Miami’s South Beach: Your essential sight-seeing checklist


David Whitley hits Miami’s hippest hub, and presents an essential people-watching ticklist

It’s always handy to have a list of must-see sights wherever you go, and Miami’s South Beach is no exception. Famed for its nightlife and art deco architecture, South Beach also does a fantastic line in people-watching.

In fact, you can turn it into something of a sport. Arm yourself with this handy list, and award yourself one point for each of the following tourist attractions you manage to see:

1. A man standing on a corner having his own private party with a cocktail in a plastic cup, swaying slightly and singing along to Sweat by Inner Circle.

2. Policemen in gleaming white shirts, sunglasses and shorts, casually draped over a bike and chatting to passers-by.

3. A restaurant advertising a mojito or daiquiri as its breakfast special.

4. A man who looks like Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure skateboarding down Ocean Drive, wearing DJ-style earphones and shouting: “No hands!” before rapping along vociferously to a hip-hop song that consists almost entirely of profanities.

5. Shorts-and-visor clad folks in their mid-40s sat outside the Clevelander Hotel, trying to pretend they’re part of the cool as the continually awful music deafens them.

6. A man with a clueless virgin look in tight, tiny blue underpants, armed with a camera and tripod and trying to take pictures of himself in unintentionally hilarious poses by the water’s edge.

7. Gigantic body-building women attempting to pull off girly, floral dresses.

8. A scruffy-looking chap with a slight serial killer glint in the eye approaching people sat on café terraces whilst holding some sugar cane, then either trying to sell said sugar cane or an origami-style flower made out of it. And then, when the diners have gone, he comes back, scoops the leftovers into a napkin and makes it more appetising by stealing some hot sauce from a table in the next café.

9. Redneck Republican tourists snapping away outside the former home of Gianni Versace, even though he stood for everything they despise.

10. A man shouting incomprehensibly at, well, who knows... the wind, maybe?

11. More giant body-builders waddling along the street, dragging tiny wheeled bags behind them.

12. A man – possibly a tramp – sat on a bench, dozily oblivious to the outside world and clad in an exquisite Santa hat.

13. Waiters in a restaurant whooping and cheering at each other for no apparent reason.

14. An 80-year-old on a Segway.

15. A barman in an otherwise empty hotel bar telling anyone who’ll listen about how he once had a number one single in Hawaii.

16. Two women racing past, shouting “runners!” as if the fact they’re wearing trainers gives them an automatic right of way.

17. A Lamborghini parked outside a hotel on Ocean Drive that the valet parking attendants have been asked to park by the owner, but the hotel/ restaurant owner has given alternative instructions to keep it there as long as possible because it makes the establishment look cool.

18. An otherwise dashing silver-haired gent – clearly on holiday from the northern states – wearing pristine slacks, expensive shoes and a buttoned-up Hawaiian shirt, trying to do laid back whilst somehow managing to totally miss the point.

19. Sexually insecure bearded gentlemen on Harley Davidsons driving up and down Collins Avenue, trying to beat away the fears that they have failed in life and are try to mask it by owning big, noisy motorbikes.

20. An elderly woman - with shrivelled, wrinkled orange skin that looks almost exactly how you’d imagine David Dickinson’s scrotal sac to look – carrying a tiny dog in a handbag.