So there you are, three or four tequila shots deep, grooving on the dance floor, straight gettin' it on. But then, because you're dancing in your fave pair of five-inch stilettos, your feet start throbbing. So rather than abandon your sashay -- because that would be cray -- you slip out of your heels and continue unfazed.
Whether you know it or not, you just became una pata sucia. And local entertainer Pepe Billete wants your photograph.
In an abundantly sexist quest to annotate this nascent entry into Miami's nomenclature, Pepe Billete has created the Tumblr account the Official Pata Sucia Archives, which shows, among other images of dirty feet, photos of young women dancing or walking shoeless. When we recently asked Pepe what the joke was, he scoffed. "Patas sucias ain't no joke, man" he rasped. "They're my life."
Indeed, from across the city, Miamians are snapping pictures of patas sucias and shipping them to Pepe, who's collecting the pics like comic books. "My buddy Jimmy Vega snapped this pic of a #patasucia in the wild," one guy wrote to Pepe.
"The EPA needs to do a better job of protecting our shores," Pepe says, "because apparently there's an influx of mutant bacalao that by some Darwinian stroke of perseverence has adapted to our environment enough to look like a mollied-out sucia that buys cheap shoes and has no regard for hygiene. It's the only logical explanation because Miami girls have abuelas that teach them better than to be puercas."
Then, in an additional stroke of misogyny, Pepe flipped through the Miamian annals to find the first entry of "pata sucia." "El Chino Cubano and famous war strategist Pin Pan Pun once said, 'The first step in any battle is identifying quien te esta tratando de meter el pie,'" Pepe says. "The moniker was conceived to do just that, but our research data has shown that women who take of their shoes off on the street after a long night of partying typically have little reservation about much else."
He paused. "They also seem to vote Democrat, but I'm not sure that's just a coincidence because Obama supports our campaign." (President Barack Obama couldn't be reached for comment.)
If dirty feet are spotted in their natural habitat -- the streets of Miami -- Pepe urges you to send a picture to [email protected].
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