ART DECO WEEKEND MIAMI BEACH
Prepare to be Seduced
By Steve Wright
While dozens of dedicated preservationists toiled to revive South Beach, nothing put it back on the sun, sand and sexiness map quite like a television show that took child star Don Johnson and a cast of relatively unknowns and placed them in the epicenter of gritty, grim and glittery Miami.
Miami Vice made decadence and deco desirable. By the early 1990s, there were more supermodels than seabirds on South Beach. The buffed, bold and beautiful flocked to Miami Beach, injecting a cash infusion that transformed countless little hotels into rehabbed and reborn real estate.
Born during the Depression, fabulous in the forties and fifties, deteriorating and dubbed “God’s waiting room” in the sixties and seventies, made suave and sultry in the eighties and 90s, the Art Deco District in the early 21st century is like so many of inhabitants that defy age through a nip and tuck here, a facelift and cosmetic enhancement there.
From January 14 to January 16 2011, fabled Ocean Drive will be closed for several blocks to allow the masses to frolic among the art deco masterpieces. Each Art Deco Weekend has a theme. This year’s is "Art Deco & Advertising: Selling Glamour & Style."
A free street fair takes place on Ocean Drive with vendors hawking everything from vintage clothing to Bakelite household wares to junk with a questionable kinship with deco to rare collectibles.
Tours led by architects and experts will explore the finest examples of deco detailing. Parades, movies, music and lectures – all with a deco-era theme, will take place during the three-day festival.
Hotels – in the peak of high season during a holiday weekend with a marquee event – will be pricey, but what better way to immerse one’s self in art deco history than to sleep in a room with porthole windows, eyebrow overhangs and terrazzo floors?
Wright first visited Art Deco Weekend as an Ohioan in the late 1990s and vowed to stay. Within three years, he was living in an historic Spanish Mission style home in Little Havana and making weekly sojourns across Biscayne Bay to photograph Miami Beach’s art deco.
TOMORROW: MIAMI DESIGN PRESERVATION LEAGUE DETAILS
Art Deco Weekend will take place January 14-16 2011 in Miami Beach.
For details, visit the Miami Design Preservation League website at http://www.mdpl.org
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