Maybe it’s a boomer point of view or maybe it’s common sense.
But Miami-Dade County Commissioner Juan Carlos Bermudez is not down with transforming county facilities, including sections of Miami International Airport and PortMiami, into real-life installations of Vice City, the fictional place based on Miami that plays a starring role in the highly anticipated video game, Grand Theft Auto VI, aka GTA 6.
As first reported by The Miamian, Miami-Dade officials in Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s administration are floating a promotional campaign with GTA 6 maker Rockstar Games that would transform areas of the airport, seaport, transit stations and Virginia Key into Vice City destinations.
For instance, Baggage carousels at MIA and Metromover cars could be wrapped in “Vice City” decor and maybe even manhole covers in downtown Miami would feature the fictional city’s name. Discussions between Rockstar and the county remain preliminary, and the campaign would have to go through an approval process, which would presumably include going before county commissioners.
Enter Bermudez. As The Miami Herald’s Doug Hanks first reported on X., the county commissioner representing parts of northwest Miami-Dade, including Doral and Sweetwater, joins Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz in opposing the Vice City campaign.
Miami-Dade Commissioner Juan Carlos Bermudez
Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz
For anyone unfamiliar with the GTA series, the premise of the game is engaging in violent crime, and reaping the rewards from those illicit activities. GTA 2, one of the earlier versions of the game, introduced gamers to Vice City for the first time. The upcoming version has been in the works for many years and is scheduled for release in November. Netflix recently debuted a sneak peak at GTA 6, which centers on two main characters, Lucia and Jason, pulling off heists and shooting their way out of hot messes.
I spoke with Bermudez, who said he unsuccessfully tried to place the Vice City campaign as a discussion item at Tuesday’s Sept. 1 county commission. He plans to again ask County Commission Chairman Anthony Rodriguez to have a discussion about it at the next meeting later this month.
This is what Bermudez told me:
I think this community has worked very hard to eliminate our perception of being Paradise Lost and all the stuff that occurred in 1980s. We are trying to become a community that attracts tech and finance.
I am not necessarily a gamer, but my kids are. I don’t agree with the premise of the game. It’s Rockstar’s right to make it. The thing that bothers me is that we reached out to them…to use our community to promote the game when its premise is shooting people and shooting places up.
We are dealing with drive by shootings and youth crime. We have programs for no shootings in inner city neighborhoods. That doesn’t make any sense if we are going to market ourselves as ‘Vice City.’
You can’t say you want to attract jobs in tech and finance into our community and then market it as ‘Vice City.’ Billionaire Ken Griffin moved [his hedge fund Citadel and sister firm Citadel Securities] to Miami because of the crime problems in Chicago.
Maybe I have an old school way of thinking, but I don’t think it’s logical.
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