The Bitch
Aluminum Can Omen
The movie about Jimbo’s place is hipper than thou
By Jean Carey
Miami New Times Article Published Nov 2, 2006
He was a glutton, a drug addict, an absentee father. There are many more reasons, beyond sonic and canine aesthetics, to loathe Jerry Garcia in particular and hippies in general. Adrift in a sea of Grateful Dead skull-and-flowers logo-bearing T-shirts, The Bitch discovered yet another tangential motivation for crying "death to Deadheads" on a recent Saturday evening. She was attending an advance screening of a locally filmed and produced DVD titled Jimbo's: The Documentary (which should actually be called Jimbo's: The Stoner Infomercial).
The premiere took place at Books & Books in Coral Gables. The shop's outdoor courtyard had been transformed into a party area (including room for spinning) with a wine and beer bar and projection screen. The Bitch almost didn't make it. Standing across the street from the event on Aragon Avenue around 8:00 p.m., the sensitive hound's auditory and olfactory senses were assaulted by sound that could be made only by one human plus one guitar. There was a wave of tie-dye effluvia — patchouli and lack of bathing — so potent her eyes watered even as her ears flattened. Summoning a reserve of canine courage and taking a deep breath, she plunged ahead.
The documentary was made by twenty-year-old surfer/cinematographer Andrew Petersen and narrated by Robert Burr. It's a 40-minute mélange of mostly present-day footage of septuagenarian shrimp-shack owner James "Jimbo" Luznar, who, through a tenuous agreement with the city, inhabits a storied Virginia Key property. There are some snippets of films shot at the bayfront location — Wild Things and Porky's among them — as well. To Petersen's credit, he remains off-camera and allows his subjects to pretty much represent themselves, which in Luznar's case is charming though predictable (mugging with babes, rolling bocce balls, et cetera). What's grating is the film's thesis statement: that hippie culture — particularly the Florida cracker version of the Easy Rider/Monterey Pop lifestyle — is precious, imperiled, appreciably superior to its alternatives, and all in all as critical to the world as, say, Minoan bull-jumping or Etruscan funerary practices.
A good 30 minutes of the movie is devoted to scenes of hippies dancing (to acoustic, blues-derived bands playing Dead covers, of course), drinking beer, drunkenly hugging, complaining about the living detritus that gets caught in shrimping nets (annoying stuff like live dolphins, sea turtles, and soon-to-be endangered sharks), and talking about how Jimbo's is the last place where you can get away from "what Miami has become," as one nameless, hooky-playing businessman exclaims.
"This is really an important part of history," insisted Michael Stephens, a dark-haired fiftyish man with a gap-toothed smile. Wearing a Che beret and Havaianas, and exuding a lack of Old Spice deodorant, he continued, "I mean, this is one of the places that's left to go for the people like me who represented the Sixties and Seventies. We protested the war and for civil rights...."
The Bitch cited some anti-hippie propaganda — Skinny Puppy's 1987 fourteen-minute anti-tie-dye screed "Tin Omen" — and noted that even hippies have a song about how lame they are: "Easy to Be Hard," from the Hair soundtrack. "That's just because the New Wave, Reagan generation didn't have to suffer the way we did," irrationally interjected Stephens' companion, a svelte, beaded-halter-wearing blond named Pacey Kara, who is either much younger than Stephens or, you know, has had some work done. "People who are keeping the old ways alive like Jimbo deserve a museum."
The crowd at Books & Books generally seemed to reflect those values. Standing behind The Bitch were a woman named Isabel — a striking redhead dressed down-and-out in a floor-grazing muslin skirt and nerd glasses — and a man named Mark in a red-green-yellow Rasta beanie. The thirtyish couple was involved in an intense discussion as the film unspooled: Isabel: "I haven't actually been out to Jimbo's in a while. They only have beer, and beer aggravates my urinary tract. I think it's my ureter, actually!" Mark: "Well, I don't have a problem with beer. But I don't have any cash on me. Can you buy me an Amstel Light?" Other audience members clapped and cheered every time self-affirmation — in the form of hippies — flickered across the screen.
One person who appeared in a few shots in the film and was present for the screening was Douglas Renshaw. He is also known as the dude in the fake dreadlocks and black tam who tries to collect money from people to "guard" their cars when they park at Flanigan's on Bird Avenue. "Yeah, I had to take the night off," Renshaw, in all seriousness, told The Bitch. "Fortunately I've got enough for some brew. This is gonna hurt later in the month, though." Luznar received the biggest applause of the night for his comments after the film, for asserting that his life's greatest joy is "my wife, my five kids, and my eight grandchildren."
The Bitch realized she was still in present-day Miami-Dade when a limo containing reggaeton duo Wisin y Yandel nearly mowed her down. They were on their way to their record-release postparty at Houston's. The dog took the trolley-bus combination home, where she had to destroy the clothes she had been wearing, so imbued were they with eau de hippie.
