Bienvenido a Miami

It's been a long time, but I have finally returned after experiencing some pretty crazy shit this past weekend, which had to be written about and saved for posterity. I hope you enjoy:

For those of you that weren't aware, this past weekend I made a trip down to Miami with some buddies to celebrate my friend, Kupe's bachelor party. In the past, we have hit up the likes of Las Vegas and New York City for bachelor parties and I've seen some pretty crazy shit during these escapades, as seen in some of the slide shows I have on this blog. However, nothing could have prepared me for the most surreal 2 hours of my life on Friday night.

After checking into the Fountaine Bleu hotel and seeing that my buddy Ike had hooked us up with a ridiculously large suite, we decided to get things started by heading to a dog track to watch the NCAA games and bet blindly on dogs running in circles. The track is out in the middle of nowhere and the clientele patronizing this establishment are reminiscent of a mid-week, mid-day Atlantic City outing. Nonetheless, we settle down at a table, order a round of $1 Rolling Rocks, several plates of chicken fingers and fries, and begin throwing money at random dogs such as Mo's High Steppen, who coincidentally won me no money. We knew it was going to be a long night when the waitress brought us our 4th round short one beer, informing us that they ran out and that we could have another, but it would be hot. Yes, hot.

We headed out of there, I was up about $20 by dumb luck, and we walked out to the parking lot to see absolutely no cabbies. Figuring we'd have better luck on the main road, we trecked out to the corner where a McDonald's sat and within a few minutes a cab showed up. Now this is when things start to get a little weird.

So, we tell the cab where we're heading (back to South Beach) and he proceeds to scratch the side of his car on the curb, before jumping it as he pulls into the McDonald's parking lot. Perhaps this should have warned us to reconsider using this guy, but hell, we're in Miami.
Within moments of driving, we've struck up a conversation with Jorge (don't call me Hor-hey) Sanchez, a Cuban-born, 60-something who drives his cab because it's fun, not to make money. In fact, he reset our meter after driving about 2 miles, laughing that he doesn't give a shit. Is he drunk??

So, we keep driving, he's telling us that he hates Cubans and hopes Castro dies so that "some of these assholes" will go back, and then we start talking about women. The converstaion takes a turn for the worst when he starts telling us stories about his ex-wife and how much of a whore she was, and that leads us to the most bizarre of all cabbies moments.

Old Jorge decides that he's gonna show us a picture of his new girlfriend. She's a crackhead, and she's in rehab now, and she used to be a hooker, but she's all his...and he usually doesn't like showing anyone pictures of her because then they want to date her..but hell, we're like family now. So he reaches for his cell. phone and is having trouble getting to the pictures, so all attention is on the phone, not the road, as illustrated by the three lanes we're swerving in. Again, we were suprisingly not upset by this. But we were upset by the series of pictures that ended up developing.

There before our eyes, on this old Cuban's grainy cell. phone sat a picture of a relatively fat black woman seated in his passenger seat. He instructed Kupe to push the button on the phone to continue to cycle through the pictures, which went from bad to worse. Now she's sitting there topless. Now she's got her legs up. Whoa...where did her underwear go? Oh my god, is that his wang? And her mouth? Yeah, I would have to say the last thing I would want to do is want to date this girl. Dear god, what is wrong with this city??

So, we eventually make it to our destination...The Clevelander, where upon our exit, Jorge once again lowers our $24.00 fare to an even $20...I mean he really doesn't give a shit...and he lives in his cab...he told us.

Happy to be out of that surreal experience I walk towards the bouncer for Clevelander only to have a couple walk right in front of my path. And they both have pythons drapped across their shoulders??!!! What is in the water around here?

We walk into the bar, house music is pumping, so you all know I'm super thrilled. I mean, get me a glow stick and a couple of small Asians and my night would be made. But instead, all I got was a guy dancing on a stage wearing a costume like the Last Samurai, with some sort of animals horns on his helmet, and his swinging a flaming whip to the beat. Uh yeah...normally all of this would be shocking to me, but I did just see a picture of a 60 year old man getting his dick sucked by a crack whore. And perhaps it's better I saw all of this, because it destracted from the $280 bar tab we ran up over the next 4 hours of drinking.

Bienvenido a Miami...and that's only our first night.