Steve Berke was born and raised in South Florida and attended North Miami Beach High School. A third generation native, Steve grew up in the tropics of Miami Beach, and spent much of his formative years becoming a tennis phenom, winning 4 state championships and two national championships. After graduating high school, Steve turned down endorsement contracts and decided to forgo professional tennis in order to further his education. He chose to go to Yale University, where he graduated with a B.A. in American Studies, and played number one for the Yale tennis team. While in school, Steve managed to make collegiate tennis history, becoming the first unranked tennis player to make the quarterfinals of the NCAA tournament, giving Yale its first All American since Donald Dell in 1960. After graduating from Yale, Steve finally turned pro in tennis, but within his first few months on the tour, he herniated a disc in his lower back ending his tennis career right as it got started.
After tennis, Steve took up a new challenge: as a contestant on a reality TV show, The Rebel Billionaire. Having aired on Fox, The Rebel Billionaire was an Apprentice like competition that featured Sir Richard Branson, the CEO of Virgin. At 23 years old, Steve was the youngest contestant on the show, yet survived 11 of the 13 episodes, impressing Branson with his entrepreneurial mind and instinct . One of the challenges in the show -- to improve the service in Virgin's Upper Class Suite -- lead to a business opportunity for Berke. His creation, the Mooshpillow, was the winning idea for the challenge, and Steve subsequently became the first person to ever start a company on a reality TV show.
A few years later, Steve took to the stage as a stand-up comedian. A few months into his stand-up career, in a true rock n roll moment, Steve found his comedic voice. While hanging out in Berlin with Tyson Ritter, the lead singer of the All-American Rejects, Steve borrowed Tyson's guitar and played the first verse of a music parody he wrote. A few shots of vodka later, Tyson convinced Steve to finish writing the song and perform it on stage. Fast forward to today, and Steve has written over 20 parodies, some that he performs live in comedy clubs, and some that he turns into viral YouTube videos. His latest video, "Should Be Legalized," an Eminem parody advocating the legalization of marijuana, received over 100,000 hits in the first two days of its release. However, opponents of the pro-Prop 19 video reported it to YouTube, and YouTube subsequently placed an NC-18 rating on the video, effectively killing any chance it had in becoming one of the top internet videos of the year. YouTube's censoring of the video caused a widespread internet controversy and was under heavy criticism from both marijuana and free speech organizations.
The video, however, led Steve to consider a career in politics. Steve received emails from fans in over 180 different countries, and the messages were all overwhelmingly supportive. He never thought of becoming a political activist, but after NORML put his video on the main page of their website the week before the highly publicized California Proposition 19 vote, he gained the support of an entire pro-marijuana community, a widespread internet following, and became one of the faces of the movement overnight.
After learning that the current Mayor of Miami Beach, Matti Bower, was attempting to implement a policy for clubs to close earlier than 5am, Steve considered running against her. He then spoke to individual night club owners and garnered the popular support of the nightlife and hospitality community and as a result, Steve decided to run for Mayor on a pro-business and tourism agenda. His platform includes lowering taxes, renovating the Miami Beach Convention Center, ending Urban Beach Weekend, scaling back the sweetheart city employee pension deals, keeping clubs open until 5am, decriminalizing marijuana, ending government corruption, and making Miami Beach the first city in Florida to legalize gay marriage.
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