Miami Twice -- Archives
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Winning the battle of South Beach
More >>First things first: If you're headed for the Orange Bowl, the Toby the Van tailgate part is located in parking lot 6. "It's realy easy to find us," Toby
helper Wade Gupta
-- who arrived at the stadium parking lot at 10 a.m., an hour
before it opened -- told me via cell phone. "We're right by the
entrance to the Fan Zone, and we've got a Stanford flag and a
pirate flag flying overhead."I'm not sure how many pirate flags will be out at the stadium today, but judging from last night on South Beach, there should be approximately 1.6 jillion Stanford flags. Stanford people were swarming all around last night; for every Virginia Tech t-shirt or cap, there were three from Stanford. (My favorite: WE DIDN'T GIVE UP WHEN THE GERMANS BOMBED PEARL HARBOR. Probably left over from the 2006 team, but funny anyway.)
The coolest part of the night was the Stanford pep rally out on the sand. Well, the sec...
Posted by Mr. Glenn Garvin on Jan 3 2011 12:51PM | 1 comments
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Honest -- I'm the hottest football coach in America! Really!
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So, I hear Stanford players are having a great time at the Fontainebleau, the South Beach hotel where they're staying. They've spotted and in varying degrees chitchatted with Natalie Portman, Jamie Foxx, and various Kardashians.On the other hand, when Jim Harbaugh saw Sean Penn and went over to introduce himself, Penn, displaying a complete lack of interest, quickly walked away. Now we know why Stanford's stadium doesn't fill up -- Marin County just isn't that into us.
Posted by Mr. Glenn Garvin on Jan 2 2011 11:58AM | 0 comments
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Hot off the presses!
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I'l be back with more later on Sunday, but wanted to get these two bits of breaking news from this morning's Miami Herald up as quickly as possible.Posted by Mr. Glenn Garvin on Jan 2 2011 6:01AM | 0 comments
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How not to spend a million bucks on South Beach
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Sunday's going
to be a busy evening on South Beach. First there's a Stanford pep
rally from 5 to 6:30 p.m. at a temporary ampitheater erected
on Ocean Drive between 6th and 8th Streets. Then there's a no-host
Stanford bar at the Clevelander Hotel, which is at
Ocean Drive and 10th Street, from 6 p.m. until closing, which in
Miami Beach means July, 2014.South Beach can certainly be fun -- just ask Paris Hilton -- but if you get tired of pounding techno music and $18 mojitos, here are a couple of non-glam suggestions:
** The 11th Street Diner. Located at 11th and Washington, just a couple of blocks from all the Stanford stuff on Ocean Drive, this pleasant little joint has a great jukebox, a full bar and a splendid menu of both Cuban and American food, all at actual human prices. Guy Fier...
Posted by Mr. Glenn Garvin on Dec 30 2010 9:10AM | 0 comments
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Tailgate with Toby!
More >>Here's some good Orange Bowl news: After several days of doing its always-popular imitation of North Dakota, Miami has reverted to its actual self. Temperatures soared from the 30s to the 70s on Wednesday, the makeshift igloos along South Beach melted, and the weather people (as opposed to the Weathermen, who had a lot to do with the temperature on campus back when I was a student) say the balm will hold through the game.
Speaking of the
Weathermen, a guerrilla alternative to the official
Stanford tailgate party at the Orange Bowl has developed.
Toby the Van, who is to Stanford tailgating as the Tree is to the
LSJUMB -- except without, so far, the arrests or ejections from the
Alamo -- is coming to Miami.And unlike the Tree, Toby the Van is not some anthro...
Posted by Mr. Glenn Garvin on Dec 29 2010 2:43PM | 0 comments
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Harbaugh hates Miami
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That would be Addie Harbaugh, age 2. She looked positively underwhelmed by South Florida's legendarily lush tropical weather when she arrived on the Stanford team charter Monday night. Andrew Luck told reporters: "It hasn't really sunk in yet that we're here." With temperatures in the 30s, I'm sure it hasn't. Damn global warming. Here's the Miami Herald's story about the team's arrival. Posted by Mr. Glenn Garvin on Dec 28 2010 7:34AM | 0 comments
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Volcano warning for Orange Bowl weekend
More >>The Orange Bowl? Big deal. The real show in South Florida is going to take place two days earlier, when the supremely subversive Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band meets the untuously uptight city of Coral Gables.
The LSJUMB is
marching -- well, not exactly marching, but whatever the hell you
call it that those guys do -- in the Junior Orange Bowl Parade.
This is not the big vulgar extravaganza that used to run through
downtown Miami, the one you used to watch on TV when Bob Hope
and Muhammad Ali and KC and the Sunshine Band were in it.No, the Junior Orange Bowl Parade (no relation to Leland Stanford Junior) is a smaller, ungaudier affair of high school bands and homecoming queens and homemade floats. It runs through Coral Gables, a control-freaky suburb just west of the Miami city limits. Coral Gables is famous for city ordinances that cats must be kept on leashes, that pickup trucks...
Posted by Mr. Glenn Garvin on Dec 27 2010 4:45PM | 0 comments
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A shaken, not stirred, New Year's Eve in Miami
More >>What on earth are you reading this for? Don't you have any Christmas shopping left to do? Well, I do, so today we're going to have to be brief. First, for anybody who will be spending New Year's Eve in the Miami area, here's a link to stuff that restaurants and bars are planning for the night.
My favorite is the
James Bond-themed party at the Blue Martini in downtown
Miami, but for the $250 price tag, seems to me you ought to get
a date with the Goldfinger girl as part of the package.Meanwhile, if you just want to talk football, here's an interesting debate you can join about the best Stanford quarterback of the past 70 years or so. As I write this, the vote is a...
Posted by Mr. Glenn Garvin on Dec 23 2010 2:42PM | 0 comments
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Do NOT bring your giant pink snail costume to Miami
More >>If you're coming here for the Orange Bowl, know this: Miami loves you. Well, to be more precise, Miami loves your money. But it is prepared to at least like you, though we sometimes express our affection rather clumsily. Dave Barry once wrote a column about how, when he first moved here, neighbors kept ringing his doorbell and exlaiming: "Hi! Nice to meet you! We're not going to kill you!" (Because we both work at the Miami Herald, people always ask me what Dave Barry is really like. I usually answer that he's pretty nice except for his troubling obsession with sex with dogs.)
However, our
embrace of visitors is not open-ended. Garishly colored gastropods,
for instance, are unwelcome. Earlier this month, during Art Basel
-- an international art festival and exhibition at which
peop...Posted by Mr. Glenn Garvin on Dec 22 2010 6:20PM | 0 comments
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Stop by my room
More >>No matter where you're staying in the Miami area for the Orange Bowl (note the absence of any conditionals, qualifiers or other grammatical weasels there -- you HAVE TO COME), at some point you've got to be sure to stop by the Fontainebleau Hotel on Miami Beach, where the Stanford team is staying. Whether you think the place is the very lap of luxury or a staggering immersion in vulgarity, it's the essence of South Florida.
You want
celebrity glitter? LeBron James hangs out all the times at
LIV, one of the hotel bars. So do Alex Rodriguez, Ice-T and David
Arquette. (Sorry, guys, no sign of Courteney.) You want show-biz
glamour? Goldfinger was shot there. So was part of
Scarface. (They're standing in the Fontainebleau lobby
when Al Pacino looks at Steven Bauer and mutters, "This is
parad...Posted by Mr. Glenn Garvin on Dec 21 2010 3:53PM | 0 comments
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Next best thing to an Orange Bowl GPS
More >>Everybody's first question about Miami: Where the hell are these Orange Bowl seats that Stanford sold me? Here's a pretty cool site that will not only pinpoint their location, but give you a 3-D view of what you'll be able to see at the game. By next week, I hope to have a link that will tell if Gloria
Estefan,
JLo or a Kardashian is sitting near you.Everybody's second question about Miami: How the hell do we make sure Jim Harbaugh gets on the plane and comes home after the game, instead of running off to the NFL? The only sure-fire methods I know of mostly run afoul of those petty bureaucrats at the BATF. But here's an encouraging story about Harbaugh's plans which, if it doesn't exactly co...
Posted by Mr. Glenn Garvin on Dec 17 2010 2:51PM | 1 comments
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Why are you reading this instead of flying to Miami?
More >>Congratulations! You've already made one very smart decision -- to blow off work to read this blog. (Yeah, yeah, you visit here from home. I understand. That's what I just told my boss a minute ago, in fact.) Now I hope to persuade you to make another -- come to Miami to see Stanford crush, devour and excrete Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl on Jan. 3.
As much fun as it will be to taunt the Hokies (how can you not ridicule a team with a nickname like that?), there's a lot of other fun stuff to do here, and I'll help you explore it all: Best place to get hammered on mojitos. (Students: Don't try this on campus!) Top nude beach. (Also better not try that on campus. Though back when I was a student, there
was a rush party at
the Phi Delt house that -- oh, let's not go there.) Cutest serial
killer. Coolest alligator wrestling. Virginia Tech defensive
back most likely to weep in humiliation after givi...Posted by Mr. Glenn Garvin on Dec 16 2010 1:08PM | 0 comments
