It's slightly amusing to read all the post-Art Basel coverage written by out-of-towners, especially when they set their sights not on art, but on our fair city. For the record, though, fellow scribes: Half the places you call Cuban cafés are not actually Cuban; Wynwood is a specific neighborhood and not a blanket term for everything west of Biscayne Bay; and please don't act so surprised when you run into locals who are not suntanned and wearing neon Lycra.
According to the New York Post, all the homeless folks, hookers, and crackheads have won us the ultimate compliment: We're more "authentic" than New York now. OK, "authentic" is the ultimate compliment in the world of Hipster Runoff, but still.
The Post, being a New York paper and all, zeroed in on the most New York thing in town, the anniversary Overtown outpost of popular Lower East Side bar Max Fish (by the way, apparently there are now plans to keep the place open on a semi-regular basis).
"While the Lower East Side has transformed into a gentrified playground, the Overtown neighborhood home of the new Max Fish has a long, long way to go. Yet that hasn't stopped thousands of art and booze fans from descending on the new location. If anything, the dangerous surroundings make it a more authentic Max Fish experience."The writer, Justin Rocket Silverman, however, seems a little surprised that Miami could be home to a down-and-dirty dive bar. Even though we have our own share of them -- Churchill's, the Club Deuce, and Tobacco Road, to name a few. Maybe one day someone will ship one up to New York. When is your major art fair?
Anyway, with Brooklyn, specifically Williamsburgh -- New York's latest attempt at gritty, authentic, yet culturally relevant neighborhood, now a punch line inhabited by trust-fund kids -- we have to wonder if the vast hipster exodus to Overtown is right around the corner.
