I am perpetually on the lookout for free events in Miami, and today I was lucky enough to find a walking tour in my own neighborhood. I'm never quite sure what neighborhood I live in - it's sort of Design District (since we're five or ten blocks from all the hip, expensive stores like Hermes and Prada), but it's officially Buena Vista, the more historical name for our neighborhood filled with historic, 1920's houses. We're also only a few blocks from Little Haiti. Our neighborhood is filled with Haitians, but I don't know much about the culture, beyond what I've observed from a distance. (Like, Haitian Creole is a beautiful language but the custom of bicycling in the direction of opposing traffic terrifies me as a driver.)
The walking tour was in Little Haiti, conducted by a local mural artist, Serge Toussaint. (Click on the link to see what his murals look like.) Most of his work is murals done for businesses, which play the dual role of enticing people into the store and advertising what the store does to people that may not read English. So, if you run a restaurant, you paint a fish on a platter and a sandwich, and if you run a botanica which sells folk medicine items and religious items, you'd paint pictures of saints.
He told us many stories, including how he stayed in Miami: after a one week visit, he didn't want to return to New York with his father, so he stepped off the Greyhound bus right before they were headed back and "missed" the bus. He also solved a mystery for me. There's a mural painted under a bridge that features a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. (since it's on Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive) and a white outline of Obama. I always thought that the mural had never been finished. However, the story is this: the city commissioned the MLK mural, and Serge added Obama because there was so much space. It was during Obama's first campaign and the symbolism of the first Black presidential candidate was unmistakable. However, the Department of Transportation said the mural couldn't be political, and forced the artist to paint over it. He did, very carefully, so that a perfectly clear silhouette of Obama is unmistakable.
3 comments:
I know you have this attitude to wherever you settle for a while and there is so much to see in the place you live if you have the mind to search it out.
I agree with Gill. And thanks for sharing with us.
I remember how concerned you were about going to where it was going to be so hot with your growing up experiences in the South. It is really amazing how you've embraced what this city has to offer.
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