A conversation with Rachel Robinson at What’s Good Miami’s new content studio at The Moore, on freedom, family, and the discipline of showing up — every single day, for six straight years. There’s a moment, sitting in any room with Rachel Robinson, when you realize the workout isn’t actually the workout. The sweat is real. The treadmill is real. The 10.0 sprints she calls out by name — yours, mine, the woman in the back — are real. But the thing Rachel is actually doing, the thing that has packed her 9:30 a.m. Monday class on Purdy Avenue for years on end, is something else entirely. She’s having a conversation with herself out loud, and inviting fifty people to listen in. I sat down with Rachel last week at What’s Good Miami’s new content studio at The Moore. The room felt right for it. She came up on reality television, where the cameras turn the room into the performance. She built her business on Instagram Live, where the bedroom is the studio. And she’s spent the last decade teaching one of the most kinetic group fitness classes in the city, where the studio is, in the end, a kind of broadcast. Rachel doesn’t really exist in private. Or maybe more accurately: Rachel doesn’t really make a distinction between the two. The whole point of what she does — and the reason it works — is that there isn’t one. If her name doesn’t immediately ring a bell, it should. Rachel is Miami fitness royalty in the most Miami way possible. Born in the Chelsea Hotel in New York to a photographer mother who, in her own words, “always had a camera on me.” Raised in Miami since she was five. A true OG of a city that has very few of them left. She came up on reality television during the original Road Rules era — the analog days, before social media, before the playbook, before anyone went on the show planning to make a career out of it. She left it behind to live a life, got married to Natalie (the founder of G-Beauty, the family-built skincare and facial studio business that’s expanding into a new flagship in Toronto), had three kids under three, and built the kind of family life that most reality TV alumni quietly envy. Then, after an eleven-year hiatus, she went back. The producers had been calling her for years. The timing finally worked. She returned to The Challenge as an all-star — and won. A literal Cinderella moment for a woman in her late thirties who hadn’t been on television in over a decade. She’ll tell you herself: that doesn’t normally happen. But by then, she wasn’t really a reality TV person anymore. She was a fitness person.

WATCH THE FULL LONG FORM INTERVIEW BY CLICKING ABOVE

“Always Be a Gentleman, and Never Play by the Rules”

A conversation with Ben Pundole at the new Delano, on dreaming, trusting, and the city that finally stopped following.

“As we pulled up to the porte cochère, I remember being thrilled. The entrance to the Delano had a magnitude and energy I’d rarely, if ever, experienced before. The valets were all perfectly dressed in crisp white outfits, the people getting out of their cars were beautifully put together, and the architecture was the perfect combination of classic Art Deco and clean modern lines.

While the arrival alone was magnificent, it wasn’t until I entered the lobby that I was swept away: fifty-foot ceilings, a straight-shot visual hundreds of feet from the entrance to the rear orchard, and charming vignettes of whimsical seating and social areas throughout. The beauty was unmistakable, and the energy was so real you could almost drink it. Every step I took built on the drama of the experience. By the time I exited the lobby and stepped into the orchard, I felt changed, as if my appreciation for what the imagination could manifest had been heightened. I didn’t say a word for ten minutes after I walked outside. I just smiled, completely satisfied by what I had just consumed.”

- The Age of Ideas by Alan Philips (Yes Me :))

There’s a moment, sitting in the new Delano, when you realize the building is doing something quieter than it used to. The old Delano was a statement, flowing white curtains, Philippe Starck swagger, a lobby that felt like the velvet rope of an entire decade. The new one isn’t trying to be that. It’s trying to be something harder: a place you actually want to come back to.

I sat down with Ben Pundole there last week. If that name doesn’t immediately ring a bell, it should. Ben is hospitality royalty in the most British, understated way, “I just happened to be in the room when it all started” kind of way. He came up at the Groucho Club in London in 1992, what he calls his university. He was at the Met Bar when the Met Bar was the room. He spent 23 years orbiting Ian Schrager, the man credited with birthing boutique hospitality as we now understand it.

What I wanted to know was simple: what does that lineage build, and what’s it doing in Miami right now?

There’s a certain kind of confidence you only get from the Northeast. It’s blunt. It’s unapologetic. It usually comes with strong opinions about bread. Ryan McKeown has all of it. We sat down with the Peppi’s Pizza owner in the Design District and within five minutes it was clear, this isn’t another Miami restaurant trying to be “vibey.” It’s a mission. Ryan explained to us in our interview “You know, a lot of places serve what I call a steak and cheese, but have never stepped foot in Philly. For me, it’s not about copying tradition, it’s about understanding where it’s going.” And honestly, that tells you everything you need to know.