[pod]

Forget Will Smith's 1998 hit "Miami", forget Miami Vice and forget
those glossy images of Miami Beach......


In reality, there are 2 versions of Miami: there's the Miami you see
on TV, which is mostly Miami Beach, then there's the rest of Miami - a
bland, urban landscape littered with apartment buildings that look
like cheap motels, gas stations, tacky strip malls, Publix
supermarkets (Publix are the only real chain here), endless fast food
restaurants, warehouses and cheap looking business parks. The version
of Miami you don't see on the TV is version 2 (an urban wasteland),
where poverty, crime and inequality are rife and where the streets are
literally choked with traffic. If you're poor, you'll live in a shack
or an efficiency, or if you're lucky, you'll live in one of those
apartment buildings that look like cheap motels with tiny windows and
no view. There is no middle class here anymore, but if you have a
little money, you'll probably have paid over $400k for a box-like
house, somewhere in the depths of Kendall or Homestead on SW 2,005,442
Street and 1,245,667 Ave, dealing with a 2 hour commute every day.


You're led to believe that Miami is some sort of tropical paradise,
full of beautiful beaches, great nightlife, great women and that Miami
is simply bubbling with culture. Sure, it has palm trees and the
nightlife is great, if you're prepared to shell out well over $200 to
go to one of the clubs on South Beach. Miami is no paradise though -
in fact, it's about as far from being a "paradise" as you can get.
You'd think that with the tropical climate, people would have
beautiful and lush gardens, but in reality, people here tear down
trees and plants and replace them with asphalt and concrete. Miami is
no paradise - it has become a third world banana republic that broke
away from the United States a long time ago.


Miami is a city with some of the worst traffic in North America. The
roads here are inadequate, sub standard and generally f**ked up.
Construction here takes 1,000 times longer than it does in the rest of
the United States. Drivers here are amongst the rudest in the
country. Not only are the drivers here rude, but they're downright
reckless too. They drive like maniacs in their Ford F150s, Dodge Rams
or Honda Civics, with reggaeton blasting. This is a city with far too
many "hit and run" type accidents - in other words, not only will they
run you over, but they'll drive off, because that's what cowardly
bastards do. But you only have to look at how easy the driving test
is here and how they hand out licenses to anyone, even non-legal
aliens who probably have no concept of what an expressway is.


For a metropolitan area of well over 5 million people, public
transportation here is nothing short of a joke. You have one MetroRail
line going north to south and it doesn't even serve anywhere west of
the airport (where the bulk of the population of Dade County live).
You're forced to use your car because there's no other choice, unless
you just so happen to live close to the Metro Rail, or can afford one
of those overly priced condos in Brickell (south of Downtown).


Customer service in general here is far worse than ANYWHERE in the
United States and there's a general lack of quality and efficiency
here that commonplace in the rest of this great country. Many people
in this city are simply out to rip you of, including mechanics,
doctors, vets and dentists. During the 4 years that I've lived here,
I have never encountered so many shady so-called health professionals
as I have here in Miami. As for customer service, forget it, unless
you speak fluent ghetto-Spanish. It's got to the point where I drive
up to West Palm Beach (a good 2 hour drive) in order to get good
customer service (West Palm Beach feels like part of the United
States, unlike Miami-Dade).


As for Miami being paradise, I suggest that if you're staying in Miami
Beach, take a drive across the causeway and you'll stumble upon the
"urban wasteland" that I despise so much. There is truly nothing here
- nothing in terms of parks, museums or infrastructure. Take a drive
through Hialeah, Opa Locka, anywhere "NW" or Overtown and you'll feel
like you're either in a slum part of Tijuana, a run down part of
Kingston, Jamaica or a miscellaneous Latin American hell-hole.


Don't get me started on Downtown Miami either - the place is a mess.
You'd think that for such an "important" city, it'd have at least a
decent-looking Downtown. Miami's Downtown looks like something out of
a zombie movie - deserted after 7pm, full of beggars and vagrants and
downright dangerous. There's no real retail, other than a Macy's and
hundreds of cheap electrical and luggage stores run by shady people.
I don't blame the homeless for being there - they have nowhere else
to. Housing here is completely unaffordable, at best, because Miami
is a city for the rich.