Comment by yardie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by yardie | Hacker News Reader

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I grew up in Miami and Miami Beach since the 80s. Miami Beach, and Ocean Drive have never been what you described. When I lived there fights, shootings, and prostitution was quite flagrant on Ocean. Before being redeveloped into million dollar condos, SoFi was a ghetto.

Spring Break is fairly new to the area. Prior to that the college students would hit Daytona, Panama City, or Key West. And long before that Fort Lauderdale was the Spring Break destination (showing my age).

The traditional family-owned restaurants started being driven out in 2014, to be replaced by new investor backed concepts because the rent was too high. Joe's Stone Crabs owns it spot and isn't going anywhere, I can't say the same for the restaurants around it. AirBnB didn't cause restaurants to close, speculators did.

Finally, it is the season of the snowbird. Every beach is packed with foreign tourists staying in their vacation homes on 6 month visas. When June arrives they'll leave, they always do.

Also, prior to this spring break there was only a few reasons to go to Ocean, Spring Break, Memorial Day, and Fourth of July. Now, city council and local organizations have planned street festivals basically every weekend between here and eternity.

All to say that very little of what's going on on Ocean Dr has anything to do with AirBnB.

First of all the 80s were close to 40 years ago. How about the period 2000-2010? What did change after 2010 that wasn't there before? Miami Beach was always a touristy place. Spring Break and Memorial Day were always rowdy affairs.

And when I talked about shop/restaurants closing I emphasized their replacements. It's one thing for restaurants to close in Miami Beach (happens every year). It's quite another for same restaurant to close and be replaced by a kebab or pizza place. Entire streets that were lined with upscale shops have been turned into cash extraction mechanisms for unsophisticated, drunken passers by. What does that tell you about the character of the neighborhood?

Today's SOBE bears little resemblance to SOBE of the pre-Airbnb past.

The carnival like open air entertainment district on ocean drive.

It certainly was a factor. As was "black beach week" [1]. The Clevelander and Mango's were there in 2010 however, as was urban day weekend (as it was called then) long before Airbnb came to town. The situation started to rapidly decline after Airbnb enabled masses of low-class, unruly crowds to come to town and party, every day of the week. Every weekend of the year is a carnival-like orgy of debauchery now.

[1] http://www.blackbeachweek.com/urbanbeachweek1.html

> change after 2010 that wasn't there before

Miami real estate was especially hit hard after the financial crisis of 2008. Rich investors, American, European, and South American, were snapping up South Beach properties for pennies on the dollar and reselling them for tidy profits. I lived in an apartment in Flamingo Park that was almost 50% absentee European owners. The trendy European neighbors you were referring to upthread are the same ones renting through AirBnB while they are back home. Even though it was against the condo bylaws (long before code enforcement cracked down) they did it anyway.

> It's quite another for same restaurant to close and be replaced by a kebab or pizza place.

Because when you are on a month to month lease, which speculators love to do before razing everything before building condos <cough>Wynwood</cough>, you tend to get cheap popup places that can move in and out quickly. A pizza place just needs cheap tables and an oven. Decor and kitchen workstation planning isn't a consideration.

> Today's SOBE bears little resemblance to SOBE of the pre-Airbnb past.

I agree but not for the reasons you think. 80s South Beach was geriatric, 90s South Beach was club grungie, giving way to 00s gay/artsy South Beach, to gentrification through the 10s, until here we are today. It's trendy but tourist trendy.

Locals have already moved on to Surfside and Hollywood. Cleaner lest crowded beaches.

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