A Transformed Miami Loses Its `Vice`

[Pink Flaming0]

May 19, 1989 By New York Times News Service. MIAMI — It`s merely a television show. Yet when the last episode of ``Miami Vice`` is broadcast Sunday night, an important chapter in this city`s life will close. The end of the series, which ran five seasons, has been marked with parties and an auction of its props. But most important, it has been marked by reflection on just how much one television show-and a fictional cops-and-robbers one, at that-came to influence the perception that this city has of itself and that many elsewhere in the country have of Miami. ``The show that redefined Miami`s image,`` the Miami Herald called it recently. From its start in September, 1984, the hourlong NBC show reaffirmed and exaggerated what was already in the news pages about Miami: crime and drugs. The world portrayed on ``Miami Vice`` was a world of cocaine cowboys and marijuana millionaires killing one another and being killed by two police detectives who wore expensive loafers (without socks) and chic European designer suits that no honest real detective could afford. But the show also sent out to more than 19 million homes around the country what was not in the newspapers: that Miami was a city of suntanned youth, not solely of retired elderly people; that it was a city with a distinctive, slick architectural style and sexy subtropical beauty. As life imitated television, many here believe, Miami began to change, as if to live up to the screen`s distilled image of it, an image that was conveyed by camera work of a rock-video style with background music to match. Suddenly the pastel T-shirts favored by the show`s characters, in particular Sonny Crockett, played by Don Johnson, were de rigueur at cocktail parties. And as the show featured Art Deco buildings painted in pastel pinks, greens and blues-in effect anointing that as the official Miami look-more Miami buildings took on those hues. The show`s cameras repeatedly focused on South Beach, then a somewhat seedy enclave at the southern tip of Miami Beach`s Art Deco area, and preservationists credit ``Miami Vice`` with stirring interest in the area and speeding its gentrification. So trendy are the clubs and cafes of this new South Beach that it has taken on an acronym, SoBe (pronounced SO-bee). Although some city officials were at first upset at the title ``Miami Vice,`` arguing that it put the city in a bad light, the name was later not merely accepted but mimicked everywhere. Now there are Miami Mice (an exterminator), Miami Twice (a secondhand-clothing store), Miami Spice (a seasonings shop), Miami Nice (a chiropractor) and Miami Slice (a luncheonette). ``Miami Vice`` had an effect on the city, but what is still disputed is whether, on the whole, the image of Miami has been burnished or tarnished.

[Matt5]

MIAMI It`s merely a television show. Yet when the last episode of ``Miami Vice`` is broadcast Sunday night, an important chapter in this city`s life will close.The end of the series, which ran five seasons, has been marked with parties and an auction of its props.But most important, it has been marked by reflection on just how much one television show-and a fictional cops-and-robbers one, at that-came to influence the perception that this city has of itself and that many elsewhere in the country have of Miami.``The show that redefined Miami`s image,`` the Miami Herald called it recently.From its start in September, 1984, the hourlong NBC show reaffirmed and exaggerated what was already in the news pages about Miami: crime and drugs.The world portrayed on ``Miami Vice`` was a world of cocaine cowboys and marijuana millionaires killing one another and being killed by two police detectives who wore expensive loafers (without socks) and chic European designer suits that no honest real detective could afford.But the show also sent out to more than 19 million homes around the country what was not in the newspapers: that Miami was a city of suntanned youth, not solely of retired elderly people; that it was a city with a distinctive, slick architectural style and sexy subtropical beauty.As life imitated television, many here believe, Miami began to change, as if to live up to the screen`s distilled image of it, an image that was conveyed by camera work of a rock-video style with background music to match. Suddenly the pastel T-shirts favored by the show`s characters, in particular Sonny Crockett, played by Don Johnson, were de rigueur at cocktail parties.And as the show featured Art Deco buildings painted in pastel pinks, greens and blues-in effect anointing that as the official Miami look-more Miami buildings took on those hues.The show`s cameras repeatedly focused on South Beach, then a somewhat seedy enclave at the southern tip of Miami Beach`s Art Deco area, and preservationists credit ``Miami Vice`` with stirring interest in the area and speeding its gentrification.So trendy are the clubs and cafes of this new South Beach that it has taken on an acronym, SoBe (pronounced SO-bee).Although some city officials were at first upset at the title ``Miami Vice,`` arguing that it put the city in a bad light, the name was later not merely accepted but mimicked everywhere.Now there are Miami Mice (an exterminator), Miami Twice (a secondhand-clothing store), Miami Spice (a seasonings shop), Miami Nice (achiropractor) and Miami Slice (a luncheonette).``Miami Vice`` had an effect on the city, but what is still disputed is whether, on the whole, the image of Miami has been burnished or tarnished.

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