Wednesday September 12, 2007
History-based Sprint ad
The trend in cell phone marketing seems to be local flavor (there’s an AT&T ad with four palm trees as signal graphs making the rounds), and Spring comes in with this handsome entry, bearing the headline “Our signal is way caliente.” And featuring a light painting made on South Beach. I dig. But.
See the problem? Let me give you a hint. That’s right — the lifeguard stand in the photo was removed after last year’s hurricane season. I don’t think this particularly diminishes the ad (it does give a glimpse into the time-lines that go into producing things like this). But it sure gives lie to the idiot officials that claim the new lifeguard stands are as popular as the old ones. Picture this in the background of that image. Not so much, eh?
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Wednesday July 25, 2007
Miami Beach lifeguard stands: last two standing
These are photos of the last two standing of the original Art Deco lifeguard stands. I took these photos in February, but both of these are still there; all the others have been replaced by the new boxy monstrosities (comprehensive photoset coming soon).
10th Street (you can click these and get geotags at flickr).
12th Street.
Scrapyard behind the Convention Center, where these two were temporarily stored on their way to the scrap yard. I also dug up this photo, of one of the original, but non-deco-ed stands. This one stood at South Pointe, and was photographed in 2003.
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Tuesday July 24, 2007
Miami Beach defends crappy new lifeguard stands
Illustration by Mike Gorman, New Times.
While I was sleeping, last week’s New Times quoted me as saying “Whoever thought this piece of shit up missed the spirit of the originals by a mile, and should be kicked in his patriotic balls.” It accompanies this article by Janine Zeitlin, which defends the new lifeguard stands as cheaper, and opens, “Tourists love ‘em. So say Miami Beach city officials.” Well duh, they haven’t seen the originals. “With art deco, everything goes.” Um, don’t even get me started. People come from all over the world by the millions, as much for the beach as for anything else, and you’re justifying your cheapness while spending lavishly on park overhauls, Washington Ave. “beautification” (as if anybody cares about Washington Ave.), and tax refunds. The lifeguard stands should have been restored or recreated according to the original designs. And Scott Timm should have said so when asked, not begged off because the stands are not technically in the historic district.
Anyway, the quote (“Ript from the blogs,” not in the online version) provides a link to the photo (where the above quote is from). NT also helpfully linked to my Sun-Sentinel website writeup (so did Elad, thanks) and a recent weekend todo. Wow.
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Tuesday January 16, 2007
MaEx links to Beth Dunlop’s writeup of the unappealing new South Beach lifeguard stands. Here is the one I photographed last year, and here they are under construction.
Wednesday June 28, 2006
Assembly line of new lifeguard stands for South Beach in Flamingo Park. Bummer: they’re cookie-cutter, not reconstructions of the iconic whimsical designs.
