The seven young models never used to have this much time for the beach. They’d hop from cellphones to cabs to casting calls, posing and pouting for the catalogs during the height of Miami’s modeling season.
Times being what they are, they now soak in the sorrow of an industry while lounging on beach towels in bikinis and board shorts, or tossing a volleyball. This game is informal, for not one but two of the annual local beach volleyball tournaments have been spiked.
”Oh, the economy!” lamented 19-year-old Dani Dwyer, a wispy blonde with a flat stomach in a black bikini.
This week’s news that the Irene Marie Models agency was shutting its doors in South Beach only served to reaffirm that the nation’s economic ugliness had tainted the world of glamour.
The owner of a top modeling agency in South Beach that closed its doors last week due to a downturn in advertising was in her office on Thursday.
Irene Marie, whose agency bears her name, arrived Thursday morning to hand out portfolios and other promotional materials to models.
”When you are sitting in the middle of February, which is one of the biggest months of the year, in a seasonable business, and there is not much hope left, I was forced into a very difficult decision,” Marie said on Wednesday.
The sign posted outside the agency’s Ocean Drive studio had a clear message: The recession hit the company hard, and models were given instructions on times to pick up their portfolios over the next several days.
Hundreds of models are expected to drop by the studio on Thursday, Friday and Monday afternoon.
The economic downturn has led advertisers to cut back drastically, slicing revenue for newspapers and magazines, and in turn, the agencies that book the models who pose for the photos.
Spending on photo shoots plunged 36 percent in 2008, down to $23 million, according to Miami-Dade figures. That’s an accelerated drop from a broader decline this decade. In 1999, Miami-Dade recorded $46 million in spending on photo shoots.
In recent months, the sinking economy has, inevitably, altered that landscape. Many of the glittery hotels lining Ocean Drive are barely two-thirds full, and escalating rents and slowing sales have forced a number of boutiques and restaurants to move off the Lincoln Road Mall, the eight-block-long pedestrian street that is South Beach’s town center.
Clearly, the recession has cast a shadow here. But it is not a long enough shadow to have darkened the spirits of many heat-seeking visitors, who still descend on South Beach in search of escape. Lulled by the languid air and the pastel-tinted backdrop of Art Deco hotels, many are still intent on indulging a hedonistic streak.
This season, the usual streams of visitors from New York, Latin America and Europe have been joined by some deep-pocketed Russians, who tend to contribute unstintingly to the city’s economy.
Sofia, a 34-year-old Frenchwoman, moved here a year ago to take a job in advertising, so confident about Dubai’s fast-growing economy that she bought an apartment for almost $300,000 with a 15-year mortgage.
Now, like many of the foreign workers who make up 90 percent of the population here, she has been laid off and faces the prospect of being forced to leave this Persian Gulf city — or worse.
“I’m really scared of what could happen, because I bought property here,” said Sofia, who asked that her last name be withheld because she is still hunting for a new job. “If I can’t pay it off, I was told I could end up in debtors’ prison.”
With Dubai’s economy in free fall, newspapers have reported that more than 3,000 cars sit abandoned in the parking lot at the Dubai Airport, left by fleeing, debt-ridden foreigners (who could in fact be imprisoned if they failed to pay their bills). Some are said to have maxed-out credit cards inside and notes of apology taped to the windshield.
Christopher M. Davidson who wrote “Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success,” says, “Why is Abu Dhabi allowing its neighbor to have its international reputation trashed, when it could bail out Dubai’s banks and restore confidence?
“Perhaps the plan is to centralize the U.A.E.” under Abu Dhabi’s control, he mused, in a move that would sharply curtail Dubai’s independence and perhaps change its signature freewheeling style.”
A recent spike in human and narcotics smuggling attempts off San Diego County’s so-called “Smuggler’s Corridor” has kept members of the San Diego Marine Task force busy over the past week.
Last month, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized 1,100 pounds of marijuana off Mission Beach, on Jan. 17. Then, on Jan. 28, an abandoned boat thought to have been used to smuggle undocumented individuals was discovered adrift off Torrey Pines State Beach. That vessel contained 21 lifejackets.
Apparently, these two well-publicized encounters were only the beginning of a rash of attempts to circumvent security measures along the international border by running an offshore gauntlet along the coast between Ensenada and Del Mar, dubbed Smuggler’s Corridor by local mariners.
On Jan. 31, the U.S. Coast Guard intercepted a 17-foot vessel traveling north from the international maritime boundary with four undocumented Mexican nationals on board.
Coast Guard Maritime Safety and Security Team officers patrolling San Diego Bay on Feb. 1 at about midnight thwarted an apparent smuggling attempt when they intercepted a 25-foot sailing vessel with four persons on board.
Before dawn Feb. 2, CBP agents intercepted a Mexican fishing vessel loaded with 23 undocumented Mexican nationals off Torrey Pines State Beach.
Later that morning, Coast Guard crewmembers from the Maritime Safety and Security Team in San Diego apprehended two suspected illegal migrants attempting to swim north across the international maritime boundary near the mouth of the Tijuana River.
The accelerating pace of interdictions off San Diego’s shoreline is beyond anything previously seen.
“I can’t even make an educated guess what’s behind the increase,” said Coast Guard Pubic Affairs Petty Officer Jetta Disco. “I don’t know what it’s like in Mexico or how bad it’s getting over there. I’ve talked to other agencies such as CBP; the fantastic job they’re doing (blocking illegal entry landside) seems to be leading to an increase of (waterborne) smuggling attempts.”
