| Escape From Miami

This has nothing to do with Kurt Russell. I promise. Though that would be a kick-ass (long overdue) sequel.

I don’t recall ever having a need for the word “transient” before living in South Florida. I mean, maybe if I wanted a fancy name for homeless people in center city Philadelphia, but for the most part an unused word lying dormant in my vast vocabulary of mostly four-letter words and brand names. Then I moved to Miami. One of the first things people tell you about Miami (though it’s really applicable to all of South Florida) is “yeah, Miami is really transient.” In other words, not only do people not normally stay here forever, but most of them flee back to wherever they came from so fast you would think botched plastic surgery is contagious.

Miami can be a really cool city, so it might be hard to understand why new residents find the place so toxic they need to pack up and leave after maybe a few months. Downtown Miami is beautiful, adorned with modern skyscrapers and causeways. South Beach is a nonstop party where there’s never a shortage of beautiful people and cars that cost more than most people’s homes. This is all really fun and exciting at first, but at some point that excitement fades away. You realize the beautiful skyscrapers lie empty and tied up in bankruptcy court, that Rolls Royce is a rental, the local government is plagued by daily corruption scandals as if it were a third world country, and that girl only got so skinny because she has a major coke problem (if you’re in Ft. Lauderdale, replace coke with meth).

The aforementioned are all relatively tolerable nuisances, but there’s one factor of life here that tends to be a nail-in-the-coffin. The sheer fact that the majority of people in Miami are just… stupid. Not stupid like ditzy stupid, stupid like stupid stupid. People in Miami either don’t care or don’t understand (leaning towards the latter) what goes on around them unless it’s broadcast on BRAVO TV.

That being said, I think Miami is one of the greatest cities in the world to live in.

Totally bipolar, I know. But hear me out: Everything about living in Miami is difficult if you’re not an heiress and don’t speak Spanish. I’m not and I don’t. Somehow, I managed to get a decent job in South Beach, with a great company, right out of college and in the middle of a recession. It wasn’t easy, and there were definitely times my fridge had more vodka than food (like now), but somehow it worked out. Miami kicked my ass, called me a bitch, and kicked it again. But it forced me to grow up, and brought a lot of awesome people into my life along the way.

Miami is a great place to live for a while or, for a handful of people, for good. So move to Miami, lose your job, get a new one, lose your boyfriend/girlfriend, get a new one, get addicted to cocaine, get a reality TV show where you get clean, become a success. Just don’t get sucked in. Don’t be that burnout who was going somewhere, stopped in South Beach, and got stuck. You don’t want to be that 46 year old server at Rosa Mexicana who dropped out of FIU and still thinks he’s going back. Sure, you’ll be able to afford a semi-nice place at the Flamingo because you don’t have a car or student loans, but you haven’t left South Beach in 20 years. You can’t work as a server when you’re 80, and that $5,000.00 you’ve got in a jar won’t even get you through the first year of retirement (you’re just going to blow it on strippers anyway). Also, you’re getting ashy and you’re caucasian, so maybe you should have worn sunscreen.