So, since that last angerlogue on hating being a pedestrian, I have owned, bemoaned, and sold my first car--to a crusty, racist hippy named Ray, but that is its own story... enough story to make a Mother May I Sleep with Danger-styled after-school special. The car, a 1983 guard's red Porsche 944, was cool, but also a money vampire killing me at uncomfortably uneven intervals. I had to escape its siren song, so I released the car to Ray a few months ago.
Since then, for the most part, I am a pedestrian once again, this time in Miami. I have been carpooling/chauffeuring my wife and using her car when I need to make meetings of my own.
The problem with this: too many immigrants. Now, I haven't done enough research to talk about any socio-economic statistics; my comments for the complaining here and now relate only to the goddamn of it all that the immigrants here refuse to submit to our basic social and safety laws. I am talking common courtesy and sense: how much personal space to give someone at the ATM, and how to cross the goddamn motherfuckin' sonofabitchin' street.
What follows is not racism. I have no problem with black people. I lived in Chicago for over 10 years, most of my time on the South Side, so I have lived among and worked with black people. African-Americans. (Americans being the key word.)
In the part of Miami I live, there are few African-Americans. There are, however, boatloads of Haitians. And Haitians seem to have a problem with walking and driving in public areas. Our standard of common sense dictates that one shouldn't wear all black at night--especially if you are black and can't submit to the oppression of crosswalks. At least keep a brisk pace or a little half-jog across the way.
Sometimes it feels like I am back in driver's ed, navigating a How-Not-To video of nearly invisible men and women crossing the street at the most inopportune times. And I mean men and women--adults who should know better. At least most of the kids ride around on bikes that have some shiny metal properties to them.
And the driving. In Apocalypse Now, they said, "The horror, the horror." If by horror they meant dodging cars on the freeway that obviously can't handle idling in an alley, then I'm living that movie. I would need more than all my digits to count the episodes of mattress fires on the freeway. Surely, Vincent Price would get a boner over the chills and thrills one experiences while driving to get groceries because of morons like this.
All of this is made more fear-inducing by another immigration abomination called the Miami Mini-Bus. Picture something that's a cross between those little extend-a-cab church vans and the crappy terrorist van from Back to the Future. Now at the wheel, imagine an immigrant who isn't required to have any specialized license. Essentially, the passengers are people who just pay some guy a buck for a ride in his big van. Having someone unversed in US traffic law driving badly and stopping randomly to pick up people who lack the proper judgment to navigate a sidewalk makes for maddening traffic.
That's the poorer side of Miami. Next time, I'll tear a new one into the flashy, showy a-holes of this city. Starting point: If you are driving a high-end sports car, you shouldn't be wearing jogging pants and driving back to your apartment.