Tone Tank’s Guide to Miami (Part 1- INTRO/Renting A Car in Miami With Bad Credit)
Friday, January 16th, 2009
I’ve just returned home after spending a week in Miami with my woman. I had never been there before and much like a lot of other things that I’ve never experienced I already had an opinion about it. I thought I wouldn’t like it. I didn’t realize it would become my new favorite city and a perfect and semi-affordable way to escape the now arctic New York weather.
To enhance your reading experience I want you to download this.
It is a mix of songs selected from the mixtape that I purchased at the US-1 Discount Mall. (The US-1 Discount Mall will receive it’s own seperate entry… it’s that good.)
This mixtape ended up becoming the soundtrack to the whole trip. All but one song is shallow and ignorant, but sometimes shallow and ignorant is the key to a good time.
Oh yeah, funny story: When I was buying the mixtape I asked the kid selling them which one he recommends, and he replied by saying, “I dunno, I only fuck with Gucci Mane.” I had no possible way of responding to that. Here’s a tracklist:
WHERE THEY DO DAT AT- Ballgreezy feat. Fat Joe & Flo Rida
CO-DEFENDANT- Plies
BLOWN- Busta Rhymes ft. T-Pain and DJ Khaled
BITCH I NEED THAT -Gucci Mane ft. Yung Joc
CAN’T GET RIGHT -Scarface ft Bilal (the one actually-for-real-deeper-than-you-think-non-ignorant song on here)
So we get off the plane.
We have a rental car reserved at Budget.
When I get to the pickup counter the man behind the counter informs me that they don’t accept debit cards without a credit check. A credit check? My credit’s so shot that I’d be lucky if I could get a library card. After my credit did what I knew it would do, the man behind the counter suggests that my girl rent the car on her card, but she’s only 21 and you have to be 25 to rent a car so we remain car-less. I feel like the Charlie Brown of this rap-shit (and non-rap-shit) and we get on the Budget shuttle bus back to the airport to hopefully find a rental place that would rent me a car on debit. I instantly picture checking into a shitty motel for a week like Tom Hanks in ‘BIG’…. you know the part in the beginning where he’s in the shitty hotel. But I keep my feeling of defeat to myself and remain calm.
Well, it must be our lucky day because seconds after boarding the shuttle bus, the driver finds out about our dilemma and tells us to “hold on”, he ‘knows a guy’ and gets on his cell phone.
I think, “What am I getting myself suckered into?”, being the naturally distrusting and pessimistic New Yorker that I am. I picture a situation where I rent an 85 Civic from the guy’s cousin. Fuck it, at this point I’ll take it, as long as it runs and they don’t do credit checks. He gets off the phone, giving me the thumbs up, and says it’s all taken care of. Good guy. He saved our asses.
He drops us at Rent Max where we rent a Ford Escape truck at a fair rate, with no credit check. I guess renting cars is one place where my old fashioned ‘cash-and-a-handshake’ way of life isn’t received too well. But we get the car and we start our journey down US-1.
They seriously saved our vacation. So, as far rental cars in Miami go I’m gonna recommend them, it’s a small business where the man who runs it tells the computers what the policies are, rather than how it is at most other places: the other way around.
(stay tuned for Part 2 of Tone Tank’s Guide to Miami- Good spots to eat in Miami for under $10 )
