Swelter

A drastic social segue, an evening at Cafe Iguana in the Town & Country Centre mall, deep in the hinterlands of Kendall. The mall itself offering the diversions of a surrealistic rock-pit lake and clubs like Studebaker's and Charcoals ("There's a five-dollar cover for the lounge, pal ....") with a polite frozen yogurt kind of crowd. Cafe Iguana turning out to have several pronounced advantages over the Beach: attitude-free service, unfamiliar faces, and very tasty, very resonable food and drink, enormous cocktails and three-dollar dinners at happy hour, roughly equivalent to the price of tap water in the district.

The 12,000-square-foot club cranking up early with the after-work set (people with jobs being another cultural oddity of Kendall) and lots of diversions: four bars and beer-tub girls, dancing, pool tables, and whistle-blowing party animal bartenders. A Key West outdoor patio theme created by Mark Coltrane, tin roofs over the bars, wooden decking and menus on paint cans, accented with attitudinal Iguana-theme videos. An interesting group of patrons, with a couple who met at Tony Roma's ("We never go out. Is this a good place?") and a spokesman for the John Doe set: "These people kiss ass all week long at work and they just want to forget and have a good time while they can." Our own good time coming during a conversation with a pretty club girl, escatic over her new social horizons: "Now I don't have to drive over to South Beach every weekend." The encounter terminating with the arrival of a guy who had the cachet of just having purchased his very own double-wide house trailer. No matter where the social beast may travel, there's always somebody ready to ruin a great time.