"It's probably the best idea I ever had," Quintero says on his YouTube channel. "It's probably the best idea anyone has ever had."
Quintero trains circus acrobats behind his 1,311-square-foot home on an acre of unincorporated land near North Miami. His home-based business, Miami Flying Trapeze, features a supersized rig that runs the length of Quintero's three-bedroom house and includes ladders, bars, safety lines, and a net.
From the right angle in the neighborhood, you might see bodies twirling and catapulting a few stories above the ground on any given day.
The aerial artist — a stout, outspoken Florida native who has run restaurants in Jacksonville and a car dealership in Doral — describes his trapeze rig as a sprawling, portable swing set that he can dismantle in an hour and fit into a six-by-twelve-foot trailer.
The backyard acrobatics were running smoothly until county code enforcement agents zeroed in on the property, he says.
Since September 2022, Quintero and his wife, Maria Briceno, have received several citations based on the code enforcement department's claims of unlawful parking of a commercial vehicle, failure to secure building permits, and failure to obtain a certificate for a home occupation.
"My business, my home-based business that the State of Florida allows — the things that I do on my private property — are being denied to me," Quintero told the county commission last year in protest.
The dispute has galvanized Quintero to participate in the First Amendment auditing community, whose participants prod government officials on their knowledge of constitutional rights while recording the public interactions.
Quintero has also mounted a longshot run for Miami-Dade mayor — and though he insists it's not a sideshow, his motivations may sit somewhere between genuine civic concern and counterstrike over the code enforcement dispute. (When discussing his political aspirations on social media, he writes, "Oy Vey! What am I doing?")
"Because I still found inconsistencies in the government, specifically in the charter, I am running for mayor," Quintero said.
Quintero sued the county in May, alleging code enforcement officers infringed on his privacy rights and trespassed on his land.
"Plaintiffs currently do not have [peace] of mind or an expectation of privacy in their own home," the complaint, filed by his attorney Michael Garcia, says.
Trapeze artists fly high in Miguel Quintero's backyard.
Screenshot via YouTube/Miami Circus
The case, which he describes on his YouTube channel as a "$15 million lawsuit," was dismissed in August, with the judge writing that Quintero did not follow pre-suit legal procedures before bringing his claims to court.
Quintero plans to refile the lawsuit and test how far the Florida drone statute can go.
Meanwhile, the backyard acrobat, who says he studied physics and theology in college, is digging in his heels to clear the citations from his home.
Quintero tells New Times that in late August, he notched a win on the administrative side when he secured a dismissal on the citation for failure to obtain a home occupation certificate. He is still facing citations related to commercial vehicle parking and allegedly unpermitted work at the property, according to county records.
The battle to keep his trapeze operation running and stave off county scrutiny has put a strain on his business and family life, but Quintero is not letting up.
"We're in survivor mode right now, and I'm coming at them with everything," he said in a self-recorded monologue in April.
Backyard trapeze artist Miguel Quintero claims he's being harassed by Miami-Dade County code enforcement.
Court exhibit in Miguel Quintero lawsuit
"I have seen Miguel turn regular people into superheroes — average humans turned into flying and flipping machines," one supporter wrote, according to the trapeze artist's campaign site. "It is no easy task to convince someone to jump off a 30-foot platform into another's arms, yet he does this daily."
"If he can do all that through the circus, I can only imagine what he can do as a mayor," the comment reads.
