Miami Is Like playing GTA VI in Real Life 🇺🇸

Miami 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 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
• Country: United States
• Tips: In America the advertised price isn’t the price, Reward honesty and hard work