Two Large Cups of Cuban Coffee for Sonny Crockett

I admit that Miami Vice, the police series Don Johnson starred in in the 1980s, had something to do with my decision to leave New York and move to Miami that same decade.

In the harsh winters in the north, while outside the window the snow covered streets and houses with an icy white blanket, the vision on the television screen of a warm, sunny city on the shores of a clear blue ocean offered a tempting contrast. The detectives in the series, always dressed in light pastel designer clothes, always moving aboard speedboats or in exotic cars under a radiant sun, made envious those of us who had to bundle up in heavy coats to heroically make our way to the subway station, braving freezing temperatures.

The adventures of Miami Vice detectives Sonny Crockett (played by Don Johnson) and Ricardo Tubbs (played by Philip Michael Thomas), their battles against the drug traffickers who plagued South Florida, took place against the magic and splendor of the beach and the ocean as a background. Raymond Chandler’s private investigator is a man who is anything but mean, but he must pass down those mean streets. The heroes of Miami Vice were spared the gloomy streets: their world was the glittering atmosphere of a southern paradise. That paradise had its dark side, but the tropical glow dazzled the audience and prevented them from fully realizing the sinister dimension of danger.

Of course, the reasons I left New York and came to Miami were more compelling than just the attraction of a TV series. In any case, the fictional city was a magnet that drew me to the real city. Miami Vice showed me the way.

One day, I received a call from a recently launched Miami newspaper, offering me a job. I said no, because, as the famous saying goes, I love New York, and I didn’t want to leave the Big Apple. But then winter arrived, with its unbearable cold and annoying snowfall, and in the spring, they called me again and offered me the same job. This time, moved by a sudden impulse, I accepted.

I decided to go to Florida in my car, so I wouldn’t have to go through the hassle of selling it on the fly and buying a new one in Miami. My uncle told me I should take I-95 highway straight south, without deviating from the road, until I reached South Florida.

I left in the morning, alone in my car and at full speed because I had to make the long drive along the Atlantic coast in less than two days to start my new job on the agreed upon date. I crossed the Hudson River through George Washington Bridge and headed south on the New Jersey Turnpike, which joins I-95.

I had learned how to drive only a little more than a couple of years ago, and the prospect of the long journey kept causing me anxiety, but I sucked it up and pressed on along the road, the police radar detector positioned on the windshield to avoid a fine for driving too fast.

It was still a bit chilly when I left New York, so I was wearing several layers and a wool jacket. As I left New Jersey and Pennsylvania behind and entered the Carolinas, the weather became kinder, and I took off first my coat, then my sweater, and finally, well into the South, I was left with only my T-shirt.

Night fell upon me in North Carolina. I was tired from the long hours behind the wheel and decided to stop at a roadside hotel and resume my journey in the morning. But there were no empty rooms.

I continued along I-95, devouring the miles in the darkness of the almost deserted road. I stopped at several hotels near the highway with the same result—they had no rooms available.

I crossed the border into South Carolina, where the same mystery awaited me—the hotels were full. Or was it that they didn’t want to accommodate a Hispanic man traveling alone in the middle of the night? I never found out what happened.

Just after midnight, I stopped at a hotel close to the highway and asked if I could stay there. The woman at the front desk gave me the same answer—they had no vacant rooms. Desperate and sleepy, I told her I was driving alone from New York, that I had been behind the wheel for many hours, and that I needed to rest.

“I don't need a room,” I told her. “I just want a space to sleep in, right here, in that hallway,” I pointed. “Any space.”

Surprised by my request, the woman said, “Wait a moment, please.”

She walked a few steps away from the reception area, picked up the phone, and dialed a number. A couple of minutes later, she was back with me.

“We don’t have rooms,” she said, “but about 20 miles from here, there’s a hotel, the Plantation Inn, that has vacant rooms and they are waiting for you.”

She explained how to get to the hotel, I thanked her and set off like an arrow.

The drive seemed endless, but finally I saw the exit the clerk had indicated. I left the highway and entered a small town. It wasn't difficult to find the hotel, an unremarkable inn where an Indian employee greeted me. I found it curious that a man from such a distant country had ended up settling in a tiny town in rural America, but I was too tired to start a conversation and went to sleep.

I got up early, around seven, walked around the desolate surroundings of the motel, and had breakfast at a fast-food restaurant. Without wasting a second, I put my luggage in the trunk of the car, paid the hotel bill, and set off again on my journey to Miami.

It wasn’t long before I spotted the sign marking the Georgia border. On my first day of travel, I had driven from New York almost to the southern border of South Carolina.

I crossed Georgia quickly and breathed a sigh of relief when I entered Florida. But I still had almost 350 miles to go to Miami, five or six hours of driving practically nonstop.

I thought the drive down I-95 would be a pleasant stroll with the majestic seascape to my left, but from the highway, I couldn’t see the ocean, just the long stretch of asphalt surrounded by vast fields and the occasional small town in the distance.

It didn’t matter. There were only a few hours left until I finally reached the dream city from the television series. The city whose most alluring views and mysterious corners Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas had shown me on the screen.

As I entered West Palm Beach, the pines and oaks that lined the road gave way to tropical palm trees. I couldn’t be far from my destination, I thought. However, it still took me an hour of high-speed driving to get to Miami.

A friend who lived in the city had rented me an efficiency apartment in Little Havana, and given me the address, but I didn’t know what part of the city it was in. I didn't even know which freeway exit I should take. I continued on I-95 until I entered a large urban area shortly before 5:00 p.m. When I saw a sign indicating that I-95 ended and became US-1, and another sign indicating the distance to Key West, I took the first exit I saw, afraid to leave Miami behind. I drove through several streets unknown to me, and finally, exhausted as if I had been beaten, I stopped at a coffee shop on the corner of SW First Street and 19th Avenue.

I had no idea where the efficiency my friend had rented me was, so I called him at his work from a pay phone near the coffee shop (no cell phones back then) and asked him to pick me up.

While I waited for him, I approached the cafeteria window. I didn’t know I was in the heart of Little Havana, a neighborhood where Spanish is the common language, so, as if I were still in New York, I addressed the waitress in English.

“May I have a cup of coffee, please?”

“¿Qué quieres, chico (What do you want, kid?)” the woman replied, speaking in Spanish with a thick Havana accent. “¿Un café cubano (A Cuban coffee?)”

“Yes,” I said in Spanish.

She served me the strong Cuban coffee in a small white plastic cup. But I was so tired and sleepy that I needed a bigger dose of the foamy espresso.

“Can I have a bigger cup?” I asked.

“What do you want, a colada?” the waitress asked.

I didn’t know what a colada was, but I said yes, and the woman gave me a larger plastic cup full of coffee, usually served to be shared among several people. The strong brew shook me off my drowsiness almost immediately. I leaned back in my car, lit a cigarette, and enjoyed the coffee as the afternoon traffic filled the street.

My friend was taking his time to get there, and I was still feeling tired from the long car ride. I went back to the coffee shop window and asked the waitress for another colada. I saw the surprise in her eyes when she made the coffee and served it to me.

“Are you going to have two coladas in a row just for yourself?” she asked in amazement.

“I’m exhausted,” I explained. “I just came driving all the way from New York.”

My friend arrived just as I had finished my second delicious colada. The efficiency apartment was a tiny room at the back of a house in Little Havana, a small and uncomfortable refuge, but the city was wonderful.

Two days later, already working in the newspaper, I stood on a terrace of the building overlooking Biscayne Bay. From that standpoint I saw two long causeways over the sea that reached a vast expanse of land to the east. “That must be Miami Beach,” I thought, and a coworker confirmed it.

The next day, during my lunch break, I took my car and drove across the MacArthur Causeway, which at that time had a drawbridge and a line of trees and shrubs in the middle of the road, running the entire length of the causeway.

I was finally in Miami Beach, the setting for so many adventures of the television series detectives. I drove on Collins Avenue a few blocks, parked near the beach, and walked down to the shore, dressed in my office attire amidst the sunbathers and with the row of hotels behind me. The dream had come true.

Two months later I moved into an apartment in South Beach, with views to the ocean and the Indian Creek.

In the late 1980s, Miami Beach was still affordable for the middle class and even low-income residents; it wasn’t the millionaires’ enclave it would later become. For just over $400 a month, I was able to rent a decent apartment a few steps from the beach and the boardwalk.

I visited the places I saw in Miami Vice. I drove around the curve on Collins Avenue next to the Fontainebleau Hotel, where there was a mural of the coastline that—I was told—a drunk driver once crashed into, mistaking the painting for the street. I drove countless times across the MacArthur Causeway, in front of the cruise ship port. One night I parked, without the slightest difficulty, next to the Clevelander Hotel and had a beer at the outdoor bar, just like Lieutenant Castillo, played by Edward James Olmos, had done in a Miami Vice episode. My car was a far cry from the Ferrari Don Johnson drove, but I lived amid the places and colors of the series, under the same sun.

About a year later, I visited the coffee shop where I had stopped when I arrived in Miami. The waitress who served me was the same one from that time. I asked for a Cuban coffee, and as she poured it, she asked, “Aren’t you the one who drank two coladas here in a row about a year ago?”

I smiled and nodded. At that moment when the waitress recognized me, I felt the sensation that Miami had already welcomed me as a full resident, that I belonged in the city of my dreams.