10 (And A Half) Things People Should Know Before Moving To Miami

From the vault. Original publish date: 7/4/2013

I’m a Northern California boy, through and through. I grew up ten minutes north of Berkeley, went to college at Davis, about forty-five minutes away, and was then fortunate enough to have the industry I studied for bloom around me. I spent my post-university career living around the Bay Area, the last four years in the Mission in San Francisco. I am attuned to things that are uniquely San Francisco: burritos, surly Asian women serving me pho, co-workers into fringe politics, and passive-aggressiveness.

And then a year ago, I decided to move in with the guy I had been dating for two years, long-distance. He received a grant to open up a movie theater in Miami, and since I was between jobs at the time, I decided to test the theory that freelancers could work anywhere. Next thing you know, we’re renting an apartment in Miami Beach, a block from where they filmed Miami Ink and four blocks from where that guy killed Gianni Versace. If a project manager from KISSmetrics can write a post about his experiences living in San Francisco, surely I can do the same with my time in Miami. Right?

So, taking the cue of what I’m basing this post on: consider this the guide I wish someone had given me when I moved to Miami.

1. The Will Smith video is kind of accurate (but only applies to Miami Beach and not Miami)

So there’s a scene in Will Smith’s Miami video where two girls are in a convertible, and one of them is Eva Mendes, and they’re all “Bienvenido a Miami”. At the same time, the camera pans out, and they’re driving over a causeway. I drive that causeway to my co-working space. Then there’s the scene where Will Smith’s posse is walking in front of a bunch of art deco hotels, and then I realize that it’s two blocks from my house. There are Brazilian models, Italian families of five arguing with their hands outside of the Starbucks where you buy your morning coffee, and a Russian girl who nearly pushes you aside because she can, and she’s wearing a fur coat because it’s 70 degrees, and when else is she going to wear fur?

You get surrounded by so much ridiculousness that your baseline for what is low-key gets completely screwed, and you think to yourself, “Well, I can wear these white shorts, because it’s not as ridiculous as that German guy who is on the corner over there with his mesh top and the magenta hot pants.” And then your friends back home see your photos on Facebook, and they’re all, “He’s changed so much already.”

But all of this isn’t Miami—Miami is over the causeway and much larger, mostly working-class, and best traversed by automobile, like Los Angeles or Houston. Most people I know in Miami don’t like traveling to Miami Beach, mostly because parking here is awful, and seriously, who would be caught dead being seen with people wearing white shorts?