|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
I lay awake after a long night, replaying that nightmare that visits me with the persistence of a mosquito in August. George Orwell’s words hover over my bed like a judgment: “I wondered, as I had many times wondered before, whether I myself was a lunatic. People kept telling me to reject the evidence of my own eyes and ears.” In this nightmare, I almost believe them.
It always starts the same: billionaire Peter Thiel’s Palantir — the surveillance and data‑mining giant — announces it’s relocating to Miami. Suddenly every waking thought becomes a reminder that our city has once again become, if it ever stopped being, a gangster’s paradise. Influencers and rich New York refugees descend like a swarm, turning daily life into a loop of power and money, money and power.
In this dystopian Miami, my life becomes one long State of the Union address. Our soundtrack is no longer Salsa or reggaeton. At South Dade Kia, Milam’s, or Trader Joe’s, the background music isn’t Bad Bunny — it’s Kid Rock. Prices rise like king tide. Chicken wings from Keg South, Titanic, or Flanigan’s are expensive and microwaved, and the young men eating them must turn their baseball caps forward, as if the city itself has become their disapproving grandmother.
Small businesses — Soriano Brothers, Lots of Lox, House of Bagels and Bialy’s, Sir Pizza, The Daily Bread — vanish one by one, joining Norman Brothers, maybe Shorty’s, and sort‑of Bagel Emporium in the great Miami afterlife of beloved institutions we didn’t appreciate until Baptist bought them. Influencers and developers roam the streets like zombies from Sinners or the werewolves and vampires from Twilight.
Even intimate cultural events like the Miami Film Festival morph into glitzy red‑carpet spectacles. Ever‑smiling Entertainment Tonight correspondents trap Lauren Cohen in endless interviews while the rest of us wonder when authenticity became a casualty. Every accomplishment leaves its achiever grinning with the toothless smile of Olympic hero Jack Hughes, while our children sport Alysa Liu’s tiger‑striped hairstyles, as if every beautician in Miami ran out of normal dye. The simplest act — buying groceries, renewing a library card — becomes as complicated as the Quad God’s Olympic routine.
Pinecrest turns into Ocean Drive. Old Cutler becomes Wynwood. And the Community Newspapers? We write exclusively about the latest “hundred‑year‑old Japanese restaurant” relocating to Dadeland with an omakase menu starting at $250. Tap water disappears; waiters pour sparkling mineral water from cans without asking, as if hydration itself now requires a subscription.
Meanwhile, every road becomes a construction zone with no end date. Public spaces shrink. Houses inflate into giant white boxes. Every empty lot sprouts a high‑rise. The only project that finishes on time is that soccer stadium by the airport. In this nightmare, Rick Scott directs all electric vehicles into a new Biscayne Bay Alcatraz — except Teslas, of course. Elon Musk becomes the new Episcopalian Bishop. Every liberal weather forecaster is canceled.
Bakeries wrap every loaf in plastic and add glyphosate and Ozempic. Cars, houses, people, and portions get bigger, but parking spaces get smaller. Only the children of private‑school parents get summer internships.
Winter grows colder. Summer grows hotter. Coconut fronds fall like confetti at a parade no one asked for. Every Sunday morning, lawn crews fire up their string trimmers at 7 a.m. Amazon trucks deliver at midnight. Waze and Google Maps send every lost driver through my neighborhood. Ventanitas become drive‑through windows. All Farm Stores close. Every road leads to Brickell — but you can’t leave.
And then the final blow: Vizcaya, the Deering Estate, and Fairchild Tropical Garden are sold and redeveloped into Section 8 housing where only English is permitted.
Maybe there’s a moral here, if it’s not too late to say it out loud. Miami — and everyone everywhere — be careful what you wish for. Sometimes the future you dream of is the one that keeps you up at night.
