Every weekday for 10 years Louis Del Borrello would take up his post at the Cocowalk information kiosk ready to share his favorite tidbits about the neighborhood he loved.
Throughout the day, tourists would stroll up to his bright yellow hand-painted booth asking for directions to the Barnacle or the Charlotte Jane Memorial Park Cemetery that was rumored to be the inspiration for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” music video.
“It was my favorite job. I’ve done a few things over the years, and that was by far my favorite. I was invited to all the parties. I knew everybody,” Del Borrello said.
Del Borrello’s booth was one of three kiosks that popped up in Coconut Grove in 2008 as part of a City of Miami initiative intended to help tourists, mostly from cruise ships, find their way around.
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Del Borrello manned his booth from 2010 – when the Coconut Grove Business Improvement District (BID) recruited him – until COVID-19 killed the need for tourist tips and neighborhood directions.
Del Borrello moved on, and so did the neighborhood.
By then, the Grove’s other two kiosks – one in front of the U.S. Post Office on Grand Avenue and a third on Main Highway outside The Cloisters – had been largely abandoned, except for the occasional security guard or street cleaner.
That’s remained the case since. Del Borrello’s kiosk outside Cocowalk is gone and the other two booths sit silent, their exterior panels of painted flowers a cheerful feint that does little to hide their empty interiors.
“It’s sad to see the state of the kiosk,” Del Borrello said. “It breaks my heart a little bit.”
The age of the info booth may indeed be over but at least one of the remaining kiosks may live again. In an interesting what’s-old-is-new-again twist, the BID is considering a proposal to convert one of the tiny spaces into a retro photo booth.
The proposal is being pitched by a South Florida company – Foto Commercio LLC – which opened a vintage photo booth in Wynwood in November 2024.
There, customers enter the booth, draw the curtain and pose for four photos that get printed out on black-and-white strips for $7 a session.
The concept is currently being vetted for approval. BID Director Mark Burns declined to comment further, but the proposed retrofit marks the latest turn for the miniature buildings that have puzzled local leaders and residents for years.
The kiosks were originally proposed by former Miami District 2 Commissioner Marc Sarnoff, who floated the idea in March 2007 shortly after taking office. Less than a year later, the booths popped up – all black at first – for about $75,000 each.
The gesture, however well intentioned, was met with a healthy dose of local skepticism.
“They look like prison guard stations or even worse, Gulag booths. Do they need to be black and do tourists really need an info booth? The Grove is three streets long,” Tom Falco wrote in the Coconut Grove Grapevine in January 2008.
Soon after, locals started to play games with booth attendants, asking for directions to Grove staples like the Coconut Grove Playhouse. Often, those mock inquiries were met with confusion.
At a cost of $1,400 a week for staff that locals deemed unqualified, according to the Miami Herald, the annoyance factor only grew.
Critics including Miami-Dade County objected to the location of the stations – including the one crowding the Commodore Trail bike path on Main Highway.
The effort seemed doomed until former BID Director David Collins stepped in.
“These are not alien pods that have landed in Coconut Grove,” Collins told the Miami New Times. “We’re really trying to do a good thing.”
Collins then set out to rescue the project, first by making the booths look like they actually belonged in the Grove. For this, Collins recruited local artist Eileen Seitz.
“One day, I’m outside in front of the Gap where the old Cocowalk was, and I’m leaning on the wall, and somebody comes up to me and says, oh, I see you’re going to be painting a building. I said, what are you talking about? ” He said, well, like these little houses,” Seitz recalled.
Seitz looked up to see Collins walking toward her. She went home that night and sketched her vision for one of the booths to present to the BID. “God gave me the colors that he wanted me to do them in,” she recalled.
Inspired by a West Indian house, Seitz’s first sketch was of the future Cocowalk booth, yellow with orange stripes, painted hanging flower baskets, and an aqua roof.
Seitz got to work that summer, painting for hours under an umbrella, often observed by onlookers. She was commissioned to paint the other two booths not long after, and replicated her colorful Caribbean theme.
“They were uplifting people’s energies by the color combinations that I was doing, because it stirs in you,” she said. “Coming from a city like Chicago or Louisiana or Los Angeles or Georgia, and all of a sudden you see this fun little wood house and it takes people back to the islands.”
The vibrant booths that had once been considered an eyesore were now a photo favorite for tourists trying to capture a bit of Grove spirit for their photo albums.
With the kiosks freshly painted, Collins sought to recruit someone who knew the Grove and would complement their colorful appearance. Del Borrello was tapped for the job.
“This is a delightful place,” Del Borrello says today. “Where else do you get peacocks walking down the street? We take things for granted, people that live here in the Grove, but when people come from other places, they find it magical. And I thoroughly enjoy sharing those little bits and pieces over the years.”
His touch included decorating the booths for the holidays, with lights, garlands, candy canes and pumpkins.
“The big red buses would go by, the trolleys would go by, all the tourists would come. And Louis was there,” Seitz recalled. “He was handing out all the maps to people and the freebies. And it was so engaging, and it was so much fun, and it was so alive.”
By 2020, however, that vibe had hit a wall.
Already challenged by the pandemic, the booths seemed ripe for replacement by digital information kiosks.
One of those digital kiosks – similar to the directories found in shopping malls – was installed near Cocowalk by 2022, replacing the booth where Del Borrello held court.
Not everyone is a fan. Seitz, for one, says keeping the information booths is integral to connecting the present Grove to the past.
But is a photo booth the best path forward? Del Borrello isn’t sure.
“I don’t know why you would bring a photo booth into one of the most photogenic areas,” he said. “I see that as a short-lived thing.”
This story was originally published in the Coconut Grove Spotlight, a WLRN News partner.
