- A new book by Miami artist Tony Mendoza and
- the Three Guys From Miami's own Glenn M. Lindgren
In this love letter to the city of Miami, local Artist Tony Mendoza and the Three Guys From Miami’s own Glenn Lindgren take you on an artistic tour of the Latin side of this vibrant, multicultural city.
Miami Lost & Found is a collection of artwork and accompanying essays that tell the story of Miami’s Cuban community, both past and present.
Publishers and Agents
Interested in publishing or repping Miami Lost and Found?
Interested parties should contact the authors at 3guys@icuban.com and we will send you a copy of the complete manuscript.
Miami Lost & Found is a combination of art book and pop culture guide.
As an art book, Miami Lost & Found is a fantastic collection of some of Tony Mendoza’s best work: 39 pieces of colorful art that capture the heart and soul of this vibrant Latin community. Miami Lost & Found will make an attractive purchase for both the collector and art enthusiast.
As pop culture, Miami Lost & Found is an exploration of the customs and traditions that make living in Miami such a uniquely Latin experience. The authors paint a picture of Cuban culture in America from its earliest beginnings, to day-to-day life in Miami today. We have written this book to appeal to both Anglo and Latin audiences. For Cuban Americans, it is also a great "cultural memory book" that they can buy for themselves and gift to their children and grandchildren.
Miami Lost & Found is also a superb resource for the cultural traveler and a perfect take-away memento of a trip to Miami.
- 50,000 words (including front and backmatter)
- 36 full-color plates
- 5 black & white plates
...Walk with us as we take a trip down a street that today only lives in memory:
The immense red brick Firestone Building flanks the corner of Flagler and 12th with its huge neon sign atop a terracotta tile roof, an impressive landmark in this time before the skyscrapers invaded Miami. Cars and trucks fill the service bays at Firestone. The pumps at the nearby art deco Gulf Station also do a brisk business with attendants who fill the tank, check the oil, and wash all the windows.
Here on the corner, Cubans taste their first American hamburger at Royal Castle. At ten cents a pop, they are a value meal if ever there was one. The San Juan Bosco church sits a block to the west on Flagler and 13th. Built in a converted garage, the boxy structure is the first church that many Cubans attend in exile. The church provides not only spiritual comfort, but also material comforts to people who arrived with barely the clothes on their backs. On Sundays, the church’s six masses, five conducted entirely in Spanish, are packed with new arrivals.
People of all types crowd the streets of La Sagüesera. Here we find nuns on the way to church, today leading a white-clad parade of children on their way to first communion. Hippies and flower children share the sidewalk with old guayabera-clad men arguing about baseball and discussing politics. Young lovers walk hand in hand while entire families enjoy a stroll in the cool breeze. A pale young gringo with an old silver quarter hanging from a simple chain around his neck attempts meek conversation with a coffee window Cubanita. Salvation Army bands play, beggars beg, and Jehovah's Witnesses preach in endless street corner competitions.
A mixed collection of establishments, all catering to Cuban tastes, lines both sides of the northern flank of Flagler. The Havana-Miami Restaurant offers inexpensive criollo cooking and Cuban sandwiches in an air-conditioned dining room that features spotless, plastic-covered tables...
(Excerpt)
...The Ybor City of today is a combination of DisneyWorld and Mardi Gras. During the day, the area is more sedate with tourists quietly meandering among the shops and historic attractions. On weekend nights, this scene changes drastically with thousands of revelers choking La Séptima as they make their way from club to club.
There are still a few vestiges remaining of Ybor City’s cigar-making past. The Ybor Square mall houses dining and retail establishments in one of the oldest former cigar factories in the area. Another old factory houses the Ybor City Brewing Company. The Ybor City State Museum provides walking tours of the city, including three restored casitas; small, single-story houses that once housed cigar-making workers and their families. Local investors are rehabbing several other casitas for use as artisan shops, restaurants, and small galleries. An old-fashioned trolley line connects Ybor City with downtown Tampa and the port.
Ybor City is at its best early in the morning. Pick up a café con leche at La Tropicana and walk down La Séptima enjoying the cool morning air and the great dark brick architecture. Smell the aroma of roasting coffee mingling with the sweet scent of gardenias from the courtyard gardens. You can almost imagine what Ybor City was like in its heyday as the center of Cuban life in Florida.
The buildings have a Cuban feel with wrought iron balconies, but looking more like something Cuban adapted to a more northern clime. The El Pasaje Hotel once housed a prestigious men’s club. With its Havana-style arcades and arched windows with stained glass fan lights, it is a beautiful reminder of Ybor’ glorious past. The Columbia Restaurant is an architectural museum with its Spanish flourishes and elaborate tile mosaics. The interior of the Columbia is a showplace where you can still eat a great Spanish-Cuban meal in old world ambiance.
At the Parque Amigos de José Martí United States and Cuban flags flank a life-sized statue of Martí. The park includes six plots that contain actual soil from each of the six original provinces of Cuba. The park sits on the site of the former home of Afro-Cuban patriot Paulina Pedrosa, where he once sought sanctuary as he hid from Spanish assassins...
(Excerpt)
...It is Sunday in Miami, shortly past noon, and the after-church crowd is lining up at “El Segundo Palacio de los Jugos,” The Second Palace of Juices in the Miami-Dade community of Westchester. Already the long picnic tables under the shade of a large awning are beginning to fill as a dozen customers enjoy this fine day with an impromptu picnic.
Many visitors to Miami know little about Cuban cuisine; most frequently believing that Cuban food is not far removed from the Tex-Mex cooking they enjoy back home, and then disappointed to find nary a taco or burrito on the menu. Here at the Palace you can learn everything you need to know about Cuban food in just one place, the heart and soul of Cuban cooking at a simple, neighborhood fruit and vegetable market.
At the Palace of Juices in Westchester, on this sunny Sunday, old and young alike are sipping on tiny cups of hot café cubano and discussing the day’s events outside at the walk-up window. Just inside the front door, the locals are ordering freshly squeezed juices: orange, mango, pineapple, grapefruit, and guanábana, a delicious tropical fruit with a light pineapple-citrus flavor, or mamey, a sweet fruit with flavor elements of peach, apricot, raspberry, and pumpkin. Whether by the glass or in quarts and half gallons, the juice is always flowing freely here. The orange juice machine in particular never seems to stop as orange after orange drops mechanically down into the squeezing chamber.
A young Cubanita behind the front counter is feeding juicy stalks of sugar cane into the side of a gleaming stainless steel cabinet. A carafe captures a steady stream of fresh sugar cane juice as the machine rumbles and grinds the cane into a woody pulp. The juice, called guarapo, is a favorite Cuban drink on a hot summer day. Extremely refreshing with a light flavor, guarapo is not overly sweet as many people presume. In fact, it has a sugar content that makes it just slightly sweeter than orange juice. Some people even swear by guarapo as a potent aphrodisiac!
Next to the guarapo machine is a heated glass cabinet stacked on one side with crispy fried chunks of pork and on the other with chicharrones, thick slices of pork from the belly and sides of the pig. Each piece of chicharrón includes a layer of skin, a layer of fat, and a layer of meat. They slow cook the meat until it is extremely tender, then roast and lightly fry it in its own fat. You eat the entire chicharrón, biting through these three layers so that the flavors merge in your mouth. Fat-phobic Americans may wince at the sight, but nutritionally, eating chicharrones is no different from eating bacon......
(Excerpt)
Tony and Glenn met on the Street (Calle Ocho) in 2003, a chance meeting that began a long, though unlikely friendship. Tony is a talented artist, and Glenn can’t even draw a recognizable stick figure. However, both men share a love of the city of Miami and an interest in Cuban culture. You might say that Tony came by the Cuban culture part naturally, while Glenn has had to earn his Cubanismo over the past 25 years.
Tony originated the idea of a collaborative effort that would capture the Cuban side of Miami in words and pictures. Glenn had been considering writing a book such as this for years, one that could naturally build on his years of writing about Miami and Cuban culture for the Three Guys From Miami and the website, iCuban.com.
So began months of hard work with paint and words flying in all directions. The authors corresponded exclusively by email – it started out that way and was working so well that neither one of them wanted to chance spoiling the project by picking up the phone. The result is a work that the authors hope will capture some of the lost Miami of old while promoting interest in the little experienced cultural gems that make Miami a unique place to visit.
The “Find It – See It” section not only covers the places highlighted in this book, it includes some of the author’s personal Miami favorites, many seldom mentioned in traditional guidebooks.
Tony Mendoza
Tony was born in New York to Cuban-born parents, but raised in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood. Tony’s simple and colorful paintings uniquely capture the spirit and vibrancy of Miami with a unique style and a great sense of humor. Much of Tony’s work centers on the daily life of vibrant Little Havana, the cradle of Cuban culture in Miami.
Tony’s style has been described as “Primitive Expressionist,” and he works mainly with acrylic on canvas. Tony has exhibited his artwork at galleries and shows throughout Florida. His colorful larger-than-life murals have become Miami landmarks, breathing new life into older buildings and creating unique photo opportunities for tourists and locals alike. Tony was the winner of the 2007 Arte de America Hispana Competition and his artwork has been featured in Cigar City Magazine, The Miami Herald, Miami New Times, Cigar Snob Magazine, Vanidades, and Selecta Magazine. Tony also made an appearance on the PBS show "Postcards from Buster." You may have also seen his work on the cover of the Miami Hispanic Yellow Pages.
Tony works and lives in Miami with his wife, Lina, daughter, Sarah Amaris, and son, Daniel Felipe.
Glenn Lindgren
Glenn was born and raised in Minneapolis and first came to Miami in 1984. Here he fell in love with this tropical city’s friendly people and unique Cuban culture. Glenn is an author, food writer, and occasional media personality. Glenn has a lifelong passion for food and has been involved in the food industry professionally since 1994.
Glenn is the creative force behind (and one of) the Three Guys From Miami; he documents their antics in books, magazines, and on the Internet. Glenn is also the author of two previous books on Cuban food and culture: "Three Guys From Miami Cook Cuban" (Gibbs Smith Publisher, November 2004) and "Three Guys From Miami Celebrate Cuban" (Gibbs Smith Publisher, August 2006). Glenn writes about a wide range of topics: food, recipes, restaurant reviews, travel, culture, and the arts, for the web, print, and television.
Although he spends a lot of time in Miami, Glenn and his wife Maureen live in Eagan, Minnesota with two daughters, Erin and Gabrielle, and a son, Dennis.
Excerpts from the book, "Miami Lost & Found"
Copright 2009 Tony Mendoza and Glenn M. Lindgren
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED