My experience of the famed Miami nightlife has so far been limited to a couple of trips to South Beach in the company of some other grad students. We've gone to a few bars that were pretty grotty, kicked about the streets a bit, gone home. Nice enough, but given the place has a reputation for a thriving club culture, I was looking for a bit more.
So when I saw that Mala and Skream were playing at a SoBe venue, for free, on Friday I was determined to go. So determined that I was prepared to go alone, even if that did mean an hour- and a half journey each way on public transport that really does seem to like eight hours' sleep a night.
(Mala and Skream are dubstep DJs from the UK, big on the scene, usually you could expect to pay a tenner or so to see either play out).
In the end, I managed to recruit a couple of my fellow grads, which was a surprise - their tastes in music seem to run mostly to rock of various kinds. Also a relief, since it meant I had lifts there and back. Wasn't sure what they'd make of it, didn't really care that much.
So, a drive through the night to South Beach. SoBe, the southern portion of an island just off the mainland to which it's linked by several causeways, is more like movie Miami. It's full of bars, clubs, 'glamorous' people, and there is of course a beach. As the driver said as we headed through downtown's illuminated skyscrapers and on to one of the causeways, it's like you're going to a different city - a world apart from the sprawling, quiet suburbs.
My first thought on entering the bar was: wow, that's a lot of bassbins. Unfortunately, this was soon followed by: oh, they're washing machines. The place is called the Laundry Bar, and the gimmick is, it really does double as a laundrette. You can come along anytime it's open (day and night) with your dirties and clean them in the lovely hygienic bar atmosphere (Florida still allows smoking in clubs and so on).
The place is small, 150 capacity tops I'd say, and the PA wasn't, as it turned out, the most stomach-churningly bassy I'd ever heard. But it felt more like what I think of as good club/bar; less of the tacky decor, more of the tacky floor, dim lights, and people there for the music as much as anything else. Dubstep is a small scene in the UK, and here it's tiny - this was the first time, I think, that a 'name' DJ had played in Miami, and people had flown from Georgia and Texas, amongst other places, to be there.
So the crowd was pretty excitable, and when the warmups stopped and the main men started, they went for it in a way I've never seen at a UK dubstep night. The music lends itself to a slow, languid kind of dancing, but these people were going like it was fast fast jungle, hanging off the staircase near the DJ booth, whooping, cheering every tune they knew. The music helped that, I think - there was more variety of tempo than in most of the dubstep sets I've heard, plenty of tunes that really did double up the snares instead of just suggesting a faster speed via the hats. Lots of records I hadn't heard, lots of them really good, the sets were everything I'd hoped for.
And the people I'd dragged along enjoyed it too, it was completely new to them but I was surprised at how positive they were about it; dubstep maybe isn't the most amenable form of dance music if dance music isn't your thing. So we all left happy at about half three, with the party still going strong. I think I'll still need to broaden my social circle from the philosophy department if I want to do this kind of thing more regularly, but for now at least, I've finally managed to get to something good. Nice one.
Sunday, 23 September 2007
Sunday, 16 September 2007
Swamp things
It's been suggested to me that I'm not properly fulfilling my remit here. Never mind the academic stuff - what about the beaches? The rollerbladers? The vice? What about Disneyworld?
Well, all in time, apart from the last, but one's off the list now. Yesterday, I went to the Everglades, or a small part of it. The area designated as a national park is 2357 sq miles (the Lake District national park is 885 sq miles), so you can only take in a small part on a day trip. Of course, not that much of it is really accessible, being wild marshland, but anyway.
I went with a couple of philosophy grads and one of their friends, visiting from Estonia. The hour and a half drive from Miami impressed upon me just how flat Florida is (highest point: 345 feet). It reminded me of the Netherlands, or more precisely, those seventeenth century Dutch landscape paintings where the sky takes up three quarters of the canvas and accounts for most of the picture's expressive content and interest.
We stopped at Shark Valley visitor centre and hired bikes to take a 15-mile circuit along a wide asphalt road through part of the area called the Shark River Slough, or Sea of Grass. This is a formed by a vast, slow-moving flow of fresh water from Lake Okeechobee in the middle of the state to the south coast. The water spreads across and flows south down a flat limestone shelf about 40 miles wide, creating an enormous marshy plain. The swampy cliche of the Everglades is fulfilled in the south, but here and for much of the area, the landscape is covered by knee-high sawgrass (sedge) growing from the marsh, interspersed with 'hammocks', small raised areas of land on which scrubby clumps of trees grow. So as a landscape, it's open and fairly featureless.
The interest comes from spotting the beasties. There were plenty of beautiful flying insects, dragonflies and butterflies, an enormous variety of colours. There were several wading birds, herons and the like, and a wide -winged cormorant-like one that I later found out is called an anhinga. Floating in the thermals, we saw several raptors of some description, probably red-shouldered hawks, maybe ospreys. Also, a few turtles, swimming around in the water by the side of the track.
And, yes, alligators. Plenty of them, lying in the water about ten yards from us as we cycled by, the largest about seven feet long, the smallest a little six-inch baby that scurried off the road as we approached. They're obviously quite placid creatures, otherwise one wouldn't be allowed to get so close, but there's still an air of menace around them; that feeling that if they wanted to, they could have your leg for dinner.
We did the circuit in a couple of hours, finishing thoroughly soaked from the predictable 30C+ heat. We then went on a looping drive along a rough road that left the national park, but took us through a more wooded area of the Everglades. The dominant tree species was cypress - I think mangroves are more common in the south where the fresh water meets the salt. We saw, again, a couple of alligators, one slinking off the road in front of us, and a few racoons. At one point, we stopped and followed on foot a boardwalk about a mile into the woods, hoping to see some more big lizards, but got no reward except another couple of anhingas.
Still, some alligators is an improvement on my score of none till then, and it was good to get out of the city for a while. So, one item on the cliche list experienced and recorded. Next, Nick goes rollerblading. Maybe.
Well, all in time, apart from the last, but one's off the list now. Yesterday, I went to the Everglades, or a small part of it. The area designated as a national park is 2357 sq miles (the Lake District national park is 885 sq miles), so you can only take in a small part on a day trip. Of course, not that much of it is really accessible, being wild marshland, but anyway.
I went with a couple of philosophy grads and one of their friends, visiting from Estonia. The hour and a half drive from Miami impressed upon me just how flat Florida is (highest point: 345 feet). It reminded me of the Netherlands, or more precisely, those seventeenth century Dutch landscape paintings where the sky takes up three quarters of the canvas and accounts for most of the picture's expressive content and interest.
We stopped at Shark Valley visitor centre and hired bikes to take a 15-mile circuit along a wide asphalt road through part of the area called the Shark River Slough, or Sea of Grass. This is a formed by a vast, slow-moving flow of fresh water from Lake Okeechobee in the middle of the state to the south coast. The water spreads across and flows south down a flat limestone shelf about 40 miles wide, creating an enormous marshy plain. The swampy cliche of the Everglades is fulfilled in the south, but here and for much of the area, the landscape is covered by knee-high sawgrass (sedge) growing from the marsh, interspersed with 'hammocks', small raised areas of land on which scrubby clumps of trees grow. So as a landscape, it's open and fairly featureless.
The interest comes from spotting the beasties. There were plenty of beautiful flying insects, dragonflies and butterflies, an enormous variety of colours. There were several wading birds, herons and the like, and a wide -winged cormorant-like one that I later found out is called an anhinga. Floating in the thermals, we saw several raptors of some description, probably red-shouldered hawks, maybe ospreys. Also, a few turtles, swimming around in the water by the side of the track.
And, yes, alligators. Plenty of them, lying in the water about ten yards from us as we cycled by, the largest about seven feet long, the smallest a little six-inch baby that scurried off the road as we approached. They're obviously quite placid creatures, otherwise one wouldn't be allowed to get so close, but there's still an air of menace around them; that feeling that if they wanted to, they could have your leg for dinner.
We did the circuit in a couple of hours, finishing thoroughly soaked from the predictable 30C+ heat. We then went on a looping drive along a rough road that left the national park, but took us through a more wooded area of the Everglades. The dominant tree species was cypress - I think mangroves are more common in the south where the fresh water meets the salt. We saw, again, a couple of alligators, one slinking off the road in front of us, and a few racoons. At one point, we stopped and followed on foot a boardwalk about a mile into the woods, hoping to see some more big lizards, but got no reward except another couple of anhingas.
Still, some alligators is an improvement on my score of none till then, and it was good to get out of the city for a while. So, one item on the cliche list experienced and recorded. Next, Nick goes rollerblading. Maybe.
Wednesday, 12 September 2007
Arboriculture Florida
I was asked before I came here to report on the trees and the surgery thereof. It's taken me a while, because I wanted to find out a couple of names, and my enquiries along these lines amongst my peers met with flatly uninterested 'dunno's. It seems the only naturalism philosophy grads are interested in is the Quinean kind (philosophy joke. Sorry).
Well, anyway, I should say that I'm not really describing Florida's trees, just Miami's. Doubtless they're rather different in the north, and of course will be very different in the Everglades. So, suitably qualified, onwards...
Two things are immediately striking about Miami's trees. First, the ubiquity of palm trees and similar tropical species. You know dragon trees, those spindly little things kept as houseplants in the UK? There's one in my back garden with a trunk as thick as my, err, trunk. Second, there's a lot of them. The city being so sprawling, there's plenty of space for trees, so that if you're in a tall building, the place looks incredibly verdant.
Looking beyond the palms, a lot of the species are pretty similar to UK ones, although they're probably tropic-adapted subspecies. I've spotted oaks, beeches, and elms, for example. It'll be interesting to see how these deciduous ones behave in the autumn and winter. I suppose it's quite possible that these are imports - that the majority of the trees, like the majority of the population, aren't indigenous. This is certainly the case with the first of the two that have caught my eye most.
This is the royal poinciana (Delonix regia). There's a few of these on campus. Native to Madagascar, they're fairly low, with wide-spreading canopy. The attractive thing about them is the combination of their leaves, which are very like ferns, and their big clusters of small flowers, red or yellow usually.
The second one I particularly like is the banyan, or strangler fig. This really refers to a few similar fig species, two of which are native to South Florida. They germinate in cracks in the trunk of a host tree or some structure, and send roots groundwards. These roots are long red strands. When they touch the ground, the roots, err, root, and harden into trunks. Sometimes they're wrapped round the trunk of the host, sometimes they're free-standing. Eventually, the host tree/building is killed off, and the banyan is left alone, a network of trunks. These can grow really, really enormous...
As for surgery, the approved method with palms seems to be similar to how you look after yuccas or dragon trees; wait for the leaves to die, then strip them off. Either that, or just leave them alone and let them fall. There's huge dead palm leaves all over the place. With other trees, the Americans have apparently taken all the danger, fun and skill out of tree surgery by replacing climbing with sitting in a cherry-picker, like you use to change streetlight bulbs.
Well, that's trees. Maybe I'll do wildlife next, alligators have been spotted in the campus lake...
Well, anyway, I should say that I'm not really describing Florida's trees, just Miami's. Doubtless they're rather different in the north, and of course will be very different in the Everglades. So, suitably qualified, onwards...
Two things are immediately striking about Miami's trees. First, the ubiquity of palm trees and similar tropical species. You know dragon trees, those spindly little things kept as houseplants in the UK? There's one in my back garden with a trunk as thick as my, err, trunk. Second, there's a lot of them. The city being so sprawling, there's plenty of space for trees, so that if you're in a tall building, the place looks incredibly verdant.
Looking beyond the palms, a lot of the species are pretty similar to UK ones, although they're probably tropic-adapted subspecies. I've spotted oaks, beeches, and elms, for example. It'll be interesting to see how these deciduous ones behave in the autumn and winter. I suppose it's quite possible that these are imports - that the majority of the trees, like the majority of the population, aren't indigenous. This is certainly the case with the first of the two that have caught my eye most.
This is the royal poinciana (Delonix regia). There's a few of these on campus. Native to Madagascar, they're fairly low, with wide-spreading canopy. The attractive thing about them is the combination of their leaves, which are very like ferns, and their big clusters of small flowers, red or yellow usually.
The second one I particularly like is the banyan, or strangler fig. This really refers to a few similar fig species, two of which are native to South Florida. They germinate in cracks in the trunk of a host tree or some structure, and send roots groundwards. These roots are long red strands. When they touch the ground, the roots, err, root, and harden into trunks. Sometimes they're wrapped round the trunk of the host, sometimes they're free-standing. Eventually, the host tree/building is killed off, and the banyan is left alone, a network of trunks. These can grow really, really enormous...
As for surgery, the approved method with palms seems to be similar to how you look after yuccas or dragon trees; wait for the leaves to die, then strip them off. Either that, or just leave them alone and let them fall. There's huge dead palm leaves all over the place. With other trees, the Americans have apparently taken all the danger, fun and skill out of tree surgery by replacing climbing with sitting in a cherry-picker, like you use to change streetlight bulbs.
Well, that's trees. Maybe I'll do wildlife next, alligators have been spotted in the campus lake...
Thursday, 6 September 2007
Activity summary
A fragmentary account of recent and coming events. I've got some thematic posts planned, but I'm a little too frazzled to think coherently. Expect something about trees soon.
I'm am little frazzled because I've spent the last five hours trying to write my paper for tomorrow's graduate seminar. All new grads are obliged to do one in the first semester, and I thought it would be better to get it out of the way before the work piled up. Unfortunately, I thought I'd try out some new ideas that were crystal clear. In my head. Having disseminated the title, I've now found that these ideas are rather less tractable when it comes to actually expressing them. Always the way. I think I've got it sorted now, but it might feel rather different tomorrow. An additional worry is that faculty attend and participate in these seminars (unlike at Sheffield). I'm looking forward to Colin McGinn telling me why his theory of imagination is way better than the Sartrean one I'm expounding, and then exploding with indignation when I tell him I've not read his book.
What else? I've ordered myself a nice shiny new lappy - Should be here in a couple of weeks. I considered a sexy Apple, but went with Dell because 1) better discount, 2) better machine for same $$, 3) don't trust Apple's all-in-one philosophy, 4) might one day get round to converting to Linux. Anyway, generous educational discount + generally cheaper consumer electronics = a bargain of a machine.
Speaking of bargains, I found some guy who sells brand new but old hifi equipment. End of line stuff that was great in its day but no shop can shift any more. So last night, I got a Sony amp/tuner (original RRP $250) and a pair of Polk speakers ($300) for $130. He also threw in a Sony CD player, which I didn't really want, but came with the amp. So that was probably $100 or so back in the day. I haven't rigged it up yet, principally because I didn't get any speaker cable from him; I'm off to get some tonight as a reward for finishing that paper.
I'm keeping an eye out for secondhand decks, but I'm not sure what's best; buy some decks first, and have nothing to play on them, or start with buying records. Or do neither and save money for flights. Hmmm.
Anyway, I'm off to buy some speaker cable, and panic a bit more...
I'm am little frazzled because I've spent the last five hours trying to write my paper for tomorrow's graduate seminar. All new grads are obliged to do one in the first semester, and I thought it would be better to get it out of the way before the work piled up. Unfortunately, I thought I'd try out some new ideas that were crystal clear. In my head. Having disseminated the title, I've now found that these ideas are rather less tractable when it comes to actually expressing them. Always the way. I think I've got it sorted now, but it might feel rather different tomorrow. An additional worry is that faculty attend and participate in these seminars (unlike at Sheffield). I'm looking forward to Colin McGinn telling me why his theory of imagination is way better than the Sartrean one I'm expounding, and then exploding with indignation when I tell him I've not read his book.
What else? I've ordered myself a nice shiny new lappy - Should be here in a couple of weeks. I considered a sexy Apple, but went with Dell because 1) better discount, 2) better machine for same $$, 3) don't trust Apple's all-in-one philosophy, 4) might one day get round to converting to Linux. Anyway, generous educational discount + generally cheaper consumer electronics = a bargain of a machine.
Speaking of bargains, I found some guy who sells brand new but old hifi equipment. End of line stuff that was great in its day but no shop can shift any more. So last night, I got a Sony amp/tuner (original RRP $250) and a pair of Polk speakers ($300) for $130. He also threw in a Sony CD player, which I didn't really want, but came with the amp. So that was probably $100 or so back in the day. I haven't rigged it up yet, principally because I didn't get any speaker cable from him; I'm off to get some tonight as a reward for finishing that paper.
I'm keeping an eye out for secondhand decks, but I'm not sure what's best; buy some decks first, and have nothing to play on them, or start with buying records. Or do neither and save money for flights. Hmmm.
Anyway, I'm off to buy some speaker cable, and panic a bit more...
Saturday, 1 September 2007
Staying, for sure
Just a quickie:
Those of you who've had to put up with me muttering ungratefully about how I'd consider coming back to the UK in the event of an AHRC offer will have no more such grumbling to contend with. As expected, the skinflints wouldn't spare me a penny or several million, so I'm staying here in sunny Florida till I've got either a PhD or a heat-induced psychopathological condition... (is that a real word?).
Those of you who've had to put up with me muttering ungratefully about how I'd consider coming back to the UK in the event of an AHRC offer will have no more such grumbling to contend with. As expected, the skinflints wouldn't spare me a penny or several million, so I'm staying here in sunny Florida till I've got either a PhD or a heat-induced psychopathological condition... (is that a real word?).
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