SEEKING THE LAST OF OLD MIAMI

SEEKING THE LAST OF OLD MIAMI

By Steve Wright

The flavor of Miami today, to anyone anywhere in the world, conjures up the aroma of café con leche in Little Havana, sushi on South Beach and grillot in Little Haiti.

Miami style means boastful, towering skyscrapers on Biscayne Bay and impossibly high-heeled models decked out in Prada on Ocean Drive.

But not that long ago, the flavor of Miami tasted more like tangy barbecue, fried frog legs and buttered grits. The city’s style consisted of modest, low-rise houses occupied by a shirt sleeve and dungaree crowd sporting farmer’s tans.

In the course of becoming one of the most exciting, most diverse, most international cities in the Western Hemisphere, Miami left its past behind in record time.

Various building booms and rich cultural changes following immigration waves have left little of the Old Miami in tact.

But if you know where to look, little remnants of the Old South, Old Florida and Old Miami can be tasted and enjoyed all over Dade County. Um, make that Miami-Dade County. Everything changes, even the county names, here in the fast and furious subtropics.

No place has stayed so much the same -- when so much change has gone on around it – as Shorty’s Bar-B-Q on South Dixie Highway. They’ve been serving up dirt cheap ribs, chicken, beef and pork since 1951 – that’s like 2000 BC in Miami years.

Folks still lineup out the door for smoky ‘cue drowned in warm Shorty’s Sauce, sides of sweet potato and corn on the cob and southern beverages such as iced tea and lemonade. Shorty’s was out in the middle of nowhere when it opened. Today, it sits below a MetroRail station and at the eastern gateway to miles and miles of suburban sprawl that is Kendall.

“The places that date back to when barbecue was king, those still hang on,’’ observed Miami historian Paul George. “They conjure up memories of when it was good ole boys drinkin’ beer and shootin’ pool and there was smoke everywhere. They represent the Miami of a generation or two ago, when people called it ‘My-Am-Uh.’”

They still do drink beer (by the can), play bocce (on outdoor courts – what could be more Old Florida?) and smoke (both unfiltered coffin nails that’ll kill you and succulent Marlin that makes for some of the best fish dip in the South) at Jimbo’s

Flipper used to roam the tropical lagoon where Jimbo’s is located. The faux Bahamian shacks were featured in Miami Vice. But the real Jimbo’s is a little shack of a building that opens about 6 a.m. and serves shrimpers who secure their boats on the rickety docks there. The beer goes for a buck fifty a can. Proprietor Jimbo Luznar has been smoking fish and on the same swath of city parkland, a stone’s throw from the sewer plant, for a half-century.

Soul food is an old southern staple and no one does it better than Jumbo’s in Liberty City. For more than four decades, the friendly folks there have been starting your day right with hearty breakfasts of biscuits and gravy. Jumbo’s is also open late night, to quench your craving for crackling fried chicken, breaded shrimp, fried conch and all the requisite southern sides of corn, black-eyed peas and beans. The iced tea is sweet, and the greens -- collard, mustard, kale, or turnip -- are salted with requisite bits of fatback.

The Coconut Grove of the present is defined by Bayshore Drive condominium towers and Main Highway retail boutiques, but the true soul of the Grove exists west of these addresses. In the West Grove, descendants of Bahamians who came there in the 19th century play dominoes, ride bicycles and raise children in an area that still has a hint of the Bahamas despite encroaching condo development from all sides.

The Charlotte Jane Memorial Park cemetery on Charles Avenue and Douglas Road is one of the West Grove’s treasures. The above ground cemetery is as mysteriously beautiful as any of New Orleans’ fabled graveyards. Several nearby streets feature shotgun shacks, named because a bullet fired through the front door would pass straight through house and out the back. These modest, but exquisitely southern and historic houses remain largely unadulterated – save for the addition of indoor plumbing.
Downtown Miami maybe be one of the most adulterated parts of the city. The stores, except for Burdines have moved to suburbs; the banks and law firms, for the most part, have moved to Brickell; and the street life resembles a Caribbean seaport – to the excitement of some and exasperation of others.
“When I think of the Miami my childhood, I think of the restored Olympia Theater,” historian Arva Moore Parks said of the last of the grand downtown movie palaces, now known as the Gussman Center for the Performing Arts.
“The others that come to mind are The Pit and Coopertown Restaurant, a pair of wonderful places on the Tamiami Trail,” she said -- lauding the barbecue joint famed for honey-rich sauce, crispy fry biscuits, corn on the cob and little to no air conditioning – and a down home cookin’ joint at an airboat launch deep into the Everglades part of Western Dade County. “The Coopertown Restaurant is probably the best old everything I know. It serves great frog legs and catfish.”
George and Parks, the city’s pre-eminent historians, both treasure Allen’s Drug Store at the corner of Red and Bird Roads. The pharmacy side looks like the apothecary of your grandpa’s era. Parks still revels in the soda fountain side and its “friendly service.”
In a town where last year’s hot, new, wait-three-hours-for-a-table bistro becomes this year’s shuttered has-been, there is something endearing about restaurants that have lasted for decades in fickle greater Miami.
The S&S Restaurant, just north of downtown and a stone’s throw the from historic old Miami Cemetery, is a throwback two-fer. Outside, the 12-foot-wide building boasts a wonderful Depression-era Art Deco design with multicolored glass arranged in horizontal and vertical bands on its facade. Inside, the tiny diner serves up sinfully pre-Atkins breakfasts of grits, eggs, bacon, home fries and buttered toast -- all washed down with good old fashioned coffee served from a giant urn.
“Up on 7th Avenue and 125th Street is the last remaining Royal Castle—a real old time treat,” Parks said in a burger-craving reminiscence. “They used to be everywhere -- 15 cent hamburger and five cents for a birch beer. I still eat my hamburgers like they fixed them with cooked onions, mustard and a pickle.”
Along with delis, diners and deliciously greasy little hamburgers, people seem to connect with Old Miami through its roadside architecture. Though much of Sunny Isles’ tourist eye-catching kitsch has met the wrecking ball, several World War II area-confections remain on the facades of somewhat seedy motor inns on Biscayne Boulevard. On Coral Way at 17th Avenue, a picturesque service station that blends elements of Art Deco Mediterranean Revival styles still serves motorists with petrol on a boulevard lined with stately banyan trees.
While great old tourist magnets such as the Serpentarium have been razed to make way for strip malls, and even Parrot Jungle left its perfect and leafy park for new digs at cruise ship alley, some of the old-time attractions remain. Monkey Jungle “where the humans are caged and the monkeys run wild” still draws the curious to its verdant grounds in South Dade.
Historian George misses the Rare Bird Farm and Crandon Park Zoo, but he said the granddaddy of them all still exists.
“Coral Castle has to be the best of the remaining old-time roadside attractions,” he said. “It’s a one-of-a-kind that stands way down there in South Dade and development is pushing up all around it. But when you get behind those rock walls, you are right back there in a marvel that looks the way it did 60 years ago – back with US 1 brought people to South Dade when it was home to some of the most unusual attractions in Florida.”
Wright is the perfect Miamian for the 21st century. His grandparents lived in Old Florida Coastal towns in the Jazz Age. His parents raised him in Ohio, the state that gave Miami Henry Flagler, Julia Tuttle and Mary Brickell. Brought up on barbecue, catfish, hush puppies and sweet tea, the award-winning writer-photographer now feasts on arroz con pollo, pan con lechon, vaca frita and café cubano – all available footsteps from his Little Havana home.

IF YOU GO (all numbers in 305 area code):

Shorty’s Bar-B-Q, 9200 S. Dixie Highway, 670-7732; Jimbo’s, Duck Lake Road on Virginia Key, 361-7026; Charlotte Jane Memorial Park cemetery, Charles Avenue and Douglas Road; Maurice Gusman Center for the Performing Arts, 174 E. Flagler St., 374-2444; The Pitt Bar-B-Q, 16400 S.W. 8th Street, 226-2272; Coopertown, 11 miles west of the Florida Turnpike on the Tamiami Trail, 226-6048; Allen’s Drug, 4000 S.W. 57th Avenue, 666-8581; S&S Restaurant, 1757 N.E. 2nd Avenue, 373-4291; Arnold’s Royal Castle, 12490 N.W. 7th Avenue, 681-5346; Coral Way Gas station, Service Station based on a prototype by Russell Pancoast, 1700 S.W. 22nd Street, 858-1020; Coral Castle, 28655 S. Dixie Highway, 248-6344.