Quote from Slave2Market:
In terms of Miami, I would first ask you a few of questions:
1. How old are you?
2. Do you like clubbing e.g. the kind of places with music so loud you are deaf when you leave ... and sometimes need to be "somebody" to get in?
3. Do you speak Spanish?
4. Do you like hot humid weather from April to October - but great weather the rest of the year?
5. Does a large gay community bother you?
6. Do you want to live on the water?
7. How much money do you have?
I just moved from South Beach after living there for five years. When I moved there, I can honestly say that I really didn't know much about it; I just wanted to live somewhere warm and in a tax free state. I can't say that it's a bad place, it's just not my style ... and if I were 22 again, it would have been a lot more fun.
Regards,
Slave2Market
P.S. There's definitely lots of "Eye Candy" on South Beach ... but it's very young!
I also did south beach for five years. It was great when I got there - you could go rollerblading on lincoln road, the club scene was incredible, and there was a very open attitude down there with tremendous numbers of europeans, gays, models, and boho types. You could get an average 1br rental for $800 year round, and there was still a season.
Then, like all things, it changed. More people like me moved in, and pushed out the artsy boho types, condo development went up and went wild, rents skyrocketed, traffic got so bad that you couldn't rollerblade without getting hit by a car, and quality of life declined.
So the europeans stopped coming, the models were less frequent, and a lot of not-so-pretty tourists came to south beach. To service them, the big chains moved into lincoln road so that middle america could buy the same stuff on vacation at higher prices than at the mall at home. Yay.
People come to south beach for the same reasons they come to Vegas - to "front" and pretend that they are more than they are. They spend exorbitant amounts of money on premium services which they are putting on their credit card. Hey, for a weekend, you too can rent a ferrari & try to impress some chicks (or some guys). And of course, some of them say, "hey, lets live here."
Sooo... you too can buy and overpriced condo down by 5th St and West Ave where the sewage system can't handle the number of people living in the new apartment buildings. You can buy into the "lifestyle", but don't actually expect real models, artists, or too many interesting people. You can expect players, perverts, and a lot of professionals who want to capture a bit of the excitement that was there.
But from a climate standpoint, its not so bad. Just a bit hot in summer. And its funny to hear about people freezing to death on the news when it hits 45 one or two days a year.
Ultimately, the party moved on. So did I.
Quebec City is far more militantly Quebecoise than Montreal.
