‘Opa-locka Hialeah is the place to go.’ Why Miami will never forget the flea market jingle
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Say the words Opa-locka Hialeah to anyone who grew up in South Florida in the 1990s and watch them break out into song.
Blame that commercial. You know the one. You’re singing it right now: “Opalocka Hialeah is the place to go/It’s more than just a market it’s a great big show”
All together, now: “Opalaaa-ckaaa/ Hialeee-ahhh”
That catchy, kitschy jingle was the earworm that put the Opa-locka Hialeah Flea Market on the map. When the market closes for good on June 30 after nearly 40 years, its jingle will live on in lo-fi infamy.
Longtime general manager Scott Miller would walk the flea market grounds and offer customers $100 to sing the jingle on the venue’s stage, which hosted local musicians weekly. Everyone knew the lyrics.
“Then they would go home and sing the song and tell 100 people,” Miller said. “How much is that worth?”
That was by design. The market’s owner poured $1 million into an all-out media blitz to blast that commercial and its simple jingle throughout South Florida airwaves, on radio and television, for a full year. Its reach was such that many can still hear the music in their heads today, those earnest lyrics sung by — if you believe the legend — maybe, possibly, Cuban Grammy winner Willy Chirino.
“When I mention it to people today, they start singing the song,” said Miller, who claims to have co-written the song as the flea market’s first general manager, running it from 1985 until it sold in 2017. “Anybody can sing it.”
The jingle was clever marketing.
The New Hialeah Flea Market east of Amelia Earhart Park bought out its chief competitor across the street in 1989 and moved a couple blocks north to a wide-open space, technically into Opa-Locka. Mayor John Riley told the owners they couldn’t insult its new host city by calling it just the Hialeah flea market and so the owners hyphenated it, Miller remembers.
Now, they had to get the word out. The owner, Israeli real estate developer Zvari “Bebo” Kovo, told Miller to hire an ad agency to make a commercial for the newly named Opa-Locka Hialeah Flea Market. Kovo, an early investor in Jordache Jeans, understood the power of marketing.
Miller says he and a creative from a Fort Lauderdale-based ad agency met in the flea market office trailer and started throwing out ideas for simple lyrics when Miller says he hit on the phrase, “The place to be.” The agency hired a company out of California to write, record and cut the song together, in English and Spanish.
But when Kovo and his staff first heard the song, they realized no one could understand the Spanish version. It had been recorded in Mexican Spanish, Miller said, with phrasing that was foreign to Spanish speakers from the Caribbean in Miami.
“Nobody knew any better!” Miller said. “We couldn’t air that version. Nobody understood it.”
The ad agency hired a Miami musician to rewrite the lyrics in Cuban Spanish and re-record both versions, with the same singers. That writer, and the male voice in the duet, was none other than Willy Chirino, two different flea market staffers from that era said.
He recorded it, Miller recalled, at Criteria Studios in North Miami, the studio that recorded stars across the spectrum: Aretha Franklin, Eric Clapton, the Bee Gees, Abba, and, of course, the Miami Sound Machine.
That would have been the year Chirino recorded the iconic, “Lo Que Está Pa’ Ti,” which the song answers, “nadie te lo quita.” (What’s meant for you, no one can take away.)
That question-and-answer is part of the catchiness of the flea market commercial’s hook, too, what’s known in musical theory as antecedent and consequent phrases — so says Alex Lacamoire, the Miami-raised musical director of the hit Broadway musical phenomenon “Hamilton.”
He listened to the jingle and broke down why it’s such an earworm.
“There’s a sense of inevitability to it. You know where it’s going even if you’re listening to it for the first time,” Lacamoire said. “It sticks with you because it’s very simple and accessible. You feel like you’ve heard it before. It’s got almost a nursery rhyme feel to it.”
Also, he says, it’s just plain catchy.
“It’s upbeat. It sounds joyous,” Lacamoire said. “You can hear the smiles in the voices of the people singing.”
Chirino, for one, can’t take credit. He doesn’t remember his role in the commercial, if he had one, he told the Miami Herald through a spokesman. But he also did not rule out it was him, as he was just starting his career and taking on lots of pay-for-play jobs.
After 40 years, that’s good enough for Miller.
The flea market aired the ad on English, Spanish and Haitian radio and local television throughout 1990. Claude Mancuso, owner of the Haitian Television Network (now called Ayiti TV), voiced over the English version in Creole.
“Scott saw the potential in the Haitian community early on,” Mancuso said. “It was great for us. And we delivered.”
The song burrowed into the public’s consciousness.
“It blew up,” Miller said.
The Opa-locka Hialeah Flea Market was instantly packed. Within a year, it had 1,300 vendors, three times the vendors it has today, Miller said.
And the 30-second jingle achieved enduring Miami fame.
This story was originally published June 1, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
