A Cuban Revival

Everyone knows about Calle Ocho, the heart of Cuban Miami. But there were never many good reasons to go there, unless you liked playing dominos with grumpy 70- year-olds or sipping sweet Cuban coffee outside Versailles restaurant. In fact, its neglected streets and rising crime led many upwardly mobile Cuban-Americans to move out. New immigrants from Honduras and Nicaragua in the 1980s created their own Little Central America.

But 50 years after the first Cuban exiles began arriving in Miami, Calle Ocho is getting a much-needed makeover. Tourists fresh off cruise ships are arriving by the coachload. New attractions are springing up everywhere, from art galleries and cigar stores to Latino theaters and nightclubs.

“There’s a really great local scene building here. It’s a real revival,” says Mike Kuczynski, a University of Miami law school student, sucking on a cigar in a leather armchair at Padilla Cigars.

“We are trying to get the word out,” says storeowner Ernesto Padilla, son of one of Cuba’s greatest poets. Old black and white photos of his father with 1950s literary figures, including Ernest Hemingway, decorate one wall. “There are places to eat, things to do and see. It’s turning around.”

One new spot, La Casa de Tula, offers a throwback to Cuba’s pre-revolutionary past, mixed with Miami popular culture. “We are like Havana in the 1950s, a nightclub-cabaret style venue where you can lounge while the orchestra plays,” says owner Gilbert Cabrera, 44, a Cuban-born former TV producer who studied journalism in Russia before defecting in Canada. Cabrera worked as executive producer on El Show de Cristina before going into local politics. But now he’s betting on Calle Ocho. He opened La Casa de Tula two years ago.

It’s not all for Hispanics either. At La Casa de Tula, Wednesday is Comedy Night, with mostly English-language performers. Thursday is House Music night. “We are revolutionizing live evening entertainment in Little Havana. It’s not all Latin. It’s beyond salsa and merengue,” Cabrera says. “When you have pure English entertainment on Calle Ocho, that tells you something is going on.”

A few doors down Roberto Ramos, 44, a former karate champion and special forces trainer in Cuba, has created his own cultural space, Cuba Ocho. Ramos fled Cuba in 1992 with a boatload of Cuban paintings. Housed on the spacious ground floor of a new building, Cuba Ocho is decorated with Ramos’ personal collection of paintings and books from Cuba’s pre-revolutionary era.

Across the street at Kimbara Cumbara, theater owner Fabio Díaz, 35, has created another popular nightspot for music and theater. One recent show titled ‘Mujeres’, a Latin-style Vagina Monologues featuring six women in different states of female angst, played to packed houses.

Díaz arrived in Miami in 1993 and worked as a waiter at Gloria Estefan’s South Beach restaurant, Larios on the Beach. His father, a famous nighttime radio DJ, stayed behind. In 2000, Díaz opened Hoy Como Ayer (Today Like Yesterday), a lively Cuban music club on Calle Ocho featuring jazz/fusion. It was an instant hit.

“Cubans are entrepreneurs and optimists by nature, despite all the history of the last 50 years,” says Díaz. “Our culture is what saves and unites us.”