Best Mile Of Miami

Can we fudge just a bit? Let's call it the "Best Couple of Miles of Miami." Loosening the definition is worthwhile, for all aspects of life in Miami are symbolically represented along this stretch of blacktop. The journey begins at Biscayne Bay in the shadow of wealth and power: the Miami Herald building, the Grand and Plaza Venetia condominium towers, the Omni complex. Across Biscayne Boulevard you plunge into Overtown, where, amid the abandoned buildings, garbage-strewn lots, and potholed streets stands the sleekly rehabilitated Ice Palace Studios, an entrepreneurial beacon for the city's vision of a new film and fashion district. Press onward beyond North Miami Avenue, where social life is an outdoor affair and beverages tend to be cloaked in paper bags. Not far beyond NW Seventh Avenue a couple of small clapboard houses stand as sentinels to a bygone era, before the interstates ripped out the heart of the neighborhood, an era when Overtown was a hustling, bustling community. Duck under SR 836 and you're transported to the sprawling complex of high-rises devoted to the healing arts, anchored by Jackson Memorial Hospital. Just past Twelfth Avenue the tall buildings address not physical ills but societal ills: the county's criminal courthouse, the main county jail, the State Attorney's Office, the public defender's headquarters. Two more blocks and the street changes once again, this time into a quaint neighborhood shaded by majestic oak trees. The cozy homes don't house families, however; they are occupied by law offices catering to the defense of accused criminals. Fourteenth Street finally hits a dead end at the west side of NW Seventeenth Avenue, along the banks of the hard-working Miami River. And there you have it on one street, just about everything that comprises life in this subtropical metropolis: wealth, poverty, demolition, renovation, depression, optimism, inequity, justice.