We weren't close, so she probably didn't know that my two earliest memories are the night Hurricane Andrew hit (I was four) and not being able to get out of bed for two days straight when Selena died (I was six).
There's probably never been a more accurate way to describe me. It was Selena when I was six, the Backstreet Boys when I was 12, Conan O'Brien when I was 13, the Beatles and Wilco when I was 16, Dylan when I was 19, Gaga when I was 20, and birdwatching when I was 30. Most of these still endure.
I've pulled some crazy stunts in the name of these hyperfixations. When I was 20, I went to New York for the first time. It was my first (of only two times) seeing falling snow; my first time experiencing actual winter. I was born and raised in Miami. I do not do winter. And yet there I was at 6 a.m., in vastly inadequate footwear and a borrowed down coat outside 30 Rock, first in the standby line for a taping of Late Night With Conan O'Brien. I had to keep stepping inside the lobby to warm up. A passerby shouted some encouragement: "First in line for Conan!" It was very much appreciated as I'd totally overshot: The next group of fans didn't show up until three hours later. Needless to say, I got in — I still have my ticket with a "1" written on the back.
Fourteen years later, I made another trip to New York to see Conan host a live taping of his podcast at the Beacon Theater. I brought my 2008 standby ticket and he signed it. A year after that, I was back in another standby line (this time in the summer, at least) in hopes of seeing Conan interview Paul McCartney at the Tribeca Film Festival. My twin sister persuaded me to use my airline miles for a wildly long shot. We waited for five hours, but we got in.
Conan often quotes something his father used to tell him about his comedy career: "You're making your living off something that should probably be treated." When I started freelancing for New Times in mid-2016, I learned my obsessive concern for all things pop culture — screwed-up priorities, some might call it — could be useful here. A year into the gig, I got a tip that Shakira was going to play a free, public show at the Wynwood Yard. I waited four hours (for a two-song set) and got to write a scene report about one of the biggest superstars on the planet for the paper.
In 2018, I wrote a New Times cover story about an exhibition about my namesake, Celia Cruz.
Photo by Celia Almeida
My obsessive middle-school self would have never dreamed of the wild opportunities I've gotten thanks to New Times over the past near-decade. I interviewed a pre-pre-pre "Espresso" Sabrina Carpenter way back in 2017 and a then-little-known Karol G at Cafeina Wynwood in 2018. I slept in my hatchback (RIP 2003 Toyota Matrix) for three nights at Okeechobee Music & Arts Festival because my crappy Metro PCS connection made it impossible to find the relative strangers with whom I'd planned to camp. I sat in my car (yup, the hatchback) in a parking garage and talked to Walter Mercado about my astrological sign (Virgo) ahead of an exhibition of his clothes and artifacts at HistoryMiami in 2019 — it was one of the last interviews he did before he died later that year.
Now that I'm back at New Times — this time as culture editor — I'm looking forward to continuing those adventures and fostering them for the next generation of culture writers in this town. The culture vertical covers a vast range of topics — visual arts, theater, dance, film, comedy, travel, wellness, sports, entertainment, sex and dating, and what we like to call "Miami Life" — so we've got lots of questions to explore. Who are the artists we'll introduce locally before they're known worldwide in a few years? How can we best document Miami's rapidly changing cultural landscape in the face of encroaching development? Can we give you valuable tips on how to date and make friends in this damn town?
I can't wait to find out.
