Happy New Years…Miami’s Melting Pot Style (Part 2)

My 2011 started with family and friends but after midnight the game plan was to hit Spain’s biggest party in the world, Matinée Group came to Miami Beach for the first time ever. What could be a better start to the New Year? SoBe with “The Boys” to get some of that Spanish energy, from our December 2009 trip to Madrid, back into our lives to start the year. We would all go and dance our asses off to the wicked beats of NewYo-rican Hector Fonseca and be surrounded by the magic that is a Matinée party, or so I thought.
For some time now Miami has been getting this great reputation for being a great party town. But I’ve always been completely confused as to why or maybe I’m just missing the spots truly earning this title. Aside from a few major weekends (i.e. Winter Music Conference, White Party, and Winter Party), there are the occasional weekends that some random venue gets a truly great DJ to mix things up. But that happens few and far apart.

I expected the Matinée party to live up to what I experienced in Ibiza (or even in Barcelona) during my summer 2009 in Spain. But how wrong was I to think that this could even be a minor reflection. Besides having to avoid the road blocks into the beach from the first two causeways which lead me to enter the beach from the 79 Street Causeway which took an extra hour. Then I get to the Chase ATM to pull some cash and low and behold the card gets declined. After trying at a 2nd bank location and then the Walgreen on Alton Road next to the 2nd Chase and the same thing. There was cash because I did the transfer myself online hours earlier and confirmed the cash was there on the phone system. So now I’m stuck on the beach with only $25 cash on me. Why did I wait to pull the cash? Why would I wait to pull cash on such a night? Well for the most part every where on SoBe accepts credit cards so why would I have to worry?

At this point my nephew and I decide to just find a street parking spot and save the parking fees. We are stuck with no cash as neither of us has been successful to pull cash. This makes me think of how in the city we do not carry cash anymore. Today at the office when I spoke with people about it most people agreed. The majority do not carry cash when they go out. In the city you do not feel the need to carry cash because it makes most feel unsafe and/or as if it were a burden to some. I thought this was interesting and something worth looking into for a future entry.