this past weekend i had the opportunity to visit the museum of ice cream pop up in miami! jake and i were able to see the los angeles version last august so we were eager to compare the two. and boy, was there a contrast. looking at the website, it looks like LA is currently moving to a new space, i assume because of it’s immense popularity. here are a few pix from that visit!

 

now, those are all low quality phone pix. when we decided to visit a second time, i knew i had to actually bring a dslr. the lighting is just so unreliable from room to room, the more prepared you are, the better (though despite telling myself this, i soon realized i would be handing my camera off to everyone so much, it was easier to just leave ‘er on auto. typical me!).

my partners in ice cream are (from left to right) brittany, jake, and ellie. when we entered the building i was thrilled to see that there wasn’t much of a line. from the noise ahead we realized the sprinkle pool was the first thing we would encounter, which is why we were being held there. i had to go to the bathroom, and when i asked an employee where it was, it turned into a covert operation. i had to be escorted by a manager to ensure that i wasn’t going to…. disrupt my own experience? i didn’t understand at all but i also had to pee, so i didn’t care.

if you’ve heard anything about moic, it’s the sprinkle pool. you only get two minutes in this room, and you’re herded in with a bunch of other attendees, so you gotta be quick with those shots! i didn’t really care about photos this time, i just wanted to squeeze the sprinkles with my toes like a baby.

 

 

moic miami was actually fined by the city because of the sprinkles’ habit of making their way out of the museum with you. when we visited the LA version, i was actually pretty appalled by the amount of sprinkles that were lining the streets of the warehouse district. why even go inside? the pool’s out here! miami’s answer was to move the pool from the end of the exhibit to the beginning. i don’t know if it’s working though, because i just had to pull a sprinkle out of my dog’s mouth.
one thing moic miami had that LA didn’t was s p a c e. in LA, the whole “museum” was confined to a single story warehouse, and the walls were very… particle board chic. miami’s museum takes up four or five floors of a building, with plenty of open-air experiences to really make sure the space doesn’t feel cramped.

honestly, we were pretty surprised at how empty it was when we visited, but this may be because it was a monday. when you live the theme park life though, weekends don’t really exist.

 

as we ascended, we started to realize that not all rooms were golden.
1) in los angeles, almost every room included some sort of ice cream treat. here, they were scarce. i did try a chocolate covered banana for the first time though, and i get it now.

2) the museum doesn’t totally seem to know their audience. the room full of plastic squares you can rearrange to look like shish kabobs, the room with a kinetic sand castle? clearly for kids. but the swings in the jungle room are hard plastic, not really for playing, and a lot of the museum is hands off. i guess they’re just trying to cover all their bases and include a little something for everyone, but i imagine that every group finds at least one room that leaves them going “huh?”

the jungle room is probably where we spent the most time, simply because it’s a lot of photo opportunities crammed into one space. we had to be told these were coconuts, because we had assumed and accepted that they were headlights.

we hit a stage of delirium at some point, probably because we hadn’t eaten enough before visiting and were promptly surrounded by depictions of food we could not eat.
hey, what are you?
there were a few more rooms before we were able to get upstairs, which was what i was really looking forward to. the melted room, the big plastic candies, and the sandcastles. the lighting was weird in all of them so i didn’t take many pix. imagine being at the orlando science center, but pink.
and at last, we reached the rooftop. this was the grail moment of the day because from the roof, you could see straight out to the ocean. we spent so much time up here just laying around and laughing, attempting to hula hoop, and i think ellie took a nap.

 

 

the roof is also home to the popsicle installation, so we snapped our final pix as we left.

 

 

after we left, we scooted over to wynwood for some beer and 1-800-lucky, and we were there for a very long time. we actually discovered it the night before, when we had been Trapped in wynwood due to some ridiculous traffic from a festival, and vowed to return the next day (as we had just eaten coyo taco, and could not fit a full meal into our bellies. this did not stop us from eating taiyaki though. black sesame, mmm).

once we got back to ellie’s, we watched the first ep of the new cycle of america’s next top model with wine and cheetos. the perfect end to the perfect day. who else is HYPE that tyra’s back?!

xx,
k.