Shades and a sexy drinking buddy aren't all you need for a perfect vacation (though it sometimes seems that way). In BEFORE TAKE-OFF, OC brings you guides on what to read, watch, and listen to before heading to our five favorite US destinations. This week: Miami.
1. Listen to Jubilee, aka Jessica Gentile to soundtrack your strut down South Beach with grimy, Latin-influenced, after-hours-strip-club electronic bass music. “It was like your childhood pop music, if you were from there,” the Miami-raised producer/DJ says. “I had a system in my car—in my high school, when you graduated, you either got fake boobs or a system in your car.” You can get her OC-exclusive "Bad Gal RiRi" mixtape here, and check out some strip clubs like Scarlett’s Cabaret or King of Diamonds (where famous people like to drop mad cash—Beiber made $75K rain, and Rick Ross spent $1 million on his birthday). Like Gentile says, “It’s where you can drink or hang after the clubs close at 5 AM. You don’t go to the strip club to go to the strip club; it’s just open.”
2. Watch Fresh Off the Boat with Eddie Huang: Miami. Huang is a comedian, writer, expert on munchies, and owner of the East Village bao jump-off Baohaus. In these FOB series, he visits cities around the world and hangs out with local talents (members of a metal band in Taipei; Kid Mero in the Bronx) talking controversial, often political local issues, and eating lots of delicious food. In this episode, Huang plays with the idea of “food porn,” quite literally. “When you say ‘food porn,’” he says, “half the time it’s just some dumbass making scrambled eggs with some lox mixed in on Sunday mornings, on Instagram. You want to see food porn? We’ll go make fucking food porn.” The result? Huang, porn star Jada Stevens, and a film crew on a “Bang Bus” driving around Miami making exactly that. They recommend: Morro Castle, for fritas and greasy, fried onion-stuffed Cuban burgers, and Skebo’s Kitchen BBQ, an African-American-style barbecue stand in the parking lot of strip club Club Lexx.
3. Read Tom Wolfe's Back To Blood. Cuban-American cop Nestor Camacho arrests an asylum seeker from Castro's regime in Biscayne Bay. Though he was following a direct order, his family and the wider Cuban community in Hialeah (the real “Little Havana”) see it as a betrayal to one of their own blood and disown him. This will be a perfect companion to your lazy beach days, whichever sunny beach you decide to soak in. Rent a cheesy Maserati and take a breezy drive down to the end of the Florida Keys, where the palm trees will be swaying on white sand awaiting your arrival. Or you could just sloth around South Beach, people watch, and wait until the sun