About ten minutes ago the pipes gurgled and the battle cry “FLUSH – NOW” echoed between the Aqua luxury condos. As a result of over-enthusiastic flushing the water is off again, unable to instantly flood, what? 2000, 3000? 4000? toilets.
How many toilets between 51st and 63rd Street one wonders, how many dishwashers? How many sinks, showers and washing machines?
We just showered at our friend’s house. She’s away skiing. We fought over who’d get in first. I lost. I got last but longest. While waiting I remembered going camping, I did this a lot when I was a teen, and being everso grateful to be home as if the only satisfaction of being one with nature for days on end was the ensuing luxury of standing under warm running water until the hot ran out.
Yesterday, while I was having a swim ( yes there was still clean water in the Aqua pool), a women hunched by my side, and, while avoiding eye contact , filled two gallon-flasks. Stealing water from the pool! Really, how third world is that? That’s one tea party I do not want to be invited to (actually I can name a few others).
“Soon,” they tell us. “We’re working on it,” they say. “Divers have been in the water since four this morning,” they assure me. Divers? How? Really? Where there are divers there is water! Aqua super heros!
Mommy, I hear a diver in the pipe! Aaaahh, good sweetie, things will soon back to normal…
Turns out our water pipes run under water, like along Indian Creek. Thats why, this morning on my way to get bottled water at Publix, I saw that confused crew of guys in fluorescent gear and flippers poring over a map, while leaning against a small shabby boat on a City of Miami Beach trailer.
Eventually all becomes clear.
Meanwhile they’ve promised us Porta-potties. Whooppee!
as per e-mail:
” In the interim, we are working on providing portable toilet services for the community.”
See?
This means that, I, Barbi, get to stand on line with the CEO of Mattress World and also mega property developers, drug dealers, porn kings and stars, famous DJ’s, bratty cokehead children of Russian billionaires, a gaggle of trophy wives with implants (Brazilian butt and breast), that MOSSAD lieutenant who flies the Israeli flag, droves of gay interior designers holding their noses, real estate agents, etc etc. Think about it, what a perfect networking opportunity !
Meanwhile one learns from these “trying” situations. First off: I learned that Iona has a nervous breakdown when she’s unable to shower for 24 hours, and will refuse to leave the house. I also learned that the twins couldn’t care less. I learned that my hair is best hidden after 36 hours, but that husband, when I wear head scarf, will let me know that he doesn’t dig my “chemo” look.
Fuck off! I said and also learned that my sense of humor, like the water, has run dry.
Every For Sale sign becomes a For Rent sign, everywhere I drive I imagine living. I ponder the beach versus the mainland, Sobe versus Brickell, the Grove, Downtown, North Beach, Normandy Isle. I weigh ocean-front condo against a home with a yard against a community townhouse. Then I’m sure again that Aqua, where we now live is perfect, and that I should find a more affordable place here. I’m turning into a real estate catalog. Every Miami for rent three-plus bedroom now has a place in my mind. 95% is unaffordable and other the 5% is too small for our five enormous personalities. If its true that you become what’s on your mind then I’ll be a condo soon ( a gorgeous large but cheap one).
Yes, yes, yes Iona got into DASH and our nine month escape from the winter has turned into something very different. Oh its life-changing, our friends say. Hell yes. Like how the fuck do I patch this one together. Didn’t we just built a huge beautiful house that I love back in Milford? Wasn’t it the perfect place for us? Didn’t we create a balance between living, kids and work, lots of lovely friends, in a picture perfect village? Didn’t I say, when we moved in three years ago, it was great to know that we’d never have to move again?
sweet home
But no, we had to go and fall in love.
Suddenly Miami is the perfect place for us. We ALL fell in love with the palm trees, the beach, the bays and canals and swimming pools, the gardens and parks on every corner. Miami is crazy cosmopolitan, its not a white American city. Its Cuban and Italian and Jewish and Venezuelan and Chilean and its loud and a tad dangerous and hot and sweaty and gritty and romantic and we want it. We don’t want to flirt with it anymore, we want to get married and have babies. Well, maybe no more babies. But we want to look after our three baby girls, do whats best for them. And Iona is in love with DASH and Kiki and Leila are like Miami, wild and intense and engaging and a tad dangerous.
Husband and I? Don’t know. I’ve always been a sucker for moving. I left home in Amsterdam when I was seventeen. But my bag had been packed since I was ten. Not because I hated my life. I’ve never moved because I hate my life. Paris, Sydney, Melbourne, London, New York, Princeton, Milford, Miami, I always moved because those places nurtered me enough to turn another corner and experience more, learn more, challenge myself more and expand. Its never personal. Its just who I am.
And husband? We’ll let him speak for himself. He loves to swim and his goal is to swim in every pool in Miami and write about it. I’ll say no more I’ll just send you links, after all he’s the seasoned writer in this house.
Meanwhile.
I’m sitting in front of this giant puzzle and all the pieces are still strewn in front of me. School, home, kids, husband, dog, renters, friends, work and money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. Money. And Health Insurance.
If every principal was like Stacey Mancuso the world would be a better place.
I’m writing this from the courtyard of DASH, the Design & Architecture Senior High School. Its awesome. Like really awesome. Like I wanna go here when I grow up. I now know that I never appreciated school, never, not even college in London, St Martins, Harrow, The Royal College of Art. But I’d really appreciate it now. Especially DASH. Iona is auditioning as I write this. And I’m having Couvade ( that’s when men get contraction pains when their wife is in labor) I’m having I wanna get into this school contractions, and like Iona I’m everso nervous for the audition. Poor Iona. Am I projecting? Bad mother!
So back to Stacey, and I’m not sucking up (yes, she’s funny and glamorous too) she just gets it. She gets kids, teenagers, what they need, how they’ll be their best when super motivated, super engaged, super challenged.
Never bored!
Iona’s Middle School teachers do NOT get it. They are angry. They punish. They fail to engage. Kids sleep in class. They text, listen to their I-pods. Like the gym teacher, who releases the entire class into the sports-field without any directions. She then disappears, sits around lazily, and the kids hang around in the grass, chat and listen to music. Then she suddenly stalks and punishes them by taking their music/ Ipod away. For a week, and if your parents complain she threatens, I’ll keep it for the rest of the school-year.
I want to complain but then they’ll be punished by doing one hundred push-ups without any sense that what they’re doing is for any other reason than breeding resentment.
So thats why I want Iona to go to a highs school like DASH. A place that sees teenagers as an endless source of creative posibility and not as juvenile delinquents. So wish her luck, fingers crossed and even send a little prayer if its not too much to ask.
Audi super bowl party tonight at W penthouse with large outdoor deck only it rained so deck was closed for fear of ten inch heels slipping and diving down side of building. All of us cramped inside the PH suite with model renta crowd and two celebs as in Hillary Swank and Kate Walsh, going mostly unnoticed. Then onto the pool area where I met Mark Ellwood from Plum TV, celebrating his bday and talking about models, amazon models. It was that kind of night when mini mini skirts are more rampant than dead-from-frost lizards and husband remembers why we moved here in the first place and I remember why I stopped going… like why would anyone have a six foot sultry greeter in them ten inch heels at the door in a teensy black lace dress? She must’ve made at least 50% of party guests, as in women, turn and go home to hide under the covers hugging their teddy bears and pondering non-compete pre-nups. Tomorrow: twins have a treasure hunt birthday party at the Aventura mall, is this somehow an oxymoron? And one wonders: Twenty little girls running for clues and competing for treasure in a huge mall? Safe? Day before Super Bowl? Crowded? Lost little girls? I’m volunteering to chaperone…
Then another mini skirt leggy poolside affair at the Raleigh. Its party time again in Miami and I feel like Jon Stewart on Bill O’Reilly….I’m not scared….
OK. so. I havent blogged. Lamely I blamed it on the weather. And you must’ve been thinking that I was having such a fabulous party time that I just forgot about it. Of course you weren’t thinking anything at all. Confession: I was getting into a daily drudge already, here on the beach, after four months. Maybe my lack of inspired blogging is evidence that after four months in a new city the baggage catches up. Like lost luggage it was delivered at my Aqua front door, I signed for it, and there it it sat. Or maybe it was Santa who brought it. Christmas has a tendency to bring my old shit no matter where I am. So. I was stupid enough to open the old bags and take a rummage. See if there was anything I’d missed. I got hooked in. I did my thing. I lost my improved Miami self to an older more familiar me, one I truly thought I could leave behind. One part victim. One part bossy bitch. One part I’m getting the fuck out of here…
Not much humor in that baggage. Not much blogging inspiration.
So lets forget about January 2010. Relapse month.
Hey. Hi. How’ve you been? How was your January? Shitty too? Or do you, like a Hallmark card, get positive energy and inspiration from that brand-new- year thing? I wish I did. The downside of expectation gets me every time, just about around the fifth or sixth. but I wasn’t gonna talk about January…
Bye bye January. Hello February.
Top five good news things:
1.My mother is here. My own sweet, beautiful, eighty-two year old mom from Amsterdam arrived a few days ago. She flew from Schiphol to London, where she changed to Virgin, sat cramped for nine hours next to a man with halitosis and B.O., and like a hero, arrived here, in my new paradise home. It makes me happy. She completes me. Now I can show her all the things I told her about in my mind over the past four months, for real.
2.My agent sent back my last edit.Line edit and notes. And I finished the final draft of my novel. The BlackBerry Diet. More about that in future entries. Do you have any idea how long it takes to write a book? And the waiting for people to read it? Its teaching me about patience. Slowly, which I hate. Anyway keep your fingers crossed.
3. I am working with OCEANA, the largest international Ocean Environmental advocacy group dedicated to protecting and restoring the world’s oceans, to introduce them to Miami and establish a fundraiser for them. I’m putting together, curating, a show which incorporates aspects of the ocean, then, now and in the future, through the work of photographers, artists who use pollution and repurposed garbage in their work, and local art students. It gets me connected with people here, brainstorm and be inspired.
4. Iona is applying to two local magnet art schools. DASH and New World. She’s worked on her sketchbook, portfolio and ten art pieces. Five paintings and five photographs. She is good. Seriously good and into it. I’m proud of her. If she gets accepted we may have to stay here. I think I like the idea…
Sorry for the lag but I couldn’t blog over Christmas. I had to let go. Suspend. Lose control and be cool with that. Aye, the crowds, the action, the emotions and experiences. All too layered and intense to let me sit, be still and write. What is this different mind-space? The spirits of Christmasses past? The family isolation ward? The expectation of perfection? In gifts, food, love, friends, giving and receiving with equal grace while ingesting too much alcohol, too much sugar, too much fat? Kids spinnng out of control on candy highs, disappointment and greed, while husband and I fight because on some cellular level we remember our own parents fighting, getting drunk, leaving (forever) and coming back and ex wives and step brothers and sisters suddenly demanding equal opportunities in our perceived second-family-fun?
Family, they fuck you up, they say, but I dont want to have the kind of family that fucks anyone up. I take this mission seriously. Especially over Christmas. So what happens? I fuck mysef up. I twist myself into a pretzel of perfection. I will have the best food, the best decorations, the best gifts, the best dressed kids, the heirloom decorated tree, the funnest boxing day party, you get my drift. You probably drift in that same direction yourself. Nothing new here you are thinking. Well, this year with our change of scenery, palmtrees instead of evergreens, weather : sun @80 degrees instead of ice and snow @15 degrees, the impersonal designer bachelor candyland pad as our new home rather than my 200 year old farmhouse with beams and fireplaces, I thought it would be different. I went into denial, no, I actually believed that if I closed my eyes and wore a swimsuit Christmas would pass me by.
WRONG!
I have kids. Kids with friends. I have a husband who is a romantic.
They were gonna get the tree without me. Let them, I thought, I won’t be a control freak. A tree appeared, three days before the actual event, and the last strings of lights gathered from a variety of Walgreens, CVesses and Target. One pink, one green, one that blinked (!) and two white, and the last few boxes of leftover multicolored balls and silver streamers. I planned cinnamon salt cookies, but fuckit nothing could save this tree, which looked remarably like the one in the lobby of the Wachovia bank on 41st.
finnan haddie
Christmas eve we went to Vicki, our warm embracing super-hostess friend, who served the seven fishes. So bring a fish dish. But in my newfound, I’m-not-a-control-freak personality, I did not cook. Husband did! He made the most delicious Finnan Haddie. We feasted in the pre-Christmas gift chaos of our friend’s dining room by a tall tree which was obstructed by more gifts than my kids had ever seen, while another stack of presents lay as yet bare in the wrapping corner of the room.
Just before we left Vicki (mother of two young girls) whispered to us: “We’re off to get the kittens.”
That did it.
“This is our worst Christmas,” the twins wailed in the back of the car. “Why do Rebecca and Suzy always get everything? We never get what we want. WE WANT KITTENS!”
Fuck Christmas.
Santa, for lack of a chimney or anything else that resembled such in our candy-land-bachelor-pad, left our stockings in the elevator. In our astroturf, daisy covered mini elevator. Clever Santa. It was lovely. Husband, the romantic, had discovered the Aventura Mall and had shopped like a true trophy wife. He got me Gilly Hicks underwear, Jo Malone glorious smelling body stuff, and my own Ipod (finally).
click to see a full size Gordon
Everyone in our consumer household was content while at the same time contributing to the health of our economy by spending 60% on clothes, 20% on lifestyle, 15% on electronics and 5% on other. Kiki and Leila got twin bikes and learned to ride them, like good little Dutch daughters, within 30 minutes. Looking heartbreaking in their too-large helmets, long skinny legs and wobbling handlebars. I cooked Christmas lunch while they went to the beach testing the new boogy boards. I decided to serve the feast by our communal Aqua pool. Eat out in our bathing suits, our wet hair dripping in the cranberry sauce, I fantasized, but instead we had our first RussianChristmas, because, out of 120 deck chairs on all four sides of the pool a group of super wealthy Russians descended by our dining table with several bottles of champagne, caviar, choice drugs and proceeded to show us what a MERRY Christmas really sounds like (without a nod of recognition or toast in our direction). Fuckem. I had to leave anyway. Pick up Natalie, Iona’s best friend, from Fort Lauderdale Airport.
aftermath
“PLEASE LEAVE MY NAME IN MERRY CHRISTMAS,” – Jesus.
The first billboard on our trip to Sarasota, taking a break from Miami Beach on Siesta Key Beach, started with this quote by Jesus Christ himself, at the start of the Everglades National Park, aka Alligator Alley. How unlike the holy one, I thought. How un-Jesus to bitch about his credit in Christmas like it was some reality TV show. I mean we all know who he is, like isn’t he the biggest brand in history? Don’t get me wrong, I too think Merry Christmas sounds nicer than Happy Holidays, and personally I leave his name in.
As we exited Alligator Alley there was another enormous billboard: Mommy take my hand, please don’t take my life. A tiny newborn hand reached over the edge of the sign. What about Daddy ? I wondered. Is Mommy all alone in this unwanted pregnancy? What would Jesus think of that? But wait, wasn’t his mommy Mary said to have done pregnancy all by herself..?
A few miles along my question about Joseph’s/Daddy’s participation was answered. Vasectomy signs, like rows of Dutch windmills, sprung up alongside the highway. No Scalpel, No Laser, they boasted. Pro-Vas.com and Vasnow.com. Alternative birth control in retirement alley, where Grandpa, hard on Viagra, can now have endless happy holidays without sperm.
SO.
Those were ten days of Saturdays. One blur without structure. Tomorrow is Monday. First day of school in 2010 and I can finally resume being a control freak.
And you know what?
I like it. Being a control freak actually works for me…
OK. So. I know that some of you might be coming down this Christmas vacation. To escape the snow/20 degree weather. See Mom and Pop. See Grandma. See those silly friends who moved down telling you that Miami is like the next cool city. Or if you’re just dreaming of a blue Christmas.
After my first three intense months here I dare to share :
EAT:
My, by far, favorite restaurant, and OK so I’m biased because the owners are Dutch, and Ineke and I used to model together in Amsterdam in the seventies, is IndoMania, the only really good Indonesian restaurant outside Amsterdam (I never went to Indonesia), where they serve a full Rice Table, or great Indonesian inspired dishes that compete with any high class fusion restaurant.
Next fave, for lunch or a very early dinner (close at 7pm) and for those of you who like hole-in-the-wall style Japanese sushi, is at the Japanese Market @ North Bay Village. The deck at the Standard Hotel has great views of Biscayne Bay and also of superstar guests like Naomi, Nars, Weber and Calvin. More celebs and a great spot for brunch is, of course, under the trees at the Raleigh Hotel, if you’re cool enough to be given a table… Sardinia on Purdy Street is a fancy Sardinian restaurant where the food is excellent, the waiters real Italians and real cute, and I felt like I was back being spoiled on the Costa Smeralda. The Buena Vista Bistro is in the design district, the mainland, just over the Julia Tuttle Causeway. Cafe´ style home cooking like great grouper/mashed potatoes. Other restaurants in the design district are Michael’s with draft beer and macho fayre (bacon, burnt sprouts and lots of meat) and FratelliLyon. The Red Light, (305) 757-7773, has a fabulous owner chef, a cool quirky crowd and is hidden away in the fifties style Motel Blu , with only a handwritten sign that says Red Light . Upstairs interior is funky Caribbean diner and downstairs there’s a narrow terrace on Little River where manatees have been known to lounge around. Lincoln Road is fun, but most restaurants suck in a get them in and out fast kinda way, so we have our own three destinations: Books and Books for great salads, superb fish sandwich, magazines from all over the world, and cool well-read waiters. At Sostas the pizza is good and affordable, its where we take the kids. After seeing a movie at the Lincoln Theater next door I like the Venezuelan Baire where I have the poached pear and gorgonzola salad and hope that the super sexy group at the next table (straight from a Almodovar cast) invites me to join them.
PLAY:
Like shop?
For loitering outside, people watching and groovy stores like Diesel and Miss Sixty (dotted between the same old same old Gap, Victoria Secret and Pottery Barn) there is of course Lincoln Road, which becomes more interesting every other Sunday when a street fair/fleamarket is part of the streetscape.
While being So Be-ward, even if you cant afford or fit into ultra expensive, gorgeous, top of the line, best pick designer clothes, you have to visit the Webster, a newly opened lifestyle of the rich and famous store run by former YSL execs, Milan, Laure and Frederic, all chic as poodles, and incidently there’s a Kaspia, the Paris caviar joint ,in the lobby. But in general modern shopping is best in the design district, a small neighborhood of about four blocks square with furniture/lifestyle, Luminaire, Avanti, Kartell and fashion/accesories stores like Marni, Fendi, Quinn, Tomas Maier and the recently opened Moore building with several young designers boutiques. A few blocks down is the Wynwood area with lots of little galleries and cool shops like Las Tias , a consignment furniture store (and more) choc full of Lapidus and Miami Vice-style cast offs and owned by my fabulous Miami friend Esther Percal. A must!
More PLAY:
Like beaches and pools? We like to walk to the public beach entry on 62nd street where the water is turquoise, the beach is wide and very quiet. But for the complete Miami Beach experience rent a bike and take the boardwalk all the up or way down and pick a spot. Like South Pointe Park which was recently opened and extends along the port waterway where cruise ships like giant UFO’s glide by you on your tiny towel. For a grand feet-out-of-the-sand experience the beach at the Raleigh is wide and buff boys settle you into their comfy sun chairs for a substantial fee. The Raleigh pool is fabulous dahling, models, male and female, are encouraged to hang by the pool (in their spare time) for sex appeal but it made me want to diet, do the gym, botox, tummy tuck, and spray-on tan before ever coming back . The Fontainebleau has a “poolscape” meaning three, or is it four, pools with connecting terraces that are dotted with sun chairs and VIP cabanas which include flat screen TV’s and girls who rub sunscreen into the oily backs of sunburned Soprano types. Its kitsch but if you’re doing Miami you gotta do the Fontainebleau, even if its only for an hour. My favorite pool ever, anywhere, is the lake sized pool at the Biltmore Hotel in the Gables, nowhere near the beach, but go for a drink at the poolside bar, bring a costume, and float around (preferably at night when the hotel is lit up and feels like the Alhambra.)
Other PLAY:
Like renting a boat? Any size is available depending on your budget, from Indian Creek along Collins Avenue. Nightclubs must still be play for some, and the Wall at the W is one hot-spot, although it made me feel like my own granny. Debbie’s after hours club, called Private Residence @ 1427 West Ave is my Saturday night spot, its small and exclusive and reminds me of the old London clubs like Tramp and Annabel’s. Exploring funky neighborhoods is what I like to do best. Miami is a cosmopolitan experience and if you want to feel like you’ve left the USA go hang out in the South American strip by the beach between 63rd and 75th street. My favorite is the Buenos Aires Bakery where they sell pre-made mini sandwiches which I take to the beach. Or walk around little Havana for quirky shops, great Jazz and cigars if you’re so inclined. Along the railroad tracks on 4th North Court/79th street I found, behind a wall of highly designed shades of grey concrete panels, a commune of cool young fashion designers, artists, hairdressers, architects and Green developers. Its where I want to have my studio. If we stay next year that is…
Last Saturday morning I reached for clean knickers in the freshly done laundry basket and ping, my back went out. Dont do this to me I said to it, not now, (not ever actually) but it did anyway. It did it badly just to spite me. It doesn’t do it often, maybe two, three times a year, usually when i’ve been sitting in a bad chair, same position for a while, like writing and making jewelry are really bad for my back and they are the two things I really need to do (for my sanity) after making lunchboxes, driving to and from school twice a day, shopping for supplies for my family, that fucking dishwasher, homework, and cooking. But when I get fully into doing my two favorite things, which actually make me money, my back goes out. This is really unfair. Because, lets face it, the other stuff is boring. There are scales of boredom, like driving with the kids to and from school is not acually so boring because we usually have fun, but driving back alone, along the same streets twice a day is boring. Buying food is unbelievably boring, the same isles, the same shitty choices, the same rickety rusty carts, I mean the entire Publix aesthetic is just too upsetting and boring. I hate it. Making lunch boxes every morning has a certain creativity to it, its low on the scale of creative activities, but it rates in a pathetic way. Then there is cooking. Now I LIKE to cook. I’m a good cook, or so they say, I just dont like feeding, as in whats for lunch? Whats for dinner? Twice a day. Every day. I’m the kind person who likes surprises, challenges, sudden upsets, throw me a curveball and I’m there, ready to play, but the same thing every day, day in day out eventually makes me angry. Anyone can do this shit, in fact a robot would be better because it wouldn’t get annoyed. So WTF you say? Didn’t Barbi just party around Art Basel? Yes I did. And I took all those pictures. And I met interesting people who get to be creative all day long, like men with wives like me. Like my husband. I wish I had a wife like me. Someone who pathologically has to make it perfect for everyone else. So anyway my back goes out last saturday morning. I’d been making more beachplastic jewelry because there was an increased interest after Art Basel when I wore this new piece that everyone loved. I really need to create a full collection to start retailing. I want to find a retail partner. I want to be recognized for doing something creative, like all those Art Basel types. So I’m excited. And frustrated. Like I never have a enough time to actually do what I need to do to get to where I want to get. So, what usually happens at this point of frustration is that my back goes out. Make sense? Now I cant do anything at all. I cant sit. I can shuffle sideways like a crabby crab. But I cant write, I cant make jewelry. So I take a Vicodin. I like this stuff. Not only does it stop the pain, but it also stops my pissed-off ambition dead in its tracks. Now I’m mellow. I don’t give a shit. But not everyone else in my family is equally mellow. Its Sunday. The day to do things “as a family”. We haven’t been outside Miami since we arrived, my husband says. So he gets us invited to The Keys. They have a boat, he says, we can go fishing. I’m not sure about boating I say. But I take another Vicodin and now I don’t give a shit. So we go, over an hour in the car, sitting, then a long leisurely lunch, sitting, then we drive to the boat, sitting, and then in the boat sort of sitting (in a hopping kind of way) at 30 knots over big waves, woohoo, what fun cry the kids, bang bang bang goes my back.
What a lovely family outing. Only by the time I get home I can’t actually get out of the car and my husband says in a I-know-best kind of way: You really shouldn’t have gone on that boat. Really? It must’ve been the Vicodin that made me do it.
I wake up the next day and realize that someone has come along with superglue and glued my right eye shut. Its pink-eye mom, the girls say. Hurray, now I’m blind and crippled. I will just have to stay in bed. I take another pill and sleep till two. Then I get into the jacuzzi bath for the first time since we moved into this house. I do some gentle stretching. I take it easy while my husband notes how taking the kids to and from school really cuts into his time to work… HELLO!
Still I’m good for doing homework and making dinner. I go to bed at ten.
This morning I’m sore but I can move enough to resume the daily chores. And the bills. I need to do the bills. And the twins science project is due on Thursday. And the fridge is empty (again). And Christmas is coming. And all I wanna do is make more jewelry. I think I’ll take another painkiller instead. At least then I won’t give a shit and l may even be caught humming: … all I want for Christmas is more Vicodin, Vi-co-din, Vi-co-din…
beach plastic comes in every color of the spectrum, the new piece
Beg Borrow and Steal Show at the Rubell Family Collection
Its over.
One week of feeding frenzy art exposure that had as little to do with the act of the individual expression of divine inspiration as a car show. Art Basel Miami, exhibited at the convention center and other locations around town, was all about the commodification of art. Like the stock market. Thousands of people milling around halls and halls, and booths and booths stuffed with art ready to take the gamble like they were looking for a lucrative stock portfolio.
An art overdose. An art oxymoron. OK. I know. You gettit. But let me tell you, among all that art and trend, there was hardly any Green. I’d been pitching the story of “what’s new in green art” to websites like Planet Green, Inhabitat and Treehugger, but phew I’m glad I got no bites because there was nothing to report. No thing. Nada. NADA was incidently the name of the edgier art show at the Deauville Hotel in North Beach, walking distance from my home, where the Beatles had played in the sixties and it hasn’t been renovated since. The stale baroque carpet and duck taped doors were supposedly cool and funky, and so all the cool and funky peole stayed there. But my favorite show was Pulse, at the old Ice factory, where that whacky halloween party took place a month ago, the best art, the best setting, the most together mix of people. Pulse’s old warehouse environment did not diminsh the art as much as the convention center (still reeking from last month’s wine show) did. Like Pulse had Maria Jose Arjona, the Pain Resistant performance artist who stood on blocks of ice spiked with large nails, which became exposed as the ice slowly melted. As a fakir she stood all day, blocking out pain, cold and the sight of drones of people ew-ing and ah-ing, watching, pointing and laughing. One woman in the audience said, “OH NO, her hair keeps falling across her eyes.” “Please,” I said, “thats the least of her problems. Like hypothermia and tetanus come to mind…?”
Is art shown at a trade-show still art? Or is it f-art? I mean there are trade shows for everything commercial. Cars, wine, porn,furniture and fashion all use trade shows as a means to connect to their markets. But isn’t art more? And best understood within the context of the artist’s life, mind, raw loft, rickety farmstead? Call me a romantic, but I want the entire art experience. I used to do trade shows myself. Every season, sometimes four times a year, in London when I had a collection called Giraf and then again in New York at the Javitz when I did a kids clothing line, called Baby Gordon. And I can tell you, with authority, that trade shows are like being cast into outer philistine space. They suck unless you’re really really hot. But boredom and not inspired creativity was modus operandus at Basel Miami where the art representatives escaped on their MACs, traveling to virtual worlds (Googling old boyfriends?) beyond their tiny cubicle and the bourgeois crowds.
Of course there were some really cool things with which I shall now debunk myself and I took lots of pictures for Alastair’s WSJ blog, best Basel Miami blog on the market, and when I picked the projects I liked to photograph I also picked my favorites, all of which are posted on Miami Street Style, and some here:
dessert at the Rubell Family Collection opening of their Beg, Steal and Borrow exhibition
How?
Easy, they dont feed you here! Events, aka VIP parties, are planned from five in the afternoon through three in the morning, back to back, overlapping, six layers deep, some are even called dinner, BUT, they do not actually feed food. Drinks yes, but dinner, not quite. Maybe its the recession, maybe its fashion, but if a plastic cup filled with three shrimp and a hot pepper passes you between seven and ten, count yourself lucky. Except for Fendi’s dinner at Mr. Chow last night. Well kinda, it was dinner for one, so what was I supposed to do while Alastair ate? Well, I drove Michele Oka Doner to a few events that included Jordan, her son, and when I went to pick Al up at Chows the Peking Duck was just being served so I kinda crashed an empty chair and got enough calories to stay within the Basel Miami diet limit, before we returned home. I should have yielded earlier, I thought, to the donut wall, the symbolic dessert installation at the Rubell family collection, a wall with a thousand donuts hung on nails, for the picking.
But little did I know…
Tonight I write here, its past midnight, lick the peanut butter from my lips, and I wonder, but, more of THAT tomorrow….
Barbi Does Miami 
