Top Ten of the Decade: Miami in Pop Culture

Miami made leaps and bounds in establishing its own culture this decade. You know, the respectable kind with art and music and literature, and all of that, but you wouldn't know it looking at the reflections of the Magic City in pop culture this decade. We're still the pastel paradise filled with hot chicks, cool clubs, cocaine, and all the violence and gritty underbelly that comes along with it.

​10. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

Sure, it's not GTA: Miami, but it took every cliché about the city, rendered it in neon and pastel pixelated 3D, splattered it in blood, and turned it into one of the most controversial and best selling video games of the decade. This game was pop culture event, featuring voice work from everyone from Ray Liotta and Burt Reynolds to Jenna Jameson and Debbie Harry, an excellent and exhaustive soundtrack of '80s hits, and attracted more protests than almost any video game. So yeah, it is every Miami cliche: star-fucking, beat happy, and a whole lot of grit.

​9. Miami Ink

Miami played host to a lot of brain numbingly bad reality shows this decade (and hey, we might just get to that latter in the list, who knows), but at least we have one that wasn't completely embarrassing and actually presented a South Beach that seemed realistic.

​8. Downfall of Ocean Drive

Ocean Drive strives to be the arbiter and ambassador of Miami culture, and hell, for a while it was. It made the models and bottles shtick seems classy, and pretty much invented the local luxury-porn publishing niche. Then it ended up in the hands of Jason Binn right before the biggest crisis in print history, and the bust of the local real estate market made the lifestyle they portrayed seemed silly, if not nearly impossible. Sure, even after almost all of its spin-off titles folded and a few staff cuts the glossy is trudging along, but it's grip on defining the culture of this city might be gone forever.