Nathaniel Sandler

Many have taken the recent closing of Barnes and Noble in Aventura and the general dearth of bookstores in Miami as an omen, a portentous sign that the city is somehow culturally headed in the wrong direction.

And the easy takedown of South Florida, both nationally and from locals, is that a lack of bookstores is representative of a stupid populace, or an uncultured mass mostly focused on booze and partying.

But bemoaning the death of the bookstore is missing the point. It’s happening everywhere. And it’s not just a South Florida issue.

Have you ever tried to cross US-1 on foot? Both in South and North Miami, all the way through Broward and even in parts of the Florida Keys it’s a harrowing experience. People are driving fast and not expecting pedestrians. It has the feel of an action movie to it and one you’re definitely not starring in.

There are other roads that have this same feel in South Florida. Brickell, Calle Ocho and the Macarthur Causeway are streets you take to get from point A to point B and pray you avoid running into a $200,000 luxury car or uninsured $500 car.

Two months ago, twelve dump trucks bursting with dirt and fill from a downtown Miami construction site made their way to the Everglades Outpost, an animal rescue facility in Florida City.

Barbara Tansey, the facility’s owner and overseer is slowly sifting through the remnants looking for clues. Though volunteers occasionally come to help, at some moments the elderly Tansey is entirely on her own, tirelessly sifting in hopes of revealing any artifact.

It should be mentioned that twelve truckloads is an insane amount of dirt.

Built in 1964 as part of the Cold War response to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Nike Missile Silo was abandoned in 1979, but the former complex remains eerily intact within the southern portion of Everglades National Park. It is a reminder of a time when South Florida was a focal point of international politics, and it's also one the region's more famous abandoned sites.

Well everybody, I have a new assignment. I'm WLRN's Flawed-But-Fabulous beat reporter.

P. Scott Cunningham is the founder of O, Miami, a biennial poetry festival in Miami organized by the University of Wynwood and with support from the Miami-based Knight Foundation. The festival is happening this month.

WLRN: Tell us a little bit about yourself. The real P. Scott Cunningham. 

Dear New York Times,

Hello! It’s Miami! We wanted to write and let you know that we’re a real place. You’ve seen us before. We’re the ones that had that land boom in the 1920s.

We’re writing to you from the offices of WLRN, because we care. We love the Gray Lady. We wouldn’t dare see her honor besmirched because of us, Miami.

Going to an antiquarian book fair with a university’s special collections librarian is similar to walking around Central Park with a leaky bag of bread crumbs. Or if you prefer a local metaphor, like a chum brick floating in Government Cut, with sharks coming for miles bumping their noses against the boat to test the edibility of the situation. Watching the dealers shout down a respected and well-known book buyer is a sight to be seen.

It’s hard to explain to someone what “sound art” is. These are encounters that bend our traditional definition of music, and the truth is CDs and MP3s simply cannot reproduce the experience. 

Luckily, the Subtropics music festival is literally your sounding board—both an introduction and advanced course—and a navigational chart for becoming conquistador of sound.

It seemed general consensus that no one really knew the facts about the auction last Saturday of a piece by graffiti artist Banksy. Certain parties weren't talking. In retrospect, the answer may have been simply that Fine Arts Auctions Miami knew what may be coming, that it would have to withdraw the piece over questions about who actually owns it. 

 Tucked away on a high shelf in the collections room of the Museum of Science is a startlingly unique rock specimen. It is white with long jutting crystal arms and made of a fragile mineral called calcite. The piece looks like it comes from completely different planet.