Would you like a beer with that?

If you're lucky to be living in South Beach, mark your calendars because Burger King's latest creation the "Whopper Bar" will be coming to you this February! The Whopper Bar offers the same burgers and fries, but now these combos are paired with a beer instead of your typical soft drink. Maybe we'll soon see Whopper Bars popping up all over the country.

Life Post: Memorial

This weekend, in my never-ending effort to take be an amazing photographer, I visited the Holocaust Memorial on Miami Beach. Now, now, don't jump to conclusions. Memorials don't sound exciting at all, but the Holocaust Memorial on Miami Beach is the MOST INTRIGUING memorial...hell it's the most intriguing ANYTHING I've ever seen. Judge for yourself.

Yeah....it's hard to drive past that....100 foot hand coming out of the ground. Oh but it gets better. It's hard to see in this picture, but all of that texture on the arm.....HUMAN BODIES. The most morbid sculpture I've ever seen......and I feel awkward for thinking so but it's also absolutely beautiful and stunning.

There's this beautiful blue pond around the hand. The water is so still it reflects the hand like a mirror. There's also a walkway that goes around the hand with a marble wall with people's names carved into (standard procedure for a memorial I feel like). But the experience is just breathtaking. There are flowering trees all around the pond. And the petals just fall right into the water and just float there....it's like a scene straight out of a movie.


SO STUNNING I CAN'T EVEN STAND IT.

Anyway, from first glance it looks like the hand is sitting in the middle of the pond and there's no way for people to go up to the hand. As seen in the first picture...there's a huge wall around the hand as well. But as I'm walking around (through the walkway above) I realize there's a door that lets people go to the hand...up close and personal. And I knew there were bodies carved into the hand...but I was not prepared for the EXTENT of the bodies.

This is the pathway that leads you to the hand. The cuts in the walls create a beautiful light and shadow pattern.

Through the cuts you could catch little glimpses of the pond and walkway with all of the trees. Once again absolutely stunning (stunning is my new word) and ingenious. You feel kind of like a prisoner in this hallway where you only get a small view of the beauty that is outside the walls. Likely a reference to the way prisoners must have felt in the camps.

And on these walls there are the names of all the concentration camps (also standard procedure for a Holocaust memorial I believe). There are speakers built into the wall and there are children singing Jewish songs through the speakers....It was a little it unnerving....especially with that little statue in front of the arm. And I mean, I was here BY MYSELF....it was a little bit uncomfortable.

The mix of the song and this statue and being alone made it a little tough for me to take pictures.

So once I get over the emotional trauma of this hallway, I make my way to the hand. Oh dear God, when I say I was NOT PREPARED FOR IT...I WAS NOT PREPARED FOR IT.

The sculptur of this project has guts. And they are an absolute genius. I walked out to see the arm and I was terrified. I can only imagine that's the way you are supposed to feel. It took me a good 5 minutes to be able to walk around because I was so scared. I even had to call my mom. Not ONLY were the bodies on the arm, but also ON THE GROUND. ON MY EYE LEVEL. They are so real it feels like they will start moving around at any moment. It was seriously, TERRIFYING. And those children were STILL singing in the background.

Seriously, the designers of this memorial were absolutely ON POINT in everything. I'm pretty emotionally detached from...everything...but OMG.....this was too much for ME.

At any rate, once I was able to calm down a little bit I could get closer to the sculpture and photograph it. But it was hard. The statues were literally life sized. It was an awful feeling.

Here's the view up the arm. Absolutely STUNNING.

Anyway, I took lots of pictures. And I left a different person. Well not really, but the memorial is ACTUALLY one of my favorite buildings on this planet now. It's so simple, but so genius. And if you're ever in Miami then I would definitely visit it. But go on a sunny day because it is absolutely BREATH TAKING and STUNNING.

Events in Miami

COMING UP IN MIAMI:

This awesome party with swag bags this Saturday. Looks like a lot of fun.

And for the "Fuck the Drinking Age" crowd:

MSTRKRFT. Who I saw in New Orleans last month and they were amazing. Sadly, 21+.

And also, David Guetta is playing at the Fountainebleau sometime in the beginning of December. However, ALSO 21+. Fuck the drinking age.

A Weekend in the Life

Okay so, one of the GREAT joys of being an architecture major is the amount of torture you put yourself through on a daily basis. My latest project was a map of some unimportant island in the Florida Keys.

SO seeing as it was due today, I spent my ENTIRE weekend working on this piece of shit. When I say entire, I mean ENTIRE. We're talking:

Friday: 5pm-5am (12 hours)
Saturday: 1pm-5am (16 hours)
Sunday: 2pm-1am (11 hours)

Anywho, to break the monotony that is stippling I brought my camera and took pictures during my breaks.

In total there are around 50 people in the architecture major here. And for our design classes we are divided into 6 groups of about 9. And that smaller group will be your studio, which you spend your entire life with and then you're all BFFs, etc. Good times good times.

But really, we work in this room. Everyone has a short desk (I can't cross my legs under the desk. My knees touch the bottom of the desk even sitting normally), a stool or two, some wall space, and a locker in their desk.

I sit in the desk that you can't see on the far left.

OM NOM NOM

I decorated my locker with a sticker a la Kenyonb.com.

So a lot of people think/assume architects make a lot of money, which they do make a fair paycheck, but they don't realize how expensive it is to actually produce the drawings. For example, in this picture of my desk the black ruler thing near the top costs $200, the translucent paper I'm putting my drawing on costs $3.50 per sheet, and the pen I'm drawing with is $20 each. And the pens break...often. Making it common to spend around $100 per project JUST on pens.

However, thank GOD for computers which have pretty much rendered hand drawing irrelevant in the professional world. If I had to hand draw for the rest of my life I'd probably kill myself or drop out of architecture.

Here's a better shot of the bain of my existence. Really, maps are BORING. Buildings are so much more fun. I don't think anyone could pay me to do cartography.

Middle Finger Ruined

Stippling is another thorn in my side. My finger is shaped weird from drawing so much this weekend. =( I also had a severe crook in my neck 80% of the time from holding my head in akward positions for long periods of time.

3:30 AM, still trucking. Isn't my cell wallpaper hot though?

And that's all for now. THANK GOD I'm FINALLY out of the studio.

OOOOFFFFENSIVE

OOOOFENSIVE

Dayummmm! I love my school, but I have to admit this is a clever shirt. Props.

It still doesn't make UF a better place. Come on, Gainesville? Fuck that. Go back to your double wides and fry up some bacon.

Miami will ALWAYS be the better school.

Via Facebook

Picture Post: SoBe

One of the many pluses to living in Miami is South Beach. vI brought my baby to South Beach and here are some highlights of my trip.

10:30 PM: A Lady was leaving her, what I assume to be bachelorette party (she was wearing a veil and she was incredibly wasted). Her friends tried to help her stumble along the sidewalk, unbeknownst to them she was hiking her skirt up the whole time...and she wasn't wearing underwear. Restaurant diners, workers, and people passing her were highly amused. They eventually realized she was showing her ass to the world and pulled her skirt back down every now and then.

If anyone ever watched that short-lived MTV reality television show about a modeling agency, 8th and Ocean, this is the agency it was set in. And yes, it is located at the intersection 8th Street and Ocean Ave. Didn't see any models =(, but I'm thinking if I had a job at Johnny Rockets I'd be making model friends left and right.

American Apparel love. This store has the creepiest mannequins standing outside of their door. I always think they're real people. The sketch, street rappers also choose this spot to hand out their demo tapes. In other cities this usually happens in the Walmart parking lot.

Before I continue to the next picture I have to explain about the joys of walking down the sidewalks on Ocean Avenue.

So basically this is the setting for the entire street. You walk down a narrow space, wide enough for just your body and maybe a dog, surrounded on both sides by restaurant chairs and diners. And each restaurant ALWAYS has some people set up ON THE SIDEWALK who block your path while your walking and shove their menu into your hands and then try to make you sit down. I really feel bad turning them down sometimes, but they are really fucking annoying. And SOMETIMES, the restaurants even have food displays on the sidewalk, trying to entice you in with how appealing the food looks.

COULD YOU PASS THAT UP!?

They got me.
The food was delicious though. I'd only suggest going at lunch because 90% of the restaurants do 50% off the entire menu during lunch. It's like $20 for a plate of pasta vs. $10. But the food really is good.

Camera fail, lo siento.

While your eating, jailbait shoves a tray of cigarettes and cigars into your face and offers to sell you some. $2 for a Black and Mild.

Doggy!

There are also lots of people trying to make a dollar off the rich SoBe goers. This man was walking a dog that was loyally carrying a bucket in it's mouth. If you throw some money on the ground the dog does a neat little trick.

He picks it up IN HIS MOUTH

IN HIS MOUTH

And DROPS IT IN THE BUCKET!

Cutest thing ever!! Second only to...

CHRISTIAN THE LION!!!

I WANT A BABY LION TOOOOOOO! =(((((((((((