💦 Florida: a hot, hot hub of humidity

Keep your weekend itinerary wide open. 🏖 | Want to see your own picture in this space? Tag either #thenewtropic or @thenewtropic to be featured in our Instagram of the Day. (📸: @fridagfotografia)

💦 Surprising exactly zero Floridians, a new study has found that the Sunshine State has the 20 most humid cities in the country. The less-than-shocking findings come courtesy of HouseFresh, a London-based company that compiled its data using the weather-tracking website Weather Spark. As noted by the Tampa Bay Times, 17 cities are situated in Southeast Florida while two are in Tampa Bay and another sits in Southwest Florida. While the claim for muggiest municipality belongs to Pinellas Park, Miami-Dade County made a very strong showing numbers-wise: Homestead, Miami Beach, Hialeah, Aventura, Miami, North Miami Beach, North Miami, Coral Gables, and Miami Gardens all made the list. (Tampa Bay Times)

💰 Finally, some good news from the federal government: The Everglades is set to receive $1.1 billion in funding. The money was made available through last year’s infrastructure bill and is reportedly the largest single investment ever made into Everglades restoration efforts. Environmental advocates were surprised by the announcement and hope that the funds will go toward restoring water flow and improving seagrass health. “I was shocked,” Audubon Florida State Director Jerry Lorenz told CBS Miami. “I am very optimistic that this is truly what we need.” (CBS Miami / WPTV) 

💉 Unfortunately, COVID-19 vaccination cards are not immune from getting misplaced. That’s why the Miami Herald was courteous enough to put a helpful guide together on how to get a new one. The article maps out how to go about getting a new card and who to reach out to, namely, your healthcare provider and the Florida Department of Health. It also shares this helpful pro-tip for the digitally inclined: “Once you have proof of your vaccine status, snap a pic and make a COVID vaccine photo album on your phone to have a copy handy. Apple, Android and Samsung users can also store their info digitally through Apple Wallet, Google Pay and Samsung Pay. There are other apps you can use, too.” (Miami Herald)

❄️ A very chilly anniversary just breezed through Miami: Wednesday marked 45 years since the day snow was documented in South Florida for the first time. While the 305 braces for another cold front and the slew of storms coming along with it, cozy on up with a look back at how locals reacted to this welcome weather event. 👉 (AccuWeather / NBC 6 South Florida)

“Prelude to 2100” and “The Bubble Pops Popsicle Project” are local art treats you’ll want a taste of. (📸: Courtesy of Laurencia Strauss)

Prelude to 2100, which opens at the Deering Estate on Feb. 3, invites Miamians to think about adaptation and acceptance in a not-too-distant future when the impacts of climate change will be even more visible and apparent than they already are today. Instigated and conceived by cultural producer, curator, and ​​Live Arts Miami resident artist Susan Caraballo, Prelude to 2100 brings together the work of more than 30 artists working in dance, theatre, sound art, and the visual arts. 

This immersive art experience is set in 2050 and is located at the Deering Estate. For the purposes of this event, the local institution has been converted into a residential complex made up of tenants who have been displaced or retreated from different parts of the world. In this speculative future scenario, rooms become available and the cohousing facility, the Co-op at Chicken Key, has decided to host its first OPEN HOUSE while simultaneously re-opening partially as an art space. Inhabitants are making the most of the accommodations, as it recently underwent repairs following a hurricane.

When the public arrives at the OPEN HOUSE, one of the first integrated participatory art projects they will encounter is Laurencia Strauss’ The Bubble Pops Popsicle Project. Guests will be asked at a mobile stand to share an experience when they had to adapt and what advice they would give to others. In exchange, they’ll receive a popsicle, some of which were made with mangos grown on the Deering Estate.

Responses are gathered and engraved onto popsicle sticks to facilitate more exchanges and a variety of messages. The popsicles themselves are casts of Miami area snow globes and images of cityscapes at great risk for sea-level rise impacts. As the popsicles are consumed, the edible sculptures melt and expose the advice from a previous participant. One of the residents of the fictional community created by Prelude to 2100 will be tending to the popsicle stand — like many of the characters, they’ll have extensive experience with adapting to new, strange circumstances.

Here are some past popsicle messages and words of advice:

The Bubble Pops connect participants to one another as their messages of encouragement are passed down, fostering strength on an individual scale as well as in the greater collective. 

Combining socially based art practices with landscape experiments, Laurencia creates mixed-media artwork often participatory experiences that contend with our interdependencies. Strauss has been an active collaborator from the earliest days of Prelude to 2100’s inception. Combining socially based art practices with landscape experiments, Strauss creates mixed-media artwork that often asks onlookers to immerse themselves and confront interdependencies head-on. Their work has drawn attention for grappling with climate change grief and has been presented both nationally and internationally. 

Prelude to 2100 by Susan Caraballo is the final installment of six new performance works addressing climate change and sustainability created by Live Art Miami’s LALA Artists in Residence. The Live Arts Lab Alliance (LALA) residency program empowers local performing artists from different disciplines to generate new work and establish enduring networks of creative feedback and collaboration. 

The immersive arts experience that is "Prelude to 2100" takes place outside at the Deering Estate from 7-10 pm on Thursday, Feb. 3 and Friday, Feb. 4 as well as from 6-9 pm on Sunday, Feb. 6. For more information please visit liveartsmiami.org. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased by clicking right here.