Who we've talked to...
We’re not sure if it’s the salt air, a bit too much sun or the distance from the mainland, but Miami Beach has an attraction for the notorious and the creative, those looking to reinvent themselves and those who just want a beautiful place to live. “What happens in Miami stays in Miami” reflects an attitude that defines the free-wheeling nature of the Beach and also speaks about those who came and then stayed.
Norman Braman
Norman Braman is a successful businessman, art collector, civic activist and philanthropist whose influence is felt in many spheres of community life in South Florida. He lived for many years on Miami Beach, attracted by its Jewish flavor. In this excerpt from the longer interview he talks about bringing Art Basel to Miami Beach after attending the international show in Switzerland for many years. He tells about the evolution of the event and how it now eclipses the original Art Basel in size and attendance.
Dan Gelber
Dan Gelber is a former prosecutor and the current mayor of Miami Beach, Florida. He served in the Florida Legislature from 2000 to 2010 and was the Democratic nominee for Attorney General of Florida in 2010. In this excerpt from his full interview he discusses the political make-up of Florida and Miami Beach.
In the full interview Gelber speaks about his career and that of his father, Seymour Gelber, a former Commissioner and Mayor of Miami Beach who was involved in mediating during the tumultuous summer of 1972 when Miami Beach played host to both the Democratic and Republican national conventions.
Steven Adkins
When Steve Adkins decided to leave the corporate world in California and come east, he chose Miami Beach because it was more laid back than New York, had better weather and had a reputation as being gay-friendly. Steve is the President and CEO of the Miami-Dade Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, an organization which has been at the forefront of creating Miami Beach’s openness and welcoming to sexual minorities. Steve talks about how this welcoming atmosphere evolved and the role the gay community has played and continues to play in making Miami Beach one of the top tourist destinations in the world.
Wayne Pathman
Wayne Pathman is a land-use attorney, specializing in sea-level rise mitigation and urban resiliency. He speaks all over the country on these themes. He was born and raised on Miami Beach and resides there. In the interview, he talks about his childhood growing up on the Beach and his commitment to helping create a sustainable future for his hometown in the face of sea level rise and global warming. He discusses a common sense approach to reducing financial risks which entails a collaboration between governments and the private sector. He talks about solutions he has seen in his travels, particularly in the Netherlands. He contends that a change is needed in the way excess water is managed.
Steven Haas
Steven Haas probably knows better than anyone what draws people to Miami and Miami Beach and what will keep them coming. He just stepped down as Chair of the Greater Miami Visitors and Convention Bureau. His forté is hospitality, especially in dining. So naturally we met up at Jack’s Home Cooking, a new place in the Design District area he is helping birth. The man who invented Miami Spice started working in his father’s deli as a youngster and eventually became general manager of The Forge, Miami Beach’s famed luxury restaurant, frequented by the famous and the infamous.
Lila Terry
Lila Terry ran gay night clubs on Miami Beach in the 1970s: the Nite Owl, the Pin-Up and the Middle Room, and subsequently, the Turf Pub.
In her wide-ranging interview, Lila talks about growing up gay and how it affected her life and relationship with her parents. She mentions the “Three Piece Rule.” Women wearing masculine clothing on the street in New York could be arrested because it was illegal to be “in disguise” (a convenient way to hassle cross-dressers) unless they are wearing a minimum of three pieces of women’s clothing. In that case, they would be let go.
Checking up on this “rule,” it seems that it applied to cross-dressing men, as well. The “rule” was not applied on Miami Beach. Lila’s clubs were occasionally raided by police but, she says, she didn’t consider it harassment.
Edna Buchanan
She started covering crime on the police beat for the Miami Beach Daily Sun. She moved on to The Miami Herald where she made a name for herself covering murders. Now she’s one of the best-known crime fiction writers around. This interview was filmed in Books and Books on Lincoln Mall in September of 2016.
Philip Levine
Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine, in a December 2014 interview, remembers moving to Miami Beach, setting up his business, and his working relationship with legendary developer Tony Goldman.
JoAnn Bass
JoAnn Bass grew up over Joe’s Stone Crab, the iconic Miami Beach restaurant started in 1913 by her grand-parents, Joe and Jennie Weiss. Joe’s is only open for six months, October to April, during the stone crab season. JoAnn puts in 5-day week and remains involved in the Miami Beach community.
The interview with JoAnn was recorded in June 2012.
Harold Rosen
Former Miami Beach Mayor (1973 – 1978) Harold Rosen talks about his early days on the Beach when gambling was big business and “everybody made a buck.” Rosen’s full interview about his years on Miami Beach and the developments he has seen can be viewed by clicking the link to the FIU Digital Libraries website.
Joy Malakoff
Joy Malakoff is a City of Miami Beach Commissioner. Her first visit to Miami Beach was as a one-year-old in 1937. Her grandparents, Max and Emily Iralson, had been living on the Beach since 1928. She and her parents spent winters on Miami Beach. Later, they permanently moved down. Ms. Malakoff reminisces about the wonderful times spent in their family’s rented cabana. It was practically a culture of its own. Families usually rented the same cabana each year or in the same vicinity and got to know people in nearby cabanas. The children were given swimming lessons in the pool while the adults socialized and played cards. She recalls as a child being taken to night clubs with her parents and grandparents. Her grandmother was shocked by the performance of a foul-mouthed Sophie Tucker. Ms. Malakoff talks about the development of Miami Beach into more than just a winter resort. She also discusses the challenges of dealing with rising sea levels and what strategies are being employed.
Mac Klein
Mac died in 2016 at 101 years old. Time Magazine called The Deuce a “dingy, black-tiled bar that has seen better years, and those years occurred a very long time ago. But in a town where hot drinking spots come and go like the tide, The Deuce still stands alone.” It was built in 1926 allegedly with wood from shipwrecks. The Miami Vice crew drank there and the cast wrap party was held there. Playboy named it one of the best bars in America. Anthony Bourdain said it’s one of his favorite spots. We talked to Mac in his cramped office-storeroom in 2014. The safe was in the corner, the better booze lined the walls, and his leather office chair took up most of the floor space. This was his world for 51 years, ever since he bought the place in 1964. In this excerpt Mac tells how he came to get and refurbish the Miami Beach landmark. It’s still on 14th St. off Washington.
Bruce Turkel
Miami and Miami Beach are conflated into the Miami Brand, a combination which has made South Florida the “go to” tourist destination. Bruce Turkel, born and raised on the Beach is a nationally renowned expert on branding. He explains what has made this area a global hot spot.
Sabrina Cohen
Sabrina Cohen is a disabilities rights activist who lives independently on Miami Beach. She talks about growing up on the Beach as a self-described “beach girl,” the car accident that left her paralyzed, and her efforts to bridge the sand barrier that keeps wheelchair bound people out of the ocean.
Alex Daoud
Daoud was first elected City Commissioner in 1979. He then served as mayor from 1985 until he was indicted on 41 counts of bribery on October 29, 1991. He served eighteen months in a federal prison. He talks about his boyhood on the Beach, an early bout of polio whose physical effects he overcame by working out at the famous 5th Street Gym, where he became friends with Mohammed Ali. He tells about his fall from grace. His full interview is available on the FIU Libraries site. Use the link to view full interviews.
Stuart Blumberg
Stu Blumberg has a 50 year career running some of Miami Beach’s best hotels and heading the county’s hotel trade group. He is asked about the impact that the opening of Cuba to U.S. tourists might have on Miami’s tourism industry.
Luis Garcia
Luis Garcia is a Cuban-American immigrant who has spent his adult life in public service to the City of Miami Beach, his adopted home. He was a firefighter who rose in the ranks to become the first Cuban-American Fire Chief for Miami Beach. After retiring as Chief in 1999, he ran successfully for the City of Miami Beach Commission. In 2006, he was elected to the Florida legislature, where he represented District 107 for three terms. Mr. Garcia was born in Cuba and left when he was 15 with his parents in 1960 when Fidel Castro came to power. His father had been an attorney in Cuba but could only find work as a busboy. His mother, a housewife in Cuba, went to work in a local cafeteria. To help his parents put food on the table, he worked after school and weekends for $1 an hour. He talks about his family’s adjustment to their new life, his teenaged years living on Miami Beach, and his decades of public service.
Michele Oka Doner
Artist Michele Oka Doner, sitting under a tree she used to climb as a child on Miami Beach, talks about the retrospective of her work currently exhibited at the Pérez Art Museum Miami. She tells how she chose pieces for the exhibit, many of them artifacts from her childhood collection. Michele was born and raised on Miami Beach. Her father served two terms as Mayor. She recalls the lessons in life she learned from her grandfather and the small town community that was Miami Beach in her growing up years.
Arlene Amarant
Arlene Amarant was born and raised on Miami Beach in the Jewish enclave south of 5th Street. She talks about her extended family that all lived and worked nearby, her early memories of the neighborhood, and her relationship with the beach and ocean.
David Dermer
Three-term Miami Beach Mayor David Dermer talks about growing up on the Beach and how he has seen the Beach change over the years. He talks about his father being mayor in the 1960s and his opposition to casino gambling, and the on-going tension between developers, the hoteliers and residents that still continues.
Herb Sosa
In this excerpt from our conversation with Herb Sosa in the Miami Beach Community Church, he talks about historic preservation, and his work with Barbara Capitman and the Miami Design Preservation League. In the extended interview, he discusses the enormous role of the gay community in the struggle to preserve the Art Deco and MiMo districts. Herb heads the Unity Coalition, an organization that advocates for the well-being of the LGBTQ community.
Jane Gross
Jane Dee Gross is a long-time historic preservationist and member of the Miami Beach Historic Preservation Board. Jane has always loved the Art Deco period and when she visited friends here in 1982 she fell in love with the Beach and stayed. She talks about the restoration excitement, the challenges, and about her close friendship with Leonard Horowitz, the artist/designer who created a color scheme that brought the old Deco buildings to life and drew artists, designers, preservationists, and entrepreneurs from all over the country to South Beach.
This interview was recorded May 26, 2017, in the Gross Miami Beach home.
Dona Zemo
Dona Zemo formed an attachment to Miami Beach as a child, visiting most winters since she was 4 years old. She loved the swaying palm trees, the beach, the people dressed up in glamorous clothes for a night out on the town. Miami Beach, in her eyes, was high style. In 1981, she left her settled life in Connecticut, enticed by the renaissance of the Art Deco district started by Barbara Capitman, and went to work for Andrew Capitman, marketing South Beach’s restored Deco hotels to Broadway producers, actors, performers, artists, and design-conscious entrepreneurs. She coined the term “SoBe,” after SoHo in New York City, thinking it sounded more hip than South Beach. And it stuck. Dona talked to us about the exciting rebirth of South Beach in the early 80’s and Barbara Capitman’s vision of a cafe society by the sea.
Pepi Granat
Pepi Granat is a family physician who grew up on Miami Beach among a large family of immigrants. She is a member of the Miami Beach High School Hall of Fame, honored for her distinguished career as a doctor and for her civic activism. Ms. Granat was a child during the Second World War. In her interview, she talks about growing up on the Beach and the impact the war had on her as a child.
Shareef Malnik
Shareef Malnik, owner of Miami Beach’s iconic Forge restaurant, talks about growing up on the Beach; his family, the changes that he has implemented to adapt to changing business climates, and the rich and famous who have patronized his restaurant.
This interview was filmed in the Forge on October 13, 2017 as part of the Miami Beach Visual Memoirs project.
David Wallack
David Wallack is the proprietor of the world famous Mango’s Tropical Cafe, what the Miami Herald once described as an “open air version of a late night Vegas club.” Mango’s has become the focal point of the night scene on South Beach, ironic since it was previously a home for the elderly called Eastern Sun, which offered holistic health care in a Zen atmosphere. Mr. Wallack was also the proprietor. In telling the story of the metamorphosis of Eastern Sun into Mango’s, he finds no irony. He maintains that he is still in the business of taking care of people and making sure they are happy. Mango’s is one of the top ten restaurant/night clubs in the United States.
Mr. Wallack talks about his early life as a youth on Miami Beach. His family and he arrived in 1955. His father was in the real estate business, which is how they came to own the Mango’s building. He talks about the establishment of the Eastern Sun, the first commercial ACLF (Adult Congregate Living Facility) on Miami Beach, which operated for 12 years. The care and treatment of the elderly was so exemplary and innovative, Mr. Wallack became an international consultant and lecturer on the Eastern Sun practices and philosophy.
He also talks about the club scene and the struggle to keep the night life viable — the on-going conflict between the tourism business and local residents.
This interview was recorded October 3, 2017, in Mangos on Miami Beach’s Ocean Drive.