South of South Beach

South of South Beach takes the reader back in time to the 60's and 70's during a time when South Beach was nothing like the glitzy, Art-Deco district it is today but more of a dilapidated, run-down section of real estate where Chris Dundee runs the 5th Street Gym and many transplanted prizefighters, Muhammad Ali among them, roam the streets looking for "something" to while away the hours while they prepare their bodies for the task of fighting another highly-trained boxer who wants to beat their brains out, even as they wish to do much the same to them. The girls stroll parts of South Beach in bikinis and the Beatles have even visited the 5th Street Gym recently; the beat generation is giving way to the hippie, free-love generation so come back in time and visit what today is one of the world's great vacation centers but, at this time during the 1960's was more of a slum or a ghetto --- to avoid at your own peril, especially a small stretch of beach just south of South Beach.