View from the ‘Bridge

A reporter at the Cambridge Chronicle ran across a strange posting by a member of the “Wired New York Forum” about a recent trip to South Beach, Miami.

Among the post’s bizarre account of the architectural and demographic character of South Beach. is this interesting gem:

The South Beach zip code is 33139. Within its 2.60 square miles live 40,177 permanent residents (2003), yielding a density of 15,472 persons per square mile, about the same as San Francisco. This surprising figure is achieved despite swaths of hotels and a large business district with few permanent residents. And it’s achieved principally with two and three story buildings, both commercial and residential, that are mostly free-standing. It resembles Cambridge, MA in this regard.

This has got to be stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. As a proud Cantabrigian who has traveled to South Beach on more than one occasion, I can safely say the only thing connecting these two cities is the fact that humans in either place must still breath oxygen to survive. To claim that South Beach resembles Cambridge because they both have free-standing commercial buildings is like suggesting Mickey Mouse and Marylin Monroe are twins because they both have the initials MM. Ok, maybe that analogy is a bit of a stretch, but that’s my point exactly.

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