Shtetl by the Sea

The first time David Godlis went to Miami Beach was to visit his grandparents. That was in the 1950s, he was a child and his grandparents had retired in South Beach, a sort of heaven for older generations and Jewish immigrants mostly originally coming from Eastern European countries. Later, he said these trips  were "like visiting Jewish Disneyland". When Godlis went to visit with his grandmother in 1974,  part of "that magic kingdom" had already disappeared. He was 22, took his his camera out on to Ocean Drive, shot sixty rolls of film in ten days capturing what was left of the magic (via) witnessing the end of an era. 

The environment had once been a thriving one attracting many people, offering - among other things - Yiddish-language vaudeville shows in art deco theatres (Yiddish would be abandoned by the second-generation immigrants in favour of English). 

His grandparents, like other immigrants in the community, were snowbirds who retired to South Florida after back-breaking work in the hustle-and-bustle atmosphere of New York City. A far cry from New York's harsh winters, these retirees were savoring the respite from the frost of the Northeast. 'Goodbye snow, hello coconuts,' Godlis writes in his book. (via)

When Florida repealed the discriminatory law barring Jewish Americans from owning real estate in 1949, Miami Beach became a magnet for the community. It was called "Little Jerusalem" or "Shtetl by the Sea" (via). In the 1970s, around 80% of the population of Miami Beach was Jewish,, with a peak in the 1980s (via). While in 1982, there were an estimated 60.000 Jewish households, more recent surveys put the number at a maximum of 16.000. Today, the legendary nightclub and theatre are no more, the demographics have changed. (via). But, as Godlis says, not all is lost.

In 2017, when I last returned to Miami Beach, I stayed in the little Century Hotel, looking pretty close to how it looked in 1974 when I first came upon it. I walked around to see where most of these pictures had been taken. To dream the dream I had photographed 40 years earlier. And I could still see it all. Even my cover girl in her cool Oliver Goldsmith sunglasses. The ocean and palm trees have a way of making those dreams come true. If only for a 1/125th of a second. David Godlis

In 1985, 10 years after I shot these photographs, I returned to Miami Beach with my wife, Eileen. I took her down to Ocean Drive to show her where they were taken and was astonished to find that most everyone was gone. I don’t think even in my early 30s I understood how fast time flies. Of course, many of the retired people I shot pictures of were dead 10 years later. But also many of them had been driven out by the Mariel boatlift of 1980. You can see what became of Ocean Drive in the bathroom shootout scene with Al Pacino in Brian DePalma’s Scarface. So Eileen and I stayed a little further up Collins Avenue the year. And I had to be very careful taking photographs on Ocean Drive that my camera wasn’t stolen.
David Godlis

photographs by David Godlis via