‘Cocaine Cowboy’ Mickey Munday is Building Parks on Neglected Land in Miami

August 16, 2016

Screenshot from local 10 News, with LOVE sculpture and artist Maurizio Raponi.he

Mickey Munday, one of the biggest drug traffickers of Miami’s legendary ‘Cocaine Cowboy’ era has set out to change Miami again, but this time in a completely different way, by building neighborhood parks on neglected or underutilized pieces of public property. His first park was formerly a vacant lot in North Miami that the South Florida Water Management District uses to access the C-8 canal, which Mickey and artist Maurizio Raponi have transformed into the Lock-In-Love Park.

Munday gave Channel 10 News a tour recently, showing off a large heart formed in the turf, and a ‘LOVE’ sculpture by Raponi. The idea, Mickey says is to bring a lock symbolizing your love of someone or something, lock it to a chain in the park, and toss the key in the canal ( perhaps inspired by that bridge in Paris that broke under the weight of thousands of love locks) symbolizing the permanence of your love. More parks will follow says Munday and Raponi, who plan this to just be the first of many. “We want to get a lot of parks done like this, beautified and just promote positivity and love,” said Raponi.