urban bicycle journeys

Tootie and I lived in Miami for eight months in 1983. This current bike ride brought back memories.

On a December 2025 afternoon I was driving a rental car back to Miami after having cycled to Key West. My Bike Friday was in the back. On the outskirts of Miami coming up from the south I saw this billboard:

BREAST AUGMEN $ 2500

Miami is a weird place. The writer Pam Druckerman wrote lovingly in The New York Times in 2014 about her hometown.

If you had asked me what I wanted when I was 12 years old, I probably would have said, “to marry a plastic surgeon.”.

She said about Miami: while there are some thinkers scattered around town, Miami is overrun with lawyers, jewelry designers and personal trainers, all trying to sell services to one another. 

I had time to cycle around Miami the next morning before flying back to RDU that same afternoon.

Background: around Christmas in 1982 I was working for a company called AEI at the New Orleans airport, arranging the details of international air freight shipments. AEI thought I had a promising future and offered me a promotion. Did I want a mid-level management position in their much larger Miami office? I was young and ambitious and of course I said yes. My girlfriend Tootie was arranging shipments for another New Orleans freight forwarder and was so good at it she talked HER employer into transferring her to THEIR Miami office. Tootie and I were going to Miami!

My job turned out to be a shitshow and after only nine months AEI loyally agreed to “promote” me back to New Orleans, even paying for the household move, again. Tootie’s employer agreed to send her back as well. Tootie and I were married soon after that. Our few months in Miami in 1983 were nevertheless a special time, romantic and exotic.

We did not know anyone in Miami. Tootie was from Winston-Salem NC and I was from Virginia Beach and Miami seemed like a foreign country. Most people seemed either Spanish speakers or relocated New Yorkers with Brooklyn accents. Nearly all the co-workers at our separate jobs were of Cuban heritage. There supposedly was a sign at the Dade County line leading into nearby Fort Lauderdale WILL THE LAST AMERICAN LEAVING MIAMI PLEASE BRING THE FLAG.

Even then I had a nose for an interesting neighborhood. We located an apartment only a couple of miles from downtown Miami in the hippie artsy neighborhood called Coconut Grove, a street grid featuring small worn one story houses seemingly encased by tropical jungle. We would have an easy drive from there to our jobs near the Miami airport.

These were different times. Crime was so bad that bars and restaurants did not stay open past about nine at night. Miami was the drug smuggling capital of the world. Miami Vice. Tootie and I felt young and free and did not feel fazed by all that talk.

Now in 2025 I found a room near our old neighborhood at the Hampton Inn Coconut Grove. The next day I could cycle my old hood!

There seemed to be a lot of young athletes staying at my chain hotel.

For dinner I was able to walk to Berries Restaurant & Bar which was covered but open to the seventy degree night air. It rained intermittently. The boundary between indoors and outdoors was indefinite. Miami feels tropical.

Back in 1983 despite the warnings about crime we used to sometimes eat dinner at our apartment, then bicycle together several miles each way, in the dark without bike lights through woodsy residential neighborhoods to get ice cream cones at a Baskin-Robbins in a South Miami strip mall. I still remember that same feel of wintertime warm humid night air.

The next morning I took a bike ride starting at the hotel despite occasional rain sprinkles. In 1983 Tootie and I had rented a one bedroom apartment, half of a one story 1940’s house on a woodsy street and only three or four blocks from my current Hampton Inn. I cycled up to that duplex house, 2620 Trapp Avenue, to see how it was faring in 2025. Amazingly, it was being torn down that very day! I still remember those louvered windows. Also note the more recently built the high rises in the background.

Also amazingly, the rest of the neighborhood seemed about the same. Looking later online, I realize this wooded refuge is now something of a fantasy; these small houses sell in 2025 for several million dollars each. In 1983 a couple of poorly paid freight forwarders could afford a rental unit right here in these woods. This is the 2025 view half a block away from our now torn down apartment.

I noodled around on the bike.

A bigger bicycle thrill back in 1983 was a weekend day trip to and from Miami Beach. We would cycle together through these neighborhoods the several miles to downtown Miami, then slightly north, where we would cycle on the Venetian Causeway across Biscayne Bay to Miami Beach. South Beach was not yet gentrified. Those Art Deco hotels that are now famously expensive were decrepit and filled with poorer retired New Yorkers. The beach itself was lovely. We would swim and hang a while, then bicycle home, a total of about ten miles each way. It seemed like none of our freight company co-workers realized what a great beach they had close by and I remember feeling sad about that.

I also cycled this day through Black Coconut Grove, then and likely now a majority African-American district close by, originally settled by Bahamians. There are still small houses here.

In 2025 I just cycled right through there feeling as safe as anywhere. In 1983 we thought we should not cycle through there because it was perceived as so dangerous. Like much of America crime has gone way down since 1983 when one of Tootie’s office co-workers named Alfredo was for some reason driving her home from work. At about 5:00 PM, he showed her a drive-in marijuana dealer here in Black Coconut Grove. You stopped your car in front of a certain normal looking house. Almost immediately a guy would come out and exchange a tiny brown envelope containing a few tablespoons of pot for five dollars. The envelope even had a brand stamp on it! Tootie said she and Alfredo were laughing furiously the whole time.

In 2025 I cycled through the commercial area of Coconut Grove. While similar to 1983, the stores are now more high end.

I was lucky to be on a bicycle this morning, as Mercedes and BMW’s brought traffic to a crawl in dropping off their children to two or three exclusive looking private or parochial schools that share the woodsy street called Main Highway.

Down near the waterfront I looked back. I doubt any of these high rises were there in 1983.

Miami cycling infrastructure has improved since 1983. A few blocks from Coconut Grove they have installed a bike path under Miami Metrorail. Now in 2025 I was able to cycle on it the maybe three miles to downtown Miami.

The trail stopped because it lacks its own bridge over the Miami River. I turned around.

It was time to go. I cycled back to my hotel, put the Bike Friday in the back of the car, then drove the ten miles to the rental car center near the airport. After turning the car in, I set out to bicycle the mile or so to the actual airport.

On the way out I wheeled the bicycle by a typical Miami fantasy; renting some flashy car to cruise South Beach.

Cycling from the rental building I looked at the runway scene from the top deck. In 1983 Tootie and I used to eat lunch together sitting in our car watching planes land from a spot very near here, along 36th St. Back then the planes were more colorful; each Latin American country had its own airline. I think tiny Guatemala had three!

Across the street from that car rental building, surrounded by warehouses, a sleazy “adult” bookstore, and car rental facilities was a Cuban restaurant called Rincon Criollo. Back in 1983 Cuban coffee was a new thing for us. Normal Americans in 1983 did not drink lattes or expressos. Now in 2025 I cycled over there. I still had three hours before my flight.

Sitting on one of those outdoor stools I skipped the coffee and got lunch!

“Carne de papa” (beef of potato) I discovered is basically beef stew. They upsold me the fried plantains, black beans, and rice. Still, everything cost just thirteen dollars and it was all good.

After cycling around a bit I realized my idea about cycling right up to the airport terminal was dumb and dangerous. Across the street back at the car rental facility I wheeled the bicycle onto the free MIA Mover train for the half mile ride to the airport. For those considering bicycling South Florida, the Tri-Rail commuter train shares the building with the car rentals. Tri-Rail accepts full sized bicycles and can take you all the way to West Palm Beach. I need to do that again, as West Palm Beach to Fort Lauderdale to Miami is a fetching two day bike ride.

In the airport terminal I retrieved my empty suitcase from luggage storage and spent half an hour folding the bicycle before checking it with American Airlines to RDU.

I was upgraded to first class for the hour and a half flight up to RDU, leaving at 4:30 PM; cocktail hour. It was all fine except nobody except me had their windows open to see the lovely sunset and views of the Sea Islands of the Georgia coast. Everyone ordered drinks but then just stared at their screens in the dark. Depressing, really. Nobody seemed to have the party spirit.

Oh well.