- Biggie is the like
the old-school hustler
from this neighborhood.
But on a legal side.
Well, semi.
Some communities immediately reach out
and grab you the second you arrive.
And its easy to fall prey to labeling it
way too early.
There's always more complexity and depth
than at first glance.
Its not often that you call a cinder block
a canvas, but that's certainly the case
in Wind wood.
- And right now, you know, I never
would have believed it, but you know
I got tour buses that come by here.
- [Narrator] Street art has transformed
this community.
- It's not just tech here, med tech
or software, it's also
like, a wide variety
of really different industries.
- [Narrator] And it's
creeped into the hearts
and the souls of all that experience it.
- Before there was nothing here.
You couldn't walk back here.
If you walked back here, this whole
crew would get robbed.
- [Narrator] Evolution,
transition, transformation,
whatever you want to call it, it always
has to start somewhere.
In the nineteen fifties,
after world war two,
there was a large influx of Puerto Ricans
into Wynwood, and it became know as
Little San Juan.
Over time, the neighborhood
began to diversify,
to include blacks, Haitians, Colombians,
Cubans, and Dominicans.
And by the Nineteen Seventies,
it was lower-middle class.
And then over time, the barber shops,
the laundromats, and the bodegas,
get torn down for cafes where
you can get a fifteen-dollar
cup of coffee,
hit your private Pilates session,
or ogle at a dress in the window,
that for eight hundred bucks, you
quietly wonder who in the hell is
gonna where that.
Bajarecque, a legacy of five generations
of Puerto Rico, smacked in the middle
of Wynwood. There was a period in my life
that the table was jammed packed with
mofongo, empanadas,
pasteles, and platanos.
And when I sat down at
Bajarecque, immediately
I was transported back in time.
- Our parents started teaching us to cook
as soon as we were about eight years old
or when we were in school.
When you're home and
you have nine siblings,
someone's got to feed us all. So, yeah,
we all learned to cook
eventually at one point.
- And so this has been the
anchor of the neighborhood,
for fifty years, five generations,
you've seen a lot here.
- Right, our great-great
grandparents, the primary
reason why they came here, was because
it was so affordable, at the time.
So it was easier that you lived
down the street, and if you did
have the ambition to open up a business,
luckily it was affordable and it was
viable in this area, so that's exactly
what they did, they took advantage
and they bought the land when they could
afford it, and it's been ours ever since.
We've had some people that would be like,
"we'll take it out of your
hands", absolutely not.
This is our heart and our home.
- Earlier, when there
were a larger Puerto Rican
population here, from Puerto Rico that
immigrated here, was
it a 'hey, let's stick
together and get this done', do you
have those memories?
- When we were little, our grandmother,
who literally lives around the block,
she used to prepare and
cook from the morning.
The people who we did know, who we
treated like family, which is most of the
neighborhood, if you
were hungry, we would get
you a plate at the back, you'd
bring it out to the front and eat.
- Do you ever feel like
it's a responsibility
for you to carry this on?
- Responsibility? I
definitely feel more so
of an honor, I mean, I
think we're incredibly
lucky to say that our family has been
here for so long. I don't really know
many people that can
say that. Especially as
Puerto Ricans and Cubans,
we need each other,
to survive in this area, because it is
flourishing quite rapidly so, yeah.
- You too?
- Wasn't going to let you drink alone.
- Oh, that's good. (baby cries)
- He agrees. Twenty-one more years
- Ah, maybe a little earlier.
- Uh-oh, oh Pete, okay.
- It's gonna go all great right here
- You've driven this before, right?
- Yeah, it's my first time.
- [Narrator] Meet Judd Allison,
Judd is the owner of Toe Jam Back Lot
and 305 films, and he
has been in Wynwood for
over three decades.
- You know, we've been through it,
like in the beginning, all the crackheads
were all on, I mean it was hardcore.
This area actually, you
know, three years ago
had the highest murder
rate in Dade County.
It's the funniest shit 'cause you'll
see tourists walking right into here,
and I'm like 'guys'.
Biggie, has the motor, has this place
changed at all?
- [Narrator] In the late Eighties into the
Nineteen Nineties, Artists had begun to
move into abandoned warehouses in Wynwood
and started developing them into galleries
and studios.
In the middle 2000's,
Wynwood got a savior,
Tony Goldman, a creative
and talented visionary,
who was the force behind a revitalization
of Soho and South Beach,
and he brought life to
Wynwood Walls. Art has
always been a factor in
contributing to the revitalization of a
neighborhood. But when
is it revitalization
or when is it gentrification?
New members of the community come in,
and old members of the
community may be weakened.
Either way you look at it, there is a
demographic turnover. Should you not
revitalize a neighborhood,
when does the tipping
point lead to gentrification,
and how do you
create a more inclusive
environment for all
in the mix? Tell me what you eat and
I will tell you what you are.
Meet chef Raymond of Palmar, food plays
an essential role in the
economic development,
health, and culture of a community.
- [Chef Raymond] This
is my charred Sioux ribs
this is my family recipe, the sauce.
So what I did is that I took it to the
next level, modernized it, and then
these are cashews that are toasted on
the wok, with salt, sugar and five spice.
- I remember that day my aunt took me to a
French restaurant in New York City,
and I had my first steak tartar.
- [Chef Raymond] And I learned how to do
the prawns, and the shrimp just like this.
- [Narrator] I remember the raw octopus at
this sushi restaurant in Long Island.
All of these things opened my mind, I
became part of the culture for just that
one moment, and maybe
just a bit more tolerant
than I had been previous
to tasting that food.
- Cuban food, Colombian food, that's Miami
One of my neighbors would be Jamaican,
the one in front of me, Haitian,
the guy next to me, Colombian, and you
know it's very diverse.
- [Narrator] Tony Cho
is real estate developer
who drafted up behind
the Godfather of Wynwood,
Tony Goldman.
So you've been here since early days?
- Yep,
- One of the pioneers?
- I bought my first
apartment on Twenty-first
in Biscayne Bay, I bought it for
sixty-six thousand dollars, with
nine thousand I had
saved, with a hard money
loan, from a high lea loan shark at
eleven percent. A year
later sold that apartment
for a hundred and eighty thousand dollars
and I had this aha moment, and I said
'wow, there's this direct
correlation between
art, culture, and real estate value.'
and I started investing
in all of these areas
which I now call the Urban Core,
by essentially following where
all the creatives are.
- Does Miami have a
undeserved reputation of
back in the old days?
- Me growing up, this area, was the hood.
- The only thing I
heard was the shot, boom
- [Chef Raymond] And yeah
I just remember seeing
the TV, seeing the news, there was always
something going on.
Miami's scene is shares
of many troubles, but
I see we're seeing
daylight, a lot of daylight
and a lot of innovation.
I could say we have come
a very, very long way
from what it was before.
- [Tony Cho] Wynwood has
done a really good job
about attracting really
innovative developers
and investors who see the long-term value.
People don't come in and come out and flip
properties here, people
here are very proud to
be part of it, they take an active role,
there's a Wynwood pride
here that exists that
people don't want to do things mediocre,
they're always trying to innovate.
I'm very privileged and honored to be
part of it, and I hope to contribute in
a meaningful way.
- [Narrator] Erik Beucklaers
is an executive who
previously worked in Silicon Valley for
Verve Surgical. They were developing one
of the world's most complex
surgical robotic platforms.
Erik moved to Wynwood to
lead a venture capital
surgical robotic company who intends
on revolutionizing the
dental surgery market.
When you made a decision to move the
entire Headquarters to
Wynwood, did Wynwood
influence pro or con,
what did you wrestle with
before pulling the trigger on that
financial commitment?
- [Erik] How can we blend in Miami,
we're a high tech company,
and people saw that
okay, high-tech, I've
heard that so many times.
okay, but what's so typical to Miami and
you know Wynwood is
like, kind of a piece of
Miami, it's easier as a
sales pitch to people,
like 'hey, we're this up and coming tech
company, we're fun, we're blending in
with the artists, we want to do that
stuff for the community, and I think that
it would have been way more difficult than
any other neighborhood in Miami.
- My fear here is, and it's happened in
every neighborhood, is that artists get
pushed out eventually. I don't care how
bad-ass they are, money
talks, all day long.
And so, I'm just curious, tick-tock,
tick-tock, tick-tock, how
we're going to balance
that here.
- Yeah, I think that the
bigger advantage that
companies like us have is, the timeline.
We have very patient investors, we've
been grateful, with
having the right investors
that have patience with us, right?
Let's look at five, seven years down
the road. So we don't have that pressure
of delivering right away, or we need
to grow every single quarter.
- It's that mindset that many leaders need
because, too many times, we're looking
at exclusively the
balance sheets, and scared
shit of the share holders and the
quarterly response. And I think that
that leadership really would resonate in
this Wynwood neighborhood, tremendously.
I think that we're on of
the first tech companies
or med tech companies or startups
that are looking at like technology
but it's not really living here yet.
I think that tech business here is
really the next frontier.
I think the city needs
to start recognizing
it more, cause just art
is not gonna happen,
we're gonna be attracting
talent. But talent attracts talent.
So, we really need a
lot of companies here to
join the development of
Wynwood or South Florida.
you have the people here, you have the
natural vibe, let's build
a new tech city here.
- [Narrator] Love the revitalization
of neighborhoods. We love the ready to
shoot, instagramable scenery of these
communities. While change is inevitable,
and it always leaves something or someone
behind, there will always
be winners and losers
in all transitions. Like it or not,
without the risk of
extinction, there is no
evolution. And by the way, I am not
saying that evolution is a good thing,
you're welcome True Future.
