BrandNew BrandSmart

Not too long ago, this retail space was empty for a while and now it is occupied by a new BrandSmart USA store. It's a bit on the small side for this kind of store that sells quite a large inventory. I guess this brand store will survive in this economy because they really do have very low prices for their ware.

Hidden Canvas

South Miami has lots of land and many houses sit on huge lots. Along this now abandoned rail road track is this big house with a wooden fence in its backyard. I really like the mural painted by this artist who apparently signed his/her name as HA. I wonder how long it took for this painting to be completed.

Overindulged America

I can't help to use this photo... Although I don't like to doctor my photos, these have been "mosaic blurred" so the persons here cannot easily be identified. Here we are at the famous Colonel's place from Kentucky. The big ad photo you see on the right says "NEW Doublicious (TM) Try it in original recipe @ or grilled. Obviously, that cannot be any good.

Chicken Wings

It's getting late on a Friday night... and I MUST have some chicken wings... PLEASE! So I went to my favorite place, Sports Grill on Sunset Drive and about 102nd avenue. Of course, it's Friday night and the place is packed. Customers are sent to wait outside for about 30 minutes or more before they can get a table. This is what it looks like at about 8:30pm today. You don't see me because I'm the guy taking the photo.

Go Canes!

I've been really busy and down... so I had two excuses to neglect my blog... No more... Let's get going again... I went to a UM woman basketball game tonight. The small home arena is on Ponce de Leon on the main UM campus. We are ranked 12th in the nation and battling tonight our arch enemy the "hated" Florida State Seminole FSU and they rank 14th. It was an exciting game. Unfortunately, this was my sight all night. I could only see half the game, when it happened on the other side of the court. We had fun and we won 84-68. Go Canes!

Borders

Across from Shorty's on US-1 is this great bookstore Borders Book Shop. This store has lots of technical books that are hard to find... until now when they can easily be found on the internet. That I think is a major reason why this chain is about to be extinct. In fact, rumors have it that Borders is about to go bankrupt. They said it began to delay paying its bills from the publishers. That is usually the ominous prediction of bankruptcy. I think it's too small to become a Barnes & Nobles. In any case, I no longer buy paper books because I read mine in digital, non DRM, of course. What's DRM, you asked? That's the Dumb Rude Method (Digital Rights Management, yeah right!) that was invented to protect the books sold in digital format. The whole world hates it and I won't ever buy these books again.

By the way, the strange neon reflections you see are selling beer at Shortys'.

Count Them

Look, there are really Five Guys making burgers here. If you don't believe me, count them.

New Year Art

There is a very astute art that is being demonstrated here: making this tree flower on the first new lunar year day, which is today, February 3rd. This is an Ochna integerrima. I think the secret is to strip the entire tree of its leaves on the right date prior to the anticipated blooming date which should be right on the first day of the year. I don't think that is that easy, but the owner of this tree sure knew how to do it. It's blooming right on time as it should. Happy New Year of the Cat (Rabbit if you are Chinese.) One day, I would like to learn why it's not the same animal as it is for the other 11 years.

CasaIdeas

Let me tell you one thing... Stores in Miami do not last long. They change so often I can't keep track of what's where and when. This is a brand new big store anchoring the Sunset place. I don't remember what it used to be... but this is brand new (to me.) It looks like they did a lot of face lift to the outside that must have cost a ton of money... to last a few months is my guess.