I got back from my trip to Miami and the Ultra Music Festival, one of the biggest EDM (Electronic Dance Music) events in the world. The part of Miami I mostly saw was gorgeous; a really beautiful city.
I got to Miami on Thursday evening and went to two different events. The first was outside at the old R.C. Cola Plant and of course I got lost trying to find it. I stopped in this sketchy-seeming area on Miami Ave., I parked my car, and walked hurriedly across the street into a small, corner bar with graffiti painted all over the outside of it, to inquire about directions.
When I walked in, and mind you this was about 10:30 at night, there were only three guys in there: the bartender on one side of the bar serving drinks and two guys on the other side of the bar receiving them. All three of the guys were Latino and all three looked at me in my bright, blood-orange, top and pale green, gingham skinny jeans, with red kicks as I walked toward them, and I just thought, I hope they're cool with me.
In my mind it coulda gone either way: they would go out of their way to help me, or they wouldn't. And it all had to do with territory.
Every place in America, the world for that matter, depending on where you might go, there are pockets where you can be discriminated against... and it doesn't necessarily have to do with race... it can be gender, rich/poor, small town/big city, gay/straight, whatever. It's one of those cases where, you're like a fish-out-of-water, and the feeling you get from the rest of the people in the bar is, what are you doing in our pond? I had the same feeling at different times while I was in New Zealand; I walked into a place where the initial feeling I got was, what are you doing here, and why are you here? Hell, I sometimes get that same vibe from my best friend's husband and/or twelve year old daughter when I hang out at her house!
Anyway, I think my point is, it felt like foreign territory to me: in the sense that it was a hole-in-the-wall, graffiti-covered, bar in a sketchy part of Miami and I certainly wasn't looking like I "fit" in with that scene.
But, I ordered a beer like I was meant to be right where I was, introduced myself to the guys and then pronounced I was lost... which garnered a good laugh from them. So, I asked the guys if they knew where the old R.C. Cola Plant was 'cause I was going to an event there and one of the guys said he did. At that point I pulled up a seat to the bar, and got the guy to write the directions down for me. When he did, and assured me it would be easy to find, I ordered another beer for good measure and chatted with the guys some more. I told them that I was going to this club called, Space, after the first event and asked if they thought I should just leave my car at the R.C. Cola Plant event and take a taxi to Space. They said if I left my car at the old R.C. Cola Plant that would probably be the last time I ever saw my car!
Then, one of the guys, who I later found out was the owner, told me to come back to the bar after the first event and he would let me park my car in the back lot of the bar. He told me that by the time I got back from Club Space the gate to the small lot would be closed but I could just pull open the door and get my car.
So that's what I did. After the first event, which ended at 12:30 AM I went back to the bar - and at that point there were about ten more people in there, all guys, but for one girl, but the door was locked - they came and unlocked the door and let me in.
It turned out that all of the guys in the bar at that time were prolific and infamous Miami graffiti artist and so the talk going on was all about graffiti and artistic expression, etc. It was pretty interesting to find myself randomly in the middle of this group of people, learning their culture... the culture of being talented (but illegally "defacing" property!) graffiti artist.
And the discussion of making money at something they started off doing just for expression purposes and then, also, about the artist that they thought weren't the "real deal" who were making money at it, but only because they knew the business side of it, not because they were particularly talented. And, even though these guys' artistic medium was something I couldn't really fully fathom, I did understand completely the point about artistic talent versus business talent. And most artist have the one, but don't have the other, mostly because the business part takes too much time away from the love of doing the art. So, it was a good conversation, one, that in a million years, I wouldn't have been expecting to be in the middle of, in some small bar, in a "sketchy" Miami neighborhood, with its most talented and famous graffiti artist.
But I needed to be at my next event, Club Space, by 2:00 AM so I pulled a Superman. However, instead of the telephone booth, I went into the bathroom and totally changed my outfit into a little black dress, wearing my grandma's sixty year old hat from the '50's, and put on some blood red lipstick. I was ready to go clubbing... something I literally can not remember when I did last!
And the guys at the bar couldn't have been nicer when I was ready to leave, two of the beefier guys went out and hailed a cab for me and told the taxi driver, straight-up, to take me to Club Space... kinda making sure to let the cabbie know not to screw around with me.
So, that's kinda how my whole time in Miami went with everything outside of Ultra. Because everything outside of the actual Ultra event didn't necessarily go too well, but I always seemed to have an "angel" type of person come into my life and make it all better.
However, everything about Ultra was fantastic, worth every penny, and I had an amazing time. I even had some young guy ask me if I wanted to get up on his shoulders. I told him, as I am 6' tall, that I was pretty heavy, and he was like, no worries, so he bends down, I wrap my legs around his head, and the next thing I know I'm sitting atop his shoulders above the crowd. And it became even crazier because it was just at that moment that a rain shower hit and everyone in this massive crowd of people were jubilant because we were all so hot and sweaty and the rain felt so good and cold hitting our skin.
Ultra was definitely a young-persons "game," but I'm glad that I got to play it for at least that one time in my life.
Oh, and it was really funny about that sixty-year-old hat of my grandmother's that I wore to this hip Miami Club (which I didn't leave until after 4:00 in the morning... after having traveled to Miami earlier in the day!) because the hat was like an event in itself! I had so many twenty-something, hipsters come up to me and tell me how awesome my hat was I felt like I could definitely hang in the, Hipsterville club scene, with no problem.
Here's a video that shows what Ultra's about. You can get a feel for how crazy (but for me, super fun!) this festival was... another video of one of the main headliners (just skip the ad) and a few photos from the event...
Like I've said before, traveling solo is often hard because you go to a place you aren't familiar with, where you don't know anyone; there's no one to rely on but yourself... but as difficult as it sometimes can be, the rewards of setting out into the unknown and conquering, in triumph, whatever comes your way, is where I get to find out who I really am, and its mostly by way of the random people, I fatefully meet, that I do...
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