Calle Ocho

The central commercial corridor of Little Havana, a neon-signed strip of Cuban restaurants, cigar shops, and walk-up coffee windows that never really closes.

Calle Ocho is Little Havana's spinal column, a five-mile commercial strip where Cuban culture has been compressed into a density that approaches critical mass. Walk two blocks and you'll pass three cigar shops with men rolling at benches in the window, six cafecito counters where a colada is served with five Styrofoam thimbles to share, at least two storefront Catholic shrines, a political rally headquarters, and half a dozen restaurants that have been featured in travel magazines yet still serve a lunch plate for under ten dollars. The annual Calle Ocho festival shuts down miles of roadway for a street party of roughly a million people, live music on every corner, and a degree of cross-generational joy that makes tourists cry and residents forget, at least for one weekend, whatever the year's political crisis has been.