Señor Frog’s

Miami South Beach is famous for its very well preserved Art Deco buildings, and if like me you love the Art Deco style, then it’s a little treasure-trove of colourful architectural wonders. There was a real nautical feel about the architecture of that period, and more often than not you find buildings of this style hugging the coastlines. There are similar styled buildings on the South Coast of England too, with their round port-hole windows, funnel-shaped towers, and prominent curved sterns where you would otherwise find a sharp corner in buildings from other eras. Wonderfully playful architecture often in soft pastel tones that really contrast beautifully against a vivid blue sky.

 

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Señor Frogs, South Beach, Miami, Florida, January 2016.

10 thoughts

  2. I love the lidos still found on the south coast of England from that period …. it is on my list to visit Miami Beach which shocked my husband until I pointed him to pictures of the buildings. This one is so cool in both senses of the word

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    • I can only speculate as to why your husband was shocked that you’d want to visit Miami Beach. It has its many merits for sure, however what shocked both me and my husband was the seediness of Miami’s South Beach in particular, not what we had expected at all. But in a lot of ways it reminded me of Brighton down on the South Coast of England which attracts all walks of life, from the very rich to the homeless. In both places the contrasts can either be really jarring or charming. When you have a camera in hand however, it is really difficult not to notice the very obvious squalor that exists along its streets. Fascinating place to explore.

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      • He tends to associate me with the wilderness and so I think my saying I would like to visit Miami Beach was an epic curved ball. I know exactly what you mean about Brighton … my daughter lived there for 2 years and I loved it and loathed it and was beguiled and repulsed simultaneously. These are the places that attract my own dark underbelly and I think it is essential to take the covers off one’s eyes, as an artist in whatever medium, and feel. I am at heart an Orwellian writer!

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      • Brighton is one of those places I spent many years living and working in, so I know it intimately to the point that some years back I just refused to go there anymore, due to memories that it still holds for me. It seems you never quite escape its clutches once it has worked its way under the skin.
        When I first lived there back in the early 90s it had a great buzz about it that I absolutely fell in love with, and a lot less people. Over the years it became more heavily populated and with it came the trappings of city life, the best and the worst of it. It morphed into a many tentacled creature whose only intent was to bleed dry its unwitting hosts, and spit out all those who were trying desperately to cling on for dear life.
        Miami’s South Beach I think has far surpassed Brighton’s metamorphosis, and has instead become a flea-bitten, ageing moggy. Still quite demure in its appearance, until you look at it more closely and see that it has patches of missing fur and is covered in itchy welts.
        You see, I too like to see places with eyes uncovered because therein lies a different kind of well-synchronised and very purposeful art created by the routine and very dedicated imprint of human life. No cigarette butt is placed in a crack in the pavement by accident, there was intent behind the action as there is in every detail to be observed in an urban environment. That’s what I love to capture on camera. That essence of art in the making.

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      • I think we both recognise that though we have different mediums for expression we have a similar stimuli to the beating heart vital to creativity. My mother-in-law lives part of the time in a house that is half in Brighton, half in Hove, her youngest son lives in the city and my daughter talks of moving out of London and back to Brighton. I remind her of the painful memories she has as well as the happy. She is undeterred – the filth gets into your lungs and thence your bloodstream. I understand. Miami Beach I know little of except for the dirt and the Art Deco which is where my unrequited mission to visit comes from. For me you have to visit the dark underbelly to have any voice at all. Otherwise you are simply another sybarite playing courtier.

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