A couple weeks back my friend, Nulise, asked me if I wanted to go photograph the graffiti at the Miami Marine Stadium in Key Biscayne and who am I to say no. You might remember the Miami Marine Stadium from when I photographed Lorell there. Well we sent a few texts back and forth and set up a time and date to meet up. We decided to got and photography the graffiti because the city will be renovating the decrepit and debilitated stadium soon and we wanted to capture some of the art that has been painted on to the walls of the stadium.
Nulise and myself are both from the same city in Massachusetts, Lawrence, so on the drive down we were talking about some of the places up there etc. We also were comparing it to Miami and how there is no comparison to Miami etc. Funny thing is we both vowed never to return. If you want a brief history of Lawrence here it is. During the 80’s and 90’s it lead the state and nation in arson and insurance fraud. Now its voted the worst city to live in Massachusetts. So we came from a great place.
The weather lately here in Miami has been rainy and blustery we decided to trek out and take our chances. Now the stadium is fenced in, but there are always ways to get in. The stadium is popular for people wanting to tag the walls or photograph inside. We made our way in and walked around admiring the art and taking photos in the process. The bonus of shooting today was that there were no mosquitoes.
Now my main focus of my photos were to capture the decay and the debris that is strewn about the stadium. I can appreciate the art on the walls but that wasn’t my focus today. The stadium is littered with empty spray cans, bottles and every piece of trash known to man. A lot of the chairs were tagged or broken and you always had to be careful of where you were walking.
I ended up walking out on the catwalk that overlooked the entire stadium and I was pretty nervous. I remember when I shot Lorell here I didn’t want her to walk out too far because of the holes in the ground. Well, I laugh in the face of danger. Ok I smile sheepishly, but none the less I walked out there to photograph the stadium chairs from above. Well lets just say all the holes in the floor had me worried I was going to fall through. This place is decaying quicker than a 5 year old’s tooth. I could hear Nulise telling me from below that this place won’t insure me if I fell. Such a reassuring thing to say.
We walked about the stadium and I ventured into some of the rooms as well. Some of these rooms were shallow and dark. I didn’t mind going in, but Nulise stayed out in the light. I won’t lie there were some deep, almost cavernous rooms in there and I wasn’t going to venture to see what laid amongst it. I saw “I Am Legend.” There could be some infected, flesh eating zombies in there.
After our foray into the stadium we left. As we were walking out the police were pulling in. They didn’t bother us because we were leaving but I’m sure they were there to enforce all those “Do Not Enter” signs. As I told Nulise, “I’ve been kicked out of better places than this.”
