Before the international art scene unapologetically swallowed several Dade County neighborhoods whole, this place was actually known for its lack of enlightenment. There was even a bumper sticker popular amongst local drivers and readers of Tropic Magazine: “HONK IF YOU HATE CULTURE!” At the time, the city was a kind of Wild West of the Deep South, and Tropic walked the line between the kind of drunken gonzo irreverence that spoke to the dropped out Parrothead white people living here then and actual hard-hitting journalism. This earned it not one but three Pulitzer prizes during its short thirty-one year tenure as the Sunday magazine accompanying the Miami Herald, including one in 1980 to Madeline Blais for “Zepp’s Last Stand”, a 5,000-word essay where Blais followed a World War I veteran from Miami to Washington, DC as he faced a military tribunal to overturn a fifty-year-old dishonorable discharge due to pacifism. It was the second Pulitzer to ever be awarded for feature reporting.
