MetroMiami

“Miami, FL.”

The very name brings to mind images of waterfront glamour, expensive cars, neon buildings, and beautiful bodies on the beach. But what you’d least expect would be a vision of everyday transportation, of the middle to low class. Of working people, of working and living and surviving. What you would probably never think about, or even use, would be the Miami Metrorail.

It represents Miami, the continuous paradox of fanciful excursions and cold, undeniable truth. It is constantly going forward and backward, the way that Miami is continuously trying to further itself in tourism and other spectacles. Miami leaves its resident locals and exiles behind, where they have to deal with their problems by themselves. Their voices scream for us to listen, but our metal cart zooms past into the unreal realm as their voices fade into the distance.

Most evident is that the outside of the Metrorail cars are covered in advertisements for other tourist destinations, such as Casa de Campo, a luxury resort in the Caribbean. The bright blue and white paint mask the cold steel, the rough cables and gears. Images of glitz and glamour return, so that you no longer see a Metrorail. You no longer see a mode of public transportation. You don’t see the masses of working class people that ride this machine every day, struggling to get by. You will never see the reality of Miami.