The most American of cities in its extreme contrasts, Miami is at the same time the most un-American in that it has more immigrants than anywhere else. The fittest and the fattest are all on display on Miami Beach, and you don't need the official figures to know that the greatest income discrepancy in the US is to be found here. Miami Beach is a magnet for the European and Latin American mega-rich but also the veteran panhandlers of the US. Lamborghinis lazily weave around vagrants whose bodily odour could be classed as a weapon.

This contrast exists in New York or Los Angeles, but not as sharply as in South Beach, where on Lincoln Road the models and the polo-players are channelled against those whose last meal was foraged from a bin. South Beach has New York's sass and rudeness, it has a dash of LA's superficiality and it can match St Tropez's love of opulence, but above all it is a lesson in transience.

There is always a bar, restaurant or a hotel of the month in New York or LA, but there fashion is only a ribbon in a maelstrom of other life. South Beach is a large village, where vogue counts for nearly all. This is a place where a pizzeria will trumpet its establishment ten years ago as if that puts it on a footing with Westminster Abbey.

A hotel can be renovated at a cost of hundreds of millions, but it will be the target of serious cool-gatherers for only a year or two at best. It's an amusing game, watching how the hipness hops around the beach. This season there is a tug-of-war between the Gansevoort South (which has a shark tank in its lobby, although the shark is tiny) and The Fontainebleau, which reputedly had a billion-dollar primping (this is where James Bond had the poker game with Goldfinger).