29 Things People From Miami Love
Yes, it's all true. We love pool parties, strip clubs, and happy hours. And we also have a ton of guilty pleasures out-of-towners simply wouldn't understand. However, if you dig a little deeper, beneath our white linen shirts and tanned skin, you'll find we're slightly more complex than surface-level observations. We have unique hobbies, and passions, and friends with luxurious party boats! And to prove it, we've aggregated a list of 29 undeniable things everyone in Miami not-so-secretly loves.
1. Our area code
Not only does 305 lend itself to clever hand signs, if you go to the beach at 8th St, you’ll see it looks great anywhere you get it tattooed.
2. Not working
In other cities, people like to humble-brag by talking about their 80-hour work weeks. In Miami, we like to not-so-humble-brag by posting pictures from the beach at noon on a Tuesday.
3. Spanglish
Because using only one language in a sentence es para tontos.
4. Publix subs
Ask any Miamian why the deli subs at Publix are better than the sub sandwiches at any other grocery store, and we have only one answer: “I don’t know. They just ARE.” Making it perhaps the most existential food item in history.
5. Talking about Miami
Sit down with a group of people who’ve lived in Miami for more than six months, and within an hour, you’ll know why every single person simultaneously loves and hates it here.
6. Boats
Not actually owning a boat, but having a “boy” with a third cousin who has a boat, inviting every girl you meet out on it, and still referring to it as “mine”.
7. Having “a guy who does that”
Doesn’t really matter what your “guy” does. Could be VCR repair. Could be forged passports. But Miamians never, ever pay retail -- or anything other than cash -- for a service.
8. Cuban coffee
This is the reason Miami’s never had much of a problem with crystal meth.
9. Making fun of Hialeah
They just make it so easy with their nonsensical street grid, a mayor who gets in fights on the freeway, and a store called “Nnnnnno, Que Barato”. That, and the fact that otherwise, the butt of all our jokes would be Kendall, which doesn’t sound nearly as funny.
10. Plastic surgery
We are, by all accounts, the birthplace of the ass implant. You’re welcome.
11. Humidity
We might say we hate it, but there's nothing like that first blast of hot, wet air when the doors slide open at MIA to say, “Welcome home!”.
12. Those weather maps that show the whole country in a polar vortex. Except us.
Last winter, you saw this in your newsfeed roughly 437 times a day.
13. Living at home
Who says no innovation comes out of Miami? We’ve figured out how to drive brand-new cars, have personal chefs and laundry service, and still go to the beach on a Tuesday. It’s called sharing a bedroom wall with your Grandma.
14. Live DJs
Because it wouldn’t be a Jiffy Lube opening without the funky sounds of DJ Irie on the 1s and 2s.
15. Weekend cruises to the Bahamas
This weekend you could A) hit a club full of $22 drinks and girls who won’t talk to you unless you own an oil company, or B) smuggle your own drinks onto a cruise ship bound for Nassau full of girls who paid $189 for their annual vacation and you’ll probably never see again. Tough call.
16. The Heat
You thought they'd go back to being the Marlins with better uniforms once LeBron left? Have you seen Hassan Whiteside?!
17. Working out
Look at the last 10 Miamians you texted in your phone. You know what more of them do for exercise than what they do for a living.
18. Trick Daddy
How could we not love “The 305 Mayor”, who, if you talk to guys from Liberty City, Miami Gardens, or Richmond Heights, is "boys" with EVERY SINGLE DUDE in the city?!
19. National flags
Look at the rear view mirrors in any Miami parking lot, and you can learn the flag of every country in the Western Hemisphere. Except the United States.
20. Bottles, bro
Not that any self-respecting local's enough of a sucker to actually buy a bottle. But being invited to LIV by an out-of-towner who IS? THAT we love.
21. Grey Goose and soda
With lime. Has to be Goose, preferably from one of the aforementioned bottles someone else paid for. Gotta watch those carbs.
22. Pollo Tropical
Saying “I don’t know what the big deal is about Pollo Tropical” around a group of Miamians gets you a reaction similar to telling a group of people from Texas you don’t like Lonestar.
23. Leased cars
How do people in Miami drive cars that cost more than their annual salary? The magic of leasing and, usually, #13.
24. Being late
Though “late” is kind of a relative term. Showing up at 10:30pm for an event that starts at 7 is apparently considered rude in some places.
25. Cocaine Cowboys
Outside Miami, you might meet one person a week who’s seen this doc about the 1980s coke trade. In Miami, there are people who can recite it backwards.
26. Driving
We don't pay $499 a month to lease a 5-Series so we can WALK to Publix.
27. Telling people we’re from Miami
When you’re out of town and tell someone you’re from Miami, it immediately makes you cool, sexy, and exotic. Unless that person’s actually lived here. Then they pity you.
28. Pork
Our signature sandwich -- The Cuban -- has two different kinds of swine on it, and burying an entire pig in a black box and roasting it in your backyard is pretty much a Sunday tradition.
29. Not being New Yorkers
New Yorkers take note: Boston, Chicago, and Philly might rip on you out of some sort of cold-weather inferiority complex. We do it because no matter how bad the traffic, humidity, corruption, and everything else that makes this city borderline-unlivable gets, we know it could always be worse. We could be living in New York.
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