After 15 years behind the microphone as emcee of the King Mango Strut, longtime Grove activist and jokester Nathan Kurland trades the mic for the backseat of a convertible, honored this year as the parade’s grand marshal.
Whether he’s standing in front of a college classroom, addressing the Miami City Commission, or warming up the crowd at the annual King Mango Strut, Nathan Kurland opens every appearance with a joke.
Here’s how he chose to begin this profile:
“My wife and I recently visited a marriage counselor. She told the therapist I never buy her flowers. I said, ‘I didn’t even know you were selling flowers.’ At the next session, the therapist told my wife to embrace her mistakes. She immediately ran over and hugged me.”
Known as an inveterate jokester, Kurland is also a tireless volunteer who began earning his stripes as a community activist almost as soon as he moved to Coconut Grove from his native Philadelphia 21 years ago.
“When Nathan Kurland hit Coconut Grove, he never stopped,” said Sue McConnell, president of the Village of Center Grove neighborhood association, where Kurland serves as vice president. “He’s always at full speed.”
As an assistant professor at Florida International University, Kurland’s day job is teaching public speaking to first-year students who hail from around the world.
“Polls suggest that many people say they would rather die than speak in public,” said Kurland. “So, I consider what I teach the most important course they will ever take. Why? Because they are going to be speaking for the rest of their lives.”
Outside of the classroom, Kurland pours his energies into a host of civic activities. For years he has served on the boards of the Miami Bayside Foundation, the Coconut Grove Arts Festival, the King Mango Strut and the now-defunct Miami Sports and Exhibition Authority.
He’s on the steering committee of the Gifford Lane Art Stroll. He also pays attention to local politics, for years attending commission meetings and telling so many jokes that longtime politician Joe Carollo sardonically dubbed him “the Funny Guy.”
For decades a member of the theater union Actors’ Equity Association, Kurland has appeared on stage in more than 50 plays and musicals in the Philadelphia area. He has acted in televised soap operas, owned a clothing store and worked as a licensed private detective. Of being a gumshoe, he says, “Detective work is a lot less exciting than they show on television, especially when you have to pee in a bottle [on a stakeout].”
Kurland first came to the Grove in the late 1980s to visit his brother David Kurland, then managing director of the Grand Bay Hotel. During a Christmas Day visit years later, he says, the brothers were leaving a Miami Beach steakhouse, where they had shared a bottle of champagne, when suddenly he had a life-changing epiphany.
“We were on the way out the door and I saw my future wife sitting there at the bar with a girlfriend,” he recalls, “and I said to my brother, ‘I have to meet that woman.’ And he said, ‘Nathan, if I leave you here it’s a $55 to $75 cab ride home, so I don’t recommend it.’”
But, Kurland says, “Something inside me said, ‘Meet her.’ So, I went up to her — it turned out it was her birthday — and without asking her favorite kind of champagne, I ordered another bottle. We ended up just talking all night long.”
The next day, Kurland flew home to Philadelphia, put his house up for sale and moved to the Grove. “To be with her,” he said. He and Cecilia were married in 2011. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” he says.
Six weeks ago the couple welcomed their first grandchild.
During their marriage, Cecilia Kurland estimates she has heard enough of her husband’s jokes and stories to fuel a series of comedy specials. “He’s a very giving person, and he wants to bring joy to people,” says Cecilia, a realtor. “And I must really love him because I still laugh at his jokes even though I’ve heard them hundreds of times.
“He has a great heart, and always means the best for people,” she adds. “Anyone can ask him for help.”
Among the community causes Kurland has championed are efforts to preserve the Coconut Grove Playhouse and, in the mid-2000s, to limit the size of the Home Depot proposed for Southwest 32nd Avenue.
“I’m about all things Coconut Grove,” he says. “I don’t think there’s a better place to live in South Florida.”
Trina Collins, a founding artist of the Gifford Lane Art Stroll, has known Kurland for two decades. “He has a wonderful, upbeat personality,” she said. “It makes him happy to be in the mix.”
For the past 15 years, thousands of people have heard Kurland do stand-up as the emcee of the King Mango Strut parade, working the corner of Main Highway and Commodore Plaza with a microphone and the infectious zeal of a true performer.
This year, for the 42nd annual King Mango Strut on Jan. 4, Kurland has a new role: taking part in the parade from the back seat of a convertible, where, as the event’s grand marshal, he says he’ll be doing “the princess wave.”
“It’s time to pass the baton to the next generation,” he said.
Carl Levin, the chairman of this year’s Strut, says Kurland is being honored “for fighting for everything that makes the Grove the Grove. He always has a smile and a joke to tell. He brings energy to the room.”
Kicking off the Strut this year as master of ceremonies will be Freddie Stebbins, a teacher and professional comic, says Levin.
The theme of this year’s Strut, “This is Fine,” is an ironic nod to the state of the world and the U.S. in the parodic tradition of an event founded in 1982 by Grove residents Glenn Terry and Bill Dobson.
“It seems the world is on fire around us, and in a way we just ignore it and hope things get better,” says Levin, a Grove architect.
Along with new marchers, Levin says there will be many old favorites: the Marching Freds, the Running of the Bullshitters, Disco Mangoes and the band Roadkill. Expect Strut targets to include Uber Eats robots, the ban on rainbow sidewalks, and, of course, all things Trump.
The festivities begin at noon with live music, followed by the parade at 2 p.m. in downtown Coconut Grove.
There’s one day left in this awful year, and rather than drive another Trump stake into my heart, I read this article and it lifted my aching liberal heart. Nathan is exactly the kind of person we need at City Hall. His intuition to speak to the woman who became his wife should be something we all pay close attention to. Follow your gut. Most of us know where it is.