Weird City, this Miami Is

The great Dave Barry is so correct -- Miami is one weird city. I grew up on Long Island, which was boring, but not really weird. Everyone spoke English, and our Dads had normal, boring jobs. There were no invasive exotic animals. Today, as I drove home from breakfast with Dr. Kenny, I saw a sign: the County was inspecting a property for Giant African Land Snails. I read about these things -- they're slowly taking over, and they actually eat the stucco off houses. Also, if you pick them up, you can get meningitis. Apparently our climate is sufficiently tropical to make these things happy. To eradicate them, you just find them and kill them -- wearing gloves. Weird. Kenny and I grew up together on LI, and he's lived all over the country during his stint as a Navy doctor. He moved here 10 years ago because his wife got a great law school teaching job. He's come to love the place, too -- even saying for the first time that he might stay even after his second son leaves for college -- next year. It's funny how a place changes over time, too. Last night my sister of another mother, Mirta, and I took out a future business contact. We ended up in Little Havana, which is the latest hip part of the city. We went to a bar called Ball and Chain -- with great live jazz. Little Havana was originally working class Jewish, and then as the Jews did better and moved up, the 60s era Cubans moved in. As they did better and left for Hialeah and Kendall, the area became Central American == very working class. But lately, the old botanicas and markets are being turned into culturally Cuban places -- an ice cream place called Azucar is surrounded by hip cigar bars and retaurants. And Teach for America kids are renting old duplexes -- probably to be replaced by Yuppies. The baseball stadium is nearby, too. I fantasized about buying a cheap condo and being the old gringo who hangs out nightly at Ball and Chain. I could do worse. And, as far as I could tell, there were no giant African Land Snails on Calle Ocho, so it has that going for it, too.