It's 5:30 a.m. and Selena Pickett's alarm has just gone off. She rolls out of bed. Drowsily, she gets ready for the day -- making her bed, getting dressed and fixing breakfast in her chilly dorm room. But she has one morning routine that many others don't: she practices piano.
A new movie theater has been installed in the basement of Miami's Center for Performing Arts. But they aren't showing movies here. Instead, they are rehearsing for "The Flick," the Theatre Department's first play this season, which opens next week in Studio 88.
Officer Matt Hardin instructs me to wait in the building while he gets Roscoe out of his police cruiser. It's easy to spot which one is his because the license plate reads "K-9." The 90-pound German Shepard bounds out of the car and leaps at the door in excitement, looking happy as can be.
There was an air of uncertainty hanging over the bus stop as I arrived outside of Shriver. This was the site from which the Miami Mystery Tour Bus would depart, but the amassed people, myself included, didn't seem to know which of the various buses at the stop was ours.
I have a hard time explaining my love of "It" to people.
Something about the new restaurant in Armstrong seemed uncomfortably familiar. It serves sandwiches -- bagel sandwiches, to be exact. Bagels sliced in half and filled with an assortment of meats, eggs, veggies, cheese and sauces.
Rap and EDM. Those two things go together like peanut butter and spaghetti; I suppose you could convince me that it's a good combo, but only if you change one or the other until it's almost unrecognizable. Hip-hop and electronic music have always gone hand in hand, but you almost never see a full-fledged rap over a full-fledged, techno dance beat. Kanye West rapped over industrial beats on "Yeezus," but the result was more rage-fueled than danceable, and Drake has incorporated two-step and Afro-electro beats on the likes of "Passionfruit" and "One Dance," but he switches to his sing-song voice while doing it.
If the age-old concept that sadness has a physical presence, a sort of heaviness that weighs on your shoulders and could sonically manifest itself, the result would probably sound a lot like The National. Their songs seem bent on pressing down on you in the same way that pop music wants to lift you up; the piano and bass draw rich, long chords over you like a blanket, synthesizers and strings emit hauntingly mournful moans and lead singer Matt Berninger's signature baritone is the vocal equivalent of a defeated, weary sigh. Decidedly sorrowful since their 2001 debut, The National seems the rightful inheritor of that "Depressing Indie Rock Band" label that Coldplay has seemed so desperate to escape.
Certain artists manage to stay recognizable, if not relevant, as time passes. Everyone knows a Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston or Bee Gees tune, and some of them manage to fulfill the same purpose they had decades ago -- to get people on the dance floor. At the same time, generations of people can sing along to iconic choruses from the Beatles or big-hair bands like Journey and Bon Jovi. Those were popular bands that can be recognized as such now.
Photos by Tyler Gillette.
Not many high school freshmen go on brewery tours with their parents. Fewer still find their life's calling on one.
Some of the most interesting working artists in the area are coming to Miami's campus this fall as part of the Contemporary Art Forum.
A neon crowd of girls stand in a black-lit room, yelling to each other over the pounding bass of the dance music. It could almost be a typical scene from a Friday girls' night Uptown. There will be dancing, maybe even a punch or two thrown. But it's 8 p.m. on Thursday night, and they're not at Brick Street, New Bar or anywhere else Uptown.
On a cold evening in February, my friend Jack and I took one of our frequent late night walks that are often catalyzed by some emotional trauma. Tonight, however, the walk was to just get out. We sped from Elliott Hall down to Peffer Park, snipped off the end of fresh cigar, took a light to it and caught up. Jack had finally started dating this dynamite chick, Lindsay, and he was over the moon. We eventually made our way Uptown, to meet up with some of my friends at Cellar.
6,594 feet high, standing among wispy, white clouds with the crisp mountain air caressing my cheeks, I looked out and saw nothing but mountains for miles. It was noon, and we had summited Mount LeConte in four hours. Four hours of navigating lush forest, steep sandstone steps and glistening rock faces. Four hours of readjusting the straps on our packs and stopping to chug water and catch our breath as we rapidly gained elevation on our ascent. Four hours of being drenched in sweat despite the shade from the trees and the pleasant summer temperature.
I was exhausted as I made my way across the main floor of Grand Central Terminal, awkwardly pushing through the bustling throng of New Yorkers in my path. Navigating the station's chaotic rush-hour foot traffic had become an annoying, yet necessary, part of my morning routine.
The most striking visuals among the subway platforms and hidden hallways beneath London are not the train cars hurtling miles underground, known affectionately as the Tube, but rather the colorful characters who occupy the winding paths tucked beneath the city.
Trinity College is located in the middle of buzzing Dublin, Ireland, and is semi-regularly swamped with tourists ducking in to see the Book of Kells, or just for a quiet sit. Founded in 1592, the school features Victorian architecture influenced by other institutions such as Oxford (UK) and Cambridge. The grass is cut very low like a golfing green, and the library is the largest in Ireland. In the center of the walled buildings is a campus bar, where students can grab a cider and watch rugby on a massive field. Compared to Miami, where King Library was built in the 1970s, Trinity's campus is a sort of elite utopia without (most of) the snobbery. And the campus life is so nice -- dorms are actually reserved for upperclassmen.
Wanchese is a small fishing village, located on the southern end of Roanoke Island, North Carolina. Roanoke is a curious place -- protected from the Atlantic tides by the Outer Banks, it was home to the first English settlement in 1585. Notoriously, the entire colony vanished without a trace two years later, and many legends circulate as to the fate of the colonists. Today, Roanoke is settled again, with the rather upmarket village of Manteo to the north and the working-class village of Wanchese to the south, where my parents recently purchased a 1910 farmhouse. It was from there I would begin my journey.