Picture by Bernando Doral and Gato Rivero
Audio By Carbonatix
The rhythm is gonna get you…a street name at Ocean Drive and 13th on Miami Beach?
That’s right, maybe U2 lives in a neighborhood where the streets have no name, but here in Miami, we do things differently. Come next week, Gloria Estefan will be more than merely the Queen of Latin Pop and a radio mainstay — she’ll be a new direction for your GPS to reroute you through with questionable robotic pronunciation.
If you want to see the naming ceremony for yourself, it goes down this Monday October 13 at 11 a.m. at the above address with Miami Beach Commissioner Laura Dominguez and Miami-Dade District 5 Commissioner Eileen Higgins in attendance. (The location, incidentally, is a hop, skip, and a jump from the Cardozo South Beach, the luxury hotel Gloria owns and meticulously renovated with husband Emilio Estefan.)
“The Miami Beach Commission for Women observed that very few city streets were co-named after women and offered thoughtful suggestions to help change that. I was proud to sponsor this initiative, which moved through our Public Safety & Neighborhood Quality of Life Committee and later, received full Commission approval. The final step was County Commission approval, and I’m thrilled that it is officially approved!” Dominguez says in a written statement to New Times.
“Gloria Estefan has long called Miami Beach home. Over the years, she and her husband have contributed so much to our city’s cultural and culinary scene, from their restaurants to their stewardship of the beloved Cardozo Hotel, a jewel of the Art Deco District,” she adds. “We are proud to honor her legacy and lasting impact on Miami Beach by co-naming the street next to the Cardozo Hotel in her name.”
The honor coincides with Estefan’s fiftieth anniversary in the music business, which Mónica Mendoza covered in an extensive (and wonderful) New Times feature a couple weeks ago.
That story is worth quoting at some length below:
“There are, of course, landmark headlines in the Estefan story,” Mendoza writes. “‘Conga’ — the Miami Sound Machine anthem that broke out in the early 1980s — became a global moment, a track that announced a bilingual, bicultural pop presence on the world stage. In the decades since, Estefan has collected honors that map the broadness of her influence: multiple Grammy and Latin Grammy wins, a Kennedy Center Honor, induction into halls of fame, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among them. Those accolades are signposts, but she frames them as responsibilities: ‘When you move people, what you put in the universe affects others,’ she says. ‘It is a privilege and a responsibility.’”
And that is the sort of impact and humility that earns you your very own street name.
Are you taking notes, Bono?
