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WHAT’S GOOD MIAMI: 10.12.26
This Week’s Issue
This week’s issue is about a city that’s still being shaped, and I am going to teach you how to put your hands on it.
Miami is clay, not concrete, which means the best version of almost every category here doesn’t exist yet. On Ocean Drive, The Tides reopens in November after nine dark years, with just 45 keys and a second chance to decide what the street stands for. In Boca, Michael Dell is selling condos at The Boca Raton for $9 million and up, but what he’s really selling is a club membership that passes from grandparents to grandchildren.
With 50 days to Basel, a Coconut Grove dealer is headed to prison for fake Warhols, while a new survey shows the biggest spenders in art are Gen Z: young, mostly inherited money, private, and buying straight from artists on their phones. Two chefs who trained under Robuchon and Jean Georges are opening Anako in Little River, and I’m calling it one of the best openings of the year before I’ve had a bite. Clay Conley is putting Imoto right next to Buccan on Miracle Mile.
The bigger theme: in Miami right now, the people who win aren’t fighting over territory somebody else already owns. They’re claiming ground nobody has stood on yet.
ON MY MIND: Miami Is Clay, Not Concrete
Lincoln Road is being rewritten. Brickell is building.
Mana now has what he needs to finish downtown.
North Beach was never. Now it’s just around the corner.
The Grove is back, and more expensive than ever.
Here is what I figured out about this city.
New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, London. Most of the great cities of the world are concrete. Ours is not.
Concrete cities are finished. The categories are claimed. The leaders are installed. The rooms were built before you got here, and your whole career is spent asking permission to sit in one of them.
Miami is not finished.
It is still clay. Still wet, still soft, still taking the shape of whoever shows up and presses hardest.
It is the fastest growing capital and cultural market in America, and almost every category is still looking for a leader.
Not a competitor. A leader.
Think about your own category for a second. The best version of it in this city probably does not exist yet.
Which means you are not fighting for share. You are claiming ground nobody has stood on.
That is a completely different game, and almost nobody here is playing it on purpose.
Concrete sets. Clay waits for hands.
Choose your lane. You too can dominate your category.
I am going to teach a course on it. Sign up for the waitlist at HERE.
BEACH BUSINESS
Ocean Drive gets Legendary Tides Hotel Back in November
The Tides at 1220 Ocean Drive reopens in November, nearly nine years after Hurricane Irma shut it down in 2017. Nine years of a landmark Art Deco hotel sitting dark on Ocean Drive is finally over.
