It just Happened

It's usually what people hope to do with their vacations, come to an uber-lux spot like South Beach . It makes sense, everything is gorgeous and tan and fit and decadent. The streets, even though standard asphalt gray, seem to ooze gold coins and green dollar bills. Just from being in the area, you're bestowed with an otherworldly sense of self that might be as disjointed from your normal self as the whole of Florida seems from the rest of America.

This is South Beach


This is who lives in South Beach


These are the animals of South Beach

This is the rare game in South Beach


Although magazine beautiful, I can't help but be slightly disheartened by how well manicured the entire area is. Each building's placement, the skin of the townspeople, the breasts of the ladies, all methodically executed. Nothing seems out of place- the hotels all have a similar white, modular design, as if democratically decided to be such, the sand on the beach seems to be balanced so that no step will be an awkward one (as we're used to it being when walking in sand), even the palm trees, the tallest beacons of a persisting nature, seem strategically placed. The palm tress have no roots. Magazines have categorized and congratulated this level of human execution, as beautiful, as genius, as progressive and desirable- it's what Dwell magazine thrives on, it's what Surface magazine insists and often times, it's what I (and other regular folk) think is dope. South Beach consolidates many of our dreams of the rich and famous, many of our youthfully ignorant aspirations for glitz and glory and presents it to us on a platter...a $1,300 platter, delivered by a 100 lb model with questionably real, definitely large...teeth.

I can't completely hate on the effectiveness, allure and utter coolnes of this kind of aesthetic. However, this progress of human development, being able to so perfectly manicure design, to drop white pillars of modernity where there was once nothing but sand, and ocean, and breeze, and trees, and grass and sky is slightly disappointing. Obviously this argument cannot escape being personal (and it shouldn't) but there is something generally nice about beauty that simply ...just happens. A higher value is bestowed to the ways that humans can alter natural beauty to match our modern tastes, but there is arguably a higher quality in nature's best looking achievements. No man made pool can match this:

Even if the greatest designers molded minds and recreated the structure, the fact that it was man made, and not a product of happenstance, of fate, of bewilderment, would make it measurably less impressive.

This is the same reason why falling in love will always be superior to learning to love. Culturally, love is a flexible concept. In America, though I doubt it realistically plays out this way as often as proposed, married couples fall in love. In many other cultures, economic matching is most important, and love can be learned over time, with age and maturity. Being culturally relative, I can understand and appreciate both sides, though I would defend that being in love with someone, for some unknown, better yet, some unexpected reason, is superior to generating a love over time. But I digress...

I enjoy my temporariness in a place like South Beach. My individual meals here will equal a grocery bill at home, my style here is as foreign as US citizens are (so it seems). It feels like SoBe is the bougie sister that Las Vegas never admitted to having, primped and as prideful as all hell.

This idea that fateful beauty (love, life, design, whatever) will always surpass human sculpting skews the beauty of New York in a weird way. How does New York, a place so urbane, there might not have actually been anything besides buildings, subways and corner stores. How then, do we analyze the beauty of the city- few parts of it just happened. To the contrary, gentrification and neighborhood rezoning has, to some degree, SoBe'd much of the city. But what could have just happened, on Broadway, in Crown Heights, in Bay Ridge? The utter urbanity of New York has rid the city of its possibly rural past, but that cannot excuse it from it's human created beautiful ugliness.

Although this leans heavily on the design concepts and their built-in values, the real kernel of analysis is the treasure of thing happening naturally (or with metered human interference), whether that be new modular houses built around colossal oak trees (imagine a giant oak tree jutting straight through your living room), or an emotional connection, or a fashion style. Whether you philosophically believe in fate and its control of our lives (not sure I do), it's ability to give us unexpected beauty is what keeps the philosophy as sexy as is it.