A South Florida Survival Guide

In the summer of 1992 Hurricane Andrew obliterated southern Dade County, Florida. The extent of the damage surprised everyone, and several days of chaos and looting passed before President Bush sent troops to restore order.

The Army was welcomed warmly by thousands of people whose lives had been shattered by the ferocious storm. The soldiers erected tents for the homeless, handed out food and water, played ball with the kids and by night patrolled the eerily darkened streets of Homestead. The GIs felt like heroes. But this was south Florida. Something weird and warped was bound to happen.

One evening, several troops of the 82nd Airborne were riding down a debris-cluttered street when they were confronted by a local gang armed with Uzi submachine guns. Just so you understand: The Army didn't stop the gang members, the gang members stopped the Army. And this is what they told the soldiers: "Put down your guns, boys." Or colorful instructions to that effect.

It could have been an exquisitely amusing scene, and swiftly resolved, except for one thing: The soldiers had no bullets in their M-16s. That's because the Pentagon customarily forbids the carrying of loaded weapons in peacetime missions on U.S. soil. So here were the brave fighting men and women of the vaunted 82nd Airborne, about to be robbed of their rifles by a bunch of foulmouthed teenagers—and not even in Somalia or Bosnia but in Florida, for God's sake, the United Frigging States of America.

The soldiers stoically refused to surrender their empty guns. The gang members shrugged, piled into their cars and roared off in search of someone else to mug. Soon thereafter, the commanders of the Army's hurricane-relief effort officially requested that troops be allowed to put live ammunition into their M-16s.

Those of us who live in south Florida felt bad for the visiting soldiers. Somebody should have warned them what to expect—that is, the inverse of normalcy, middle America blown inside out. From the Indian reservations of the Everglades to the neon charade of Ocean Drive, from the condo canyons of Fort Lauderdale to the funky shrimp docks of Key West, nothing is what it seems to be. Nothing is what you hope it will be.

In my lifetime, south Florida has mutated from a quaint tropical postcard to a Dali mural. The natives have been stampeded by brightly clad retirees from the Northeast seeking year-round golf and leisure; by their carpet-bagging sons and daughters seeking fast fortunes in real estate; by waves of lawyers, doctors and other predatory young professionals following the southbound herds; by half a million Cubans fleeing Fidel Castro; and by oceans of Haitians, Nicaraguans, Colombians, Puerto Ricans and Jamaicans looking for an escape from squalor.

The mix is combustible and the numbers are overwhelming. Four million agitated souls now occupy the slender southeastern edge of the Florida peninsula, and each day a few more crack up in some perversely memorable way. For the newcomer, survival requires discarding all sunny preconceptions. Forget the travel-agent hype. This is a tense, overcrowded, unmanageable metropolis that just happens to have year-round sunshine and a few beaches.

On paper, south Florida is less dangerous than, say, the South Bronx or the east side of Detroit. But Florida's robust crime statistics don't adequately convey the impressive variety and inventiveness of our sociopaths. Violence here is exceptionally arcane and grotesque, especially when it is viewed against the picturesque backdrop of swaying palms.

In the addling heat, mundane disagreements all too often detonate into Peckinpah-style mayhem. Recent items: An otherwise sane and law-abiding woman murders her neighbor to avenge the mistreatment of two pet parrots. An angry cabbie fatally pummels a customer during an argument over a fare. And a 78-year-old woman who complains about a crude rap song is bludgeoned to death with a boom box. The teenage killer then sprays her corpse with metallic red paint in a creative but futile attempt to conceal evidence of the murder.

What's going on down here? It's not that Floridians are simply crazy from the heat. Other places are just as broiling, yet none of them experience such an unrelenting pageant of the bizarre. Vagabond hordes seem drawn to our tropical locale. In the classic final scene of Midnight Cowboy, street hustler Ratso Rizzo dies on an interstate bus to Miami. In real life, hundreds of Ratso Rizzos arrive here safe and sound every day. They're all chasing something, or fleeing from something else.

Wallace Stegner wrote: "A young frontier gathers every sort of migrant, hope-chaser, roughneck, trickster, incompetent, misfit and failure." Ravaged and overrun, south Florida remains in spirit a frontier, radiating uncommon heat, splendor, greed, fury and lust. The latitudes attract extreme personalities and provoke extreme behavior. If you must come, then come prepared.

Transportation

This is the only vacation destination in America where the rental cars have been stripped of all corporate logos and identifying marks. That's because highway robbers scout for rentals, crash into them intentionally and attack the drivers. After the murders of half a dozen tourists (and scores of other assaults), the Florida legislature last year ordered Hertz, Alamo and other rental fleets to remove their company names from car bumpers so that robbers won't be so easily able to target tourists.

Maybe that will work and maybe it won't. Native thugs have a keen eye for out-of-towners; anyone wearing a Hawaiian shirt and driving a teal Taurus will attract a criminal's attention, especially if the Taurus is going the speed limit. My advice is: Don't rent a new car in Miami. Get a clunker and drive like a bat out of hell. You'll blend in just fine.

Lodging

South Florida has plenty of good safe hotels, but visitors should remain alert. Drug dealers also prefer the good hotels as places to do business. Consequently, your vacation might be interrupted by a police raid, a gun battle or a dismemberment. A few years ago, four undercover officers were shot and wounded during a drug sting at the Doral Resort in Miami Beach. I remember the pale bewilderment on the faces of arriving guests who found the lobby of their hotel cordoned off with yellow crime-tape and guarded by a SWAT team.

Last winter, a dispute that might have been drug-related resulted in a bag of human body parts being deposited in Dumpsters at a Holiday Inn on Collins Avenue. It was the second consecutive day that someone in the neighborhood had made such an unpleasant discovery, so the police department asked all guests at the hotel to check their rooms for additional human remains, specifically for a missing head.

If during your Florida vacation you should find body parts in your hotel room, call the front desk immediately and demand a new room at the same nightly rate—and be firm about it.

Tourist Attractions

The good news is that the Hurricane Andrew Museum (featuring piles of actual storm rubble) never got off the drawing board. The bad news is that there are plenty of other inane tourist traps to take your money. Floridians can make a theme park out of a head-on collision, so beware. Stick to the reliable old standbys.

As a kid, one of my favorites was the lovably hokey Miami Seaquarium, famous for its performing dolphins. After the show, we'd gather to watch the helmeted divers feed the barracudas, stingrays and giant groupers in the tank. It was a terrific place. But now the Seaquarium is spending $70 million on a renovation that includes high-rise water slides and wave-making machines—an absurd concept for an amusement park situated on Biscayne Bay, which has an abundance of natural water and waves. More dispiriting signs of yuppie pandering can be found in the Seaquarium's gift shop, where tourists now can purchase gold neck chains by the foot. It's enough to make Flipper puke up his breakfast herring.

Other Florida marine exhibits took the Seaquarium's performing-dolphin act and added a new angle: For $50, tourists may now swim with tame dolphins in an ersatz lagoon. For an additional $50, the concessionaire will videotape your dolphin encounter so that you can share it with the folks back home.

Unfortunately, such videos sometimes turn out to be X-rated. Male dolphins are among nature's randiest and (continued on page 154)South Florida(continued from page 128) most undiscriminating of mammals. Once excited, dolphins aren't shy about demonstrating their affection. The reaction from human swimmers is generally one of sheer terror; an adult male bottle-nosed dolphin weighs as much as 800 pounds and is endowed accordingly.

Incidents of "aggressive" behavior toward humans have become so prevalent that animal-rights groups have tried to close the dolphin parks that solicit tourist participation. Biologists say that physical contact between humans and cetaceans can be harmful to cetaceans, but it's no picnic for the humans, either. Several swimmers have been hospitalized with bruises, sprains and other unspecified injuries. I interviewed a legal secretary who was nearly drowned by a prodigiously aroused dolphin at a marine park in Key Largo. The woman's harrowing account, published in the Miami Herald, emboldened other victims of dolphin lust to come forward.

The bad publicity has compelled the state of Florida to block the opening of more swim-with-the-dolphin attractions. Current exhibitors are allowed to remain open but have promised to supervise the "encounters" more closely and to segregate those animals that can't control their sexual urges. My theory is that dolphins have no burning desire to date out of their species; they're just cooped up and bored. What better fun than to fuck, literally, with the tourists?

One of my novels included a sex-crazed-dolphin attack (tastefully depicted, of course), but readers outside Florida couldn't believe it was based on fact. That's a problem for writers who use this region as a setting. Tales credited to their wild imaginations are often just true stories lifted from the local newspapers and then toned down for the conventions of fiction.

Natural Attractions

Florida markets itself as a land of rare and untamed natural beauty. Millions of dollars are spent slickly promoting the Everglades, the Keys and the beaches as must-see attractions for those who treasure the great outdoors. The fact is, all of Florida would have been paved and malled and subdivided long ago if it weren't for a few hardy conservationists.

During the past 40 years, nature has taken a whipping down here. Florida's official state land mammal, the panther, is nearly extinct, now down to three dozen stragglers (as a desperate measure, Western cougars have been imported for stud service). Meanwhile, the official state aquatic mammal, the gentle but slow-witted manatee, is being systematically mauled by reckless boaters.

Not even the lowliest members of the food chain are safe. Florida's official state fish, the largemouth bass, has been declared inedible throughout much of the state because toxic levels of mercury are found in its flesh. Nobody is sure whether the metal is coming from industrial or agricultural pollution, but lethal traces have also turned up in raccoons and panthers. It's a bleak joke among Florida environmentalists that practically every species designated as a state symbol is being annihilated or poisoned.

In 1989, after a lengthy debate, our legislature proudly adopted an official state soil, the Myakka fine sand (aeric haplaquods, to agronomists). I don't know how many other states honor their soils, but I know our state does: Panthers, manatees and bass may die in the continued plundering of Florida, but dirt is forever. Dirt will never become extinct.

Alligator Love

Although we have more endangered species than any other state but Texas, it's unfair to imply that all Florida wildlife is imperiled. Some critters adapt splendidly to urban encroachment. Alligators, for instance. Once nearly exterminated, the primeval lizards have rebounded prolifically under strict federal protection. Native Floridians give gators plenty of leeway, but tourists and transplants display a childish, sometimes reckless fascination for the beasts.

The best places to observe this odd relationship are the retirement communities in the suburbs of Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. Every high-rise condo has a man-made lake, and every lake has a few resident alligators. After dinner, the old folks go down to the water with chicken scraps, marshmallows and other goodies that appeal to the alligator palate. The crepuscular feeding ritual becomes entertainment for the retirees, who invent cute names for their favorite gators and even take videos to show the grandchildren.

Unfortunately, your average retiree fails to understand that your average alligator has a brain the size of a marble. This means the alligator is intellectually incapable of forming deep emotional bonds. Inevitably, the day comes when an old-timer strolls down to the lake with his or her toy poodle yammering on the end of a rhinestone leash. You can guess what happens next. The gator assumes that the poodle is but another offering—basically a marshmallow with a perm—and proceeds to gobble. The grief-stricken pet owner calls the condo president, who calls Fish and Game, which immediately sends an armed officer to dispatch the skulking killer.

This happens all too often. People new to south Florida expect the wild animals to behave as they do in Disney films. Sometimes people expect even more.

A few years ago, a man living in a north Dade trailer park applied for a permit to keep a pair of four-foot alligators as pets inside his mobile home. When game wardens arrived, they noticed that the man was bleeding from numerous wounds recognizable as gator bites. "This put these officers on notice that something was not right here," assistant state's attorney Avi Litwin later said, in a moment of profound understatement.

The game wardens found the two alligators "in the respondent's bed" and swiftly removed the befuddled reptiles. Their owner, the man with the bite marks, subsequently sued to reclaim his beloved pets. In October 1991, Florida's Third District Court of Appeals denied the man's petition for custody and ruled in favor of the alligators. The animals were released into the Everglades, where presumably they have taken to less stressful relationships.

Over the years, south Florida's indigenous wildlife has been augmented by alien species that have escaped from captivity and now thrive in the muggy tropical climate. The most recent influx occurred after Hurricane Andrew, which destroyed many wild-animal farms and set loose a mind-boggling menagerie: 3000 to 4000 monkeys, 1000 parrots, 2000 nonvenomous snakes and lizards, six cougars, three wallabies and an African lion. And those are only what were reported missing from licensed importers. It is believed that bootleg dealers lost more big cats, plus hundreds of rare poisonous reptiles.

Of all the creatures unleashed by the storm, the monkeys caused the most (continued on page 226)South Florida(continued from page 154) public consternation. Many had escaped from medical research laboratories and were falsely rumored to be carrying HIV. In the tense days following the hurricane, more than 200 free-roaming rhesus lab monkeys were shot out of treetops by police, National Guardsmen and panicky citizens.

Other things that fall from the Sky

Two summers ago, a neighborhood crime-watch meeting in Homestead was interrupted when a 75-pound bale of cocaine fell out of the clouds. Homestead's police chief, who was addressing the group, knew instantly what was happening. And so did the crime watchers.

South Floridians are experts on drug-related phenomena, especially falling bales. Smugglers dump their illicit cargo when pursued by radar-tracking Customs agents, and such aerial chases occur frequently over Florida. Living here requires keeping a vigilant eye on the sky, particularly when mowing the lawn or cooking out. A man in Broward County barely escaped death when a 100-pound bale of marijuana crashed through the roof of his porch. As of this writing, no Floridian has been killed by a falling bale, but it's probably only a matter of time.

For local opportunists, a rain of drugs is not a hazard but a financial windfall—kilos from heaven. Cops say the bales that fall in unpopulated areas are easy to recover, but those that land in residential neighborhoods frequently vanish as soon as they hit the ground.

South Beach

It wasn't long ago that the southern spur of Miami Beach was a decayed strip of fleabags and crumbling pensioner hotels. Today the old art-deco district has been revitalized into prime oceanfront real estate, thanks to its temporary popularity with the Manhattan modeling and dance-club crowd.

South Beach aims for an image that's part Venice Beach and part Soho. Consequently, the café atmosphere is one of strenuously cultured hipness, permeated by the reek of Coppertone. Where else but Ocean Drive would that stunning blonde in an electric-lime tonga be sipping cappuccino and pretending to read Proust?

Needless to say, most native Floridians would rather be impaled on bamboo spikes than be found in South Beach. When one's social life degenerates to the point where the highlight of a Saturday night is a glimpse of Mickey Rourke and his entourage, it's time to hook up a hose to the tailpipe.

Celebrity Watching

Numerous show-business personalities have discovered south Florida. The list includes Sylvester Stallone, Larry Hagman and Cher. I think you get the idea. For years, legendary rockers and musicians have come down here to party, but few stayed past winter. Before Gloria Estefan hit it big, our most notable hometown pop stars were (in order) Julio Iglesias, two of the Bee Gees and all or most of K.C. and the Sunshine Band. It's no wonder, then, that Madonna's arrival caused such a tumescent frenzy. She came here to do the photographs for Sex, her book of erotic fantasies, and soon began popping up in odd poses all over town. Local boosters were elated that an international superstar was prancing around Miami Beach in the nude, finding it a much-needed distraction from headless torsos and hijacked rental cars.

Madonna likes south Florida so much that she bought a mansion on Biscayne Bay. The Miami media treated Madonna's arrival as the ultimate affirmation of the city's new cool. As a cultural barometer, though, the presence of Madonna is less significant than that of master crime novelist Thomas Harris (creator of Hannibal Lecter) and of Anne Rice (queen of the vampire chronicles). It makes perfect sense that both of these marvelously depraved writers would relocate to south Florida, not for the sunshine but for new plot ideas.

Souvenirs

It's amazing what's possible when good taste is no longer an issue. How about a handsome shark embryo in a jar? That was a hot item for a while in Key West tourist shops. And who could forget Hurricane Andrew trading cards? These were on shelves within weeks of the disaster—100 different scenes of destruction, in color. I purchased the set for $12.95 at a convenience store in Islamorada. Part of the profits was supposed to buy toys for children who had gone through the hurricane. Reports are that the kids are still waiting for the first truckload.

Gun Etiquette

Much has been said about our murder rate. Yes, it's bad. How bad? An outfit in Pompano Beach specializes in cleaning up crime scenes after the homicide detectives are gone. According to the owner, it takes a special touch to make a blood-splattered bedroom "visually tolerable" again. South Florida is full of such plucky entrepreneurs. For instance, there's a new map of Miami made just for tourists. Priced at a thrifty $3.75, it's coded in five colors gridding the worst crime neighborhoods (red being the most violent, green being the least violent). The fellow who markets the map has excellent credentials—he's a Dade County paramedic.

Some say ours is a false economy because the chief industries, tourism and drug smuggling, are too volatile. True, Miami doesn't manufacture much that the rest of the world can use. But that's changing. One success story is Intratec USA, a growing South Dade firm that makes guns. Not just any guns—the Tec-9, an ugly, inexpensive, easy-to-conceal semiautomatic that is the new assault-weapon of choice for urban gangs. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms says the Tec-9 has surpassed the Uzi and the Ingram in popularity among street assassins. Intratec's assembly line is rolling at full capacity, and we're damn proud of it. If you're gun-shopping on your Miami vacation, support a local industry. Think about a Tec-9.

Buying one is easy, thanks to the most porous firearms laws in the country. Basically, anyone not wearing a straitjacket can legally purchase a gun in Florida. Visitors should assume that everyone they meet is armed. Those who don't carry pistols on their hips keep them in their cars, houses or boats. Not long ago, a couple was robbed at gunpoint during a Sunday cruise on Biscayne Bay. More commonly, though, firearms are used as instruments of social debate. A muttered comment that may get you punched in another city will likely get you shot in Miami. It goes without saying that you must never, under any circumstances, honk at another motorist or contest a parking space.

Our civic leaders dread publicity about guns because it conveys the perfectly accurate impression that south Florida is a dangerous place. The truth is, it's so dangerous that many of those same civic leaders have privately armed themselves. A few months ago, a former Dade County commissioner allegedly brandished a pistol at a parking valet. The former U.S. district attorney in south Florida lost two AR-15s to burglars. The mayor of Miami had a handgun swiped from the front seat of his car. And the former head of the chamber of commerce sheepishly reported that her Uzi was stolen from her bedroom.

When the chamber of commerce is packing heat, you have a crime problem.

The Sunshine State

So why do people still come? Some are still suckers for the old postcard mythology. Others seem actually attracted by the risk and rampant weirdness of the place. It's not coincidence that the rejuvenation of South Beach began when Miami Vice got popular on television—the combination of high fashion, pastel architecture and mass murder proved irresistible. That's why it's so amusing to hear promoters whine about all the lousy press that south Florida gets. They underestimate the resolve and gameness of our tourists. A forecast of thunderstorms is more likely to keep them away than the threat of dismemberment.

As I write this, Miami's civic boosters are grappling with a new public-relations challenge: animal sacrifices. In most communities, this ceased to be an issue hundreds of years ago. Not here. For the followers of an Afro-Cuban religion called Santeria, the blood of fresh-killed animals is necessary to appease the god Chango, among others. The ceremony is usually conducted in a private home, but occasionally it takes place more conspicuously. (Once my son went fishing and snagged a headless chicken wrapped carefully inside a man's boxer shorts. We concluded that a grave curse had been placed on some poor slob, probably the owner of the shorts.)

After many complaints about decapitated livestock being found in public parks and streets, the city of Hialeah passed a law banning animal sacrifices. Santeria practitioners argued that this infringed on their freedom of religion, and last summer the Supreme Court agreed.

To celebrate the legal victory, a Santeria priest invited the Miami media to his apartment for a ritual slaughter. As TV cameras rolled, he joyfully beheaded a pigeon, a guinea hen, four roosters, two baby goats and a lamb, and then liberally sprinkled the blood over various sacramental articles. It was unquestionably one of the more gruesome sights ever to be televised. Animal lovers were scarcely consoled when the man's landlord showed up and threatened to evict him on the spot. Predictably, the videotape has found its way to the tabloid TV programs, so millions of Americans are now cringing at yet another ghastly Miami tableau. But I'm not worried. Tourists will keep coming anyway—and many would gladly pay admission to a Santeria theme park if we had one. Someday we probably will have one.

Clearly, the urge to recreate is a primal one. There's no point trying to scare people away from south Florida because it can't be done. I suppose our only option, morally, is to help them make it out alive. Survival is possible with a full tank of gas, a good map and a little common sense. Don't try to romance a full-grown alligator. Don't feel obliged to open every garbage bag that turns up on the steps of your hotel. Keep a watchful eye on your chickens and goats. Look out for falling bales of contraband. If somebody crashes into your rental car, flee at a high rate of speed.

Oh, and one more thing. If you decide to swim with the dolphins, dress down.

"I interviewed a legal secretary who was nearly drowned by a prodigiously aroused dolphin."

"Most native Floridians would rather be impaled on bamboo spikes than be found in South Beach."