Cocaine is to Miami what Opium is to Chinatown, what Marijuana is to Amsterdam, and what hallucinogenic frogs are to the jungle. It has a certain iconic cultural connection, a connection manifested in long parties at the club as well as the memories of places where the drug has affected the city. Think of the building boom of the 1980s that was partly funded with cocaine cash or the parking lot outside Dadeland Mall that was the site of the Dadeland Mall Massacre of 1979. Think of drug lord Pablo Escobar’s Miami Beach mansion.
Cocaine is to Miami what Opium is to Chinatown, what Marijuana is to Amsterdam, and what hallucinogenic frogs are to the jungle. It has a certain iconic cultural connection, a connection manifested in long parties at the club as well as the memories of places where the drug has affected the city. Think of the building boom of the 1980s that was partly funded with cocaine cash or the parking lot outside Dadeland Mall that was the site of the Dadeland Mall Massacre of 1979. Think of drug lord Pablo Escobar‘s Miami Beach mansion. Escobar’s house is being demolished today, but phorapher Bill Brothers of Golden Dusk Photography got inside and took a nice photo tour of the property (below), as well as a video tour over on his site.
Drug lord Escobar’s pink Miami Beach mansion is being demolished today by its current owner, Chicken Kitchen founder Christian de Berdouare. Mr. Berdouare recently conducted a high-tech hunt of the site for hidden valuables, barrels of cash (Escobar had so much money he was unable to launder it all), and potentially even human remains. It’s unclear whether Escobar himself ever lived in the home, or even ever visited it, but he probably used it as a dropping off point for powdery mountains of the white stuff. A tunnel-like opening was found in the back yard according to the Miami Herald, although any other finds will likely be revealed in a documentary also recently shot at the property. After Escobar purchased it 1980 for $762,500 (In his own name, apparently. A transfer of title document lists it) the house was seized by the Feds in 1987 and sold to an attorney. After a fire destroyed a portion of the property several years ago, it was abandoned. De Berdouare purchased it in 2014 for $9.65 million, and plans to build a glassy, modernist house in its place.
