I only came for two days of playing
But every time I come I always wind up stayin'
In a fortunate twist and excellent break from dreary, Canadian winter, I spent a few days in Miami. It’s an incredible – and incredibly strange – city. Florida on the whole is bipolar: lavish supercar-and-coloured-light-everywhere Miami representing one pole, which wraps itself around the stunning coastline. And you can move toward the other pole simply by traveling inland, until you arrive at shotgun shack swampland, rife with alligators and flat-earth scientists.
But today we’re talking about neither science nor swampland. We’re talking about Miami, and not just Miami, but the Lamborghini people who make the city so special.
Many of our world’s great cities draw people in to see extravagant sights. Maybe more than any other city in the world, Miami draws people in to be the sights, and be seen by others. With a very twisted misunderstanding of the word, you could almost say it’s a communal vibe, with people creating the spectacle that common-folk like myself come to behold: yachts, space-age architected houses, time-defying plastic surgeries, Italian supercars… you name it. Of course, this is an every-man-for-himself situation and none of these luxuries are to be shared, other than to be seen and sought.
I feel foolish for quoting Will Smith not once but twice in this post, but he says it so well:
Water so clear, you can see to the bottom
Hundred-thousand dollar cars, everybody got em
To a small enough creature, a hamster wheel looks a lot like a ladder.
And so here’s the story: On a Friday night walk through South Beach, I happened upon a rooftop club. I wasn’t on that rooftop, I was on the sidewalk. But I could hear the drifting clink of glass and the rumble of unrestrained bass and could let my mind wander to high elevation, society, and drink prices. Yet there was enough excitement down on the street to catch my attention – in front of da club was a lineup of fantasy cars that told the whole story of Miami, and status-climbing generally.
At the rear of the lineup was a lemon-yellow McLaren 765LT, a car the manufacturer describes as “Powerful, Light, and Track-Focused”. Perfect for driving no more than 45 km/h down usually-congested Collins Ave.
In front of the McLaren was a white Lamborghini Huracán. The apex of Italian design in vehicular form; driving around in this quarter-million-dollar supercar must feel like you’re on top of the world, listening to the bridled engine rumbling as the valet humbly parallel parks a car meant to travel 300 km/h, and you saunter past a squad of poker-faced bouncers toward uncommon pleasures. Even with the McLaren behind it, I can imagine Mr. White Lambo feeling like Yertle The Turtle as he enters da club with a swish of that black velvet curtain.
And so you can imagine his dismay upon exiting a few hours later and seeing, parked in front of his car, a modified Lamborghini Huracán STO in charcoal gray with diabolical red accents, a massive carbon fibre spoiler and every part that previously seemed to be perfect, swapped out for a higher-performance version.
This post isn’t about auto ogling, it’s about the endless and pointless race for status.
You would think that pulling up in the white Lambo means you’ve won. Of course, time goes by and your 2023 Lambo is suddenly outdated. Or dust, or dents, or any other form of entropy. None of those can be avoided. But they’re also to be expected, and somehow more surprising is that the car of Satan himself was sitting right at the front of this valet line, making the half-million-dollars’ worth of cars behind it look like used Toyotas.
Just when Mr White Lambo thought he was at the top of the ladder, he realized there were a few more rungs.
There’s Miami for you. What a person needs to do (legal or not) to drive such a car is mostly a mystery. I say mostly because there’s another, very substantial part to Miami High Life which is a complete façade, where supercars like these are rented for a few days to convey the ultimate flex, and who knows, maybe Mr. Black-and-Red Huracán STO is struggling to pay off old school-debt and decided to rent this thing to feel like a king. In a way this is even more confounding because the higher rungs of The Ladder may be occupied by charlatans renting cars from a place like this:
Yet standing back from this climbing and this status race, there’s a warm and well-lit spot I found myself standing in, over and over. It comes from a healthy dose of curiosity and humour, to see all these games playing out, and just being able to enjoy the sight of beautiful things. Spoils of war, basically. It’s nice on the eyes and keeps me warm as I return to this slushy climate-change winter that seems to have a hard time getting started.
Just like Yertle The Turtle saw the moon above his tower of turtles on which he was perched, someone somewhere is driving a spaceship on high-performance carbon fibre wheels with massive disc brakes, and if the point is to be seen as walking gold … well, there’s always platinum waiting around the next bend.
[Footnote of interest: I struck up a conversation with one of the valets at this club and asked him about the cars. He said he hates driving Lamborghinis. Well, parking Lamborghinis. To be fair, I think these cars are designed to do everything other than to be parked. But, he said they’re terribly uncomfortable and annoyingly low to the ground. Well, once we start thinking too much about practicalities, we all end up back in Toyotas.]