On the Saturday before Thanksgiving, during one of my regular swings through the art galleries of New York’s Lower East Side, nearly every conversation started with a complaint. Other Americans moan about visiting their families this season. In the art world, they moan about having to go to the beach. “[It’s] a cesspool,” one sour black-clad dealer said about her impending trip to Art Basel Miami Beach, the largest art fair in America. “I hate going there,” said another. “I’m so happy I’m not going,” said a third. I eavesdropped on a conversation between a collector and a dealer, who both feigned disgust at vapid, culture-free Miami – and then made plans to meet there.

Well, say what you want about art fairs, those unholy melanges of champagne-drenched social climbing and professional tax evasion. But as for the city that hosts the winter edition of Art Basel, a phrase from the locals comes to mind: ¡Despierta! Wake up!

Miami has taken the place of Los Angeles as the city alleged sophisticates love to hate, but there is so much more to the largest metropolis in the American southeast than sand, cocaine and plastic surgery. Rent is low. The Cuban coffee is fabulous, better than anything brewed by the hipster evangelists of Portland or Williamsburg. The weather is the envy of the eastern seaboard. People dress better to go to the mall than most other Americans do to get married. The majority language is Spanish, and if you call for a cab you have to press 2 for an English-speaking operator. I love it unashamedly, and to the sunburned gringos who moan that Miami culture is either an aggrandisement or an oxymoron, I can only say you aren’t looking hard enough.

Sunshine State surprise

Art Basel, which began in Switzerland in 1970, began its winter edition in Miami in 2002. But it wasn’t the Swiss who came looking for a place in the sun; back in the 1990s, Miami had an unpleasant reputation for drugs and crime, with tourist muggings not uncommon. It was Miami art collectors, notably the car dealership guru Norman Braman, who convinced Art Basel to come to town. Do not mistake the fair for just an art world holiday jolly; it is in large part a local undertaking, and it would never have worked if the city did not have a strong collector base eager to see it through.