an airplane kind of cheap? Anyways, I took 10 rolls of film, but you're already bored of reading about how much fun I had, probably didn't care in the first place. The rest will end up on my blog in a few days. Stay tropical.BEN RITTER