FEEL THE HEAT

MIAMI LOCALS SHARE THEIR INSIDER TIPS ON THE BEST OF THE EVER-EVOLVING CITY.

- MIAMI LOCALS

Miami, for me, somehow never changes-just like the neighbourhood bakery with its ventanita where my family has ordered café con leche on Sunday mornings for decades. And yet, every time I've come home since moving away, parts of the city look completely different. I never visit the same Miami twice. That is, unless I go to Miami Twice, a vintage-clothing store on busy Bird Road in South Miami, where I bought my prom dress back in the day. That street is also home to Bird Bowl, a gem of a bowling alley, and Playthings, an outré adult shop that took over where the laser-tag joint Ultrazone used to be. In my teen years, my friends and I gutter-balled and pew-pew-pew-ed our weekends away before we were old enough to be admitted into the city's storied nightclubs, so these establishments defined my youth.

Friends have described Miami as loud, but I'll echo rapper Trick Daddy, a Miami native, in arguing that everywhere else is a notch or five too silent. This is a natural conclusion to draw when you've grown up with passing cars blasting stereos so loudly that the music rattled the windows of your childhood bedroom, easing you into sleep every night.