---
type: Video
title: "Miami Is Like playing GTA VI in Real Life 🇺🇸"
description: A day in Miami run as a GTA checklist — a $70 haircut, a jet ski past the Scarface house, and a rant about tipping, resort fees and tax that becomes the most useful thing in it.
tags: [united-states, miami, florida, jet-ski, tipping, cuban-diaspora, south-beach]
timestamp: 2026-08-05T12:00:00Z
resource: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-s7erKrjlo
video_id: q-s7erKrjlo
upload_date: 2024-08-19
duration: 1356
---

# Miami Is Like playing GTA VI in Real Life 🇺🇸

[Miami](/places/miami.md) done as a one-day checklist, framed around GTA. The
set pieces are a jet ski out to Star Island past the Scarface and Bad Boys
houses, a $70 haircut, a cigar on South Beach and a cabaret he walks into by
accident.

The two things worth keeping are quieter. Two weeks into the country, Harry
revises his opinion of it on camera — he arrived expecting arrogant, loud
Americans and hasn't had a bad experience — and then delivers a sustained rant
about tipping, resort fees and tax that turns out to be the most practically
useful minute in the whole [United States](/countries/united-states.md)
cluster.

## Key moments

- [00:00] Miami as the Magic City, named for how fast it grew, and still
  growing: low tax, tropical weather, nightlife.
- [01:03] The revision: he came to America with negative views and, two weeks
  in, likes it. Expensive, but he thinks you get what you pay for.
- [01:38] Brickell, which he rates the most conspicuously good-looking district
  he's seen anywhere.
- [02:13] The rant, part one — being asked to tip for a coffee.
- [02:43] He states the counter-argument himself: service staff are paid below
  minimum wage and tips make it up. His objection is that as an Englishman he
  tips for good service, not by default.
- [03:14] Part two: resort fees, parking and tax stacked on a hotel rate. His
  complaint is that the price you're quoted in America is never the price you
  pay.
- [04:46] A barber at $70 — the most he has ever paid for a haircut, and normal
  here.
- [05:18] The barber is Venezuelan. Miami has a large Venezuelan population.
- [07:38] Burger King started in Miami.
- [08:08] How the city grew: Henry Flagler's railway industrialised it, post-war
  retirees and veterans moved down, and Cubans and Latin Americans arrived
  fleeing communism.
- [08:38] Everything is signed in English and Spanish, and Harry says that
  dropped here without being told, he'd assume South America.
- [09:09] His observation about the country: every US city he has visited feels
  like a different country.
- [10:14] Jet ski rental requires passing a written exam before they'll hand one
  over.
- [10:45] The safety briefing: a kill cord that cuts the engine if you come off,
  and board from the back, never the side.
- [11:16] Star Island, where Scarface and Bad Boys were filmed.
- [11:47] Top speed around 45mph, filmed one-handed.
- [12:55] His verdict: expensive, and half the price elsewhere — but nowhere else
  puts the Scarface mansion in front of you.
- [13:28] Miami is the cruise capital of the world.
- [13:58] South Beach on Memorial Day weekend, where nobody he asks can tell him
  what it commemorates.
- [14:30] Cedric, selling coconuts at $5, who has come down from Macon, Georgia
  for the work.
- [15:05] Eight sold all day, and his line is that he keeps trying and won't
  give up.
- [15:36] Harry gives him $20 — explicitly for working rather than begging.
- [16:37] The retro buildings on the front, kept deliberately, which give the
  whole strip its Miami Vice look.
- [17:14] A cigar seller. The cigars are Dominican rather than Cuban, $5 to $15,
  and no licence is required to sell them.
- [20:42] He buys a cigar and finds himself inside a Latin cabaret.
- [21:22] Navy vessels moored off the beach for Memorial Day, which he reads as
  the Americans flexing.
- [21:58] Two Cuban residents: the best thing about Miami is that everyone
  speaks Spanish, and the worst is the rent, which is expensive and getting
  worse.

## Extracted pages

- Place: [Miami](/places/miami.md)
- Country: [United States](/countries/united-states.md)
- Tips: [In America the advertised price isn't the price](/tips/american-prices-arent-final.md),
  [Reward honesty and hard work](/tips/reward-honesty-and-hard-work.md)