En Route to Miami [Travel]
2 min read
As I cross Florida Route 1, I look up at the towering Mediterranean Revival-style building that has been my home for the last four days. Its fourteen stories make it among the tallest structures in the sea of low density. Three of those fourteen, of course relegated to parking, fulfilling the City of Boca Raton's parking mandate.
Walking along the stroad to catch my train, I couldn't help but notice the Floridian disease that is the valet. Valet everything, and not just at the high-end places. My working prognosis for this oddity is urban planning, weather, and status. South Florida urban planners operate on the brilliant premise that humans should never touch actual earth, forcing cities into vast asphalt oceans where a fifty-yard walk requires a vehicular rescue team, or what I'm told are called "valets." The muggy 74% humidity, paired with 91°F, gives the whole affair the charm of a boiling hot dish towel dropped squarely over your face.
But strip away the practical excuses and what's left is status. The valet stand is a zero- sum signalling game. Your Audi Q5 gets parked up front until the Bentayga rolls in, then you're relegated to the back lot. I think of how Kierkegaard would view this, perhaps as the aesthetic life exposed. You thought you owned the car, but you were actually renting a rank. A soul needing constant comparison to feel secure was never a soul, just a position in a queue. Rousseau would point to amour-propre, self-love that only exists relative to other men. The meaning hasn't changed, God still asks for more than a man's place in line, but the incentives pulling against him have grown teeth no earlier generation had to contend with. The tragedy is that once amour-propre wins, it doesn't know how to turn itself off. Amour de soi would let him enjoy the car because it drives well. Amour-propre won't let him enjoy it until someone else's car doesn't arrive at all.
As I entered the air-conditioned Brightline station that had not yet seen its fourth year, I was greeted by the Rapiscan 620XR Checkpoint X-Ray Screening System. Brightline is unusual among American railroads in requiring a security screening before boarding, a formality I bore without complaint, having brought no luggage or possessions beyond the complimentary Hyatt water bottle from my room. Florida is, after all, a permitless state, first in the nation for concealed weapon licenses issued. They don't call it the Gunshine State for nothing.
As I lounged on a surprisingly well upholstered couch, I admired a terminal so spotless it might have passed for an American Express Lounge, and gave no outward sign that its company stood but seven days from bankruptcy. $985M of Brightline’s junk bonds had not yet seen repayment following two extensions from its lenders. Oh well, I doubt my $29.50 fare will make a dent.
Just as the clock would have it, the train arrived a minute early, clearly Florida's reputation for "latin time" didn't extend to their railways. As I boarded car nine, I was hoping the wheels had been greased and the brakes serviced, rather than that capital directed to pay its creditors.
As we chugged along, past Fort Lauderdale I sauntered the length of the ten train cars, after all my phone battery, a mere 17%. Roughly two-thirds of the guests sat in silence, most scrolling one of the platforms, likely one of the Meta varieties. The remaining third talked, mostly at a projecting volume: the men on baseball, specifically the Mets' season completing its annual implosion, the women venting about their sons' new girlfriends. As we pulled into the elevated Miami Station, elevated in the literal sense, I stepped out into a now 79% humidity, I crossed the road just as four dirt bikes roared down the boulevard blasting Lil Baby’s "Pure Cocaine". No more than five strides later, I came across two chickens eating a chicken strip outside of a Chick-fil-A. I didn't know what Miami had in store for me, but its first impression was certainly memorable.
J