At the entrance to Miami Velvet, a list of disclaimers is headlined by a forthright suggestion: “If you’re offended by sex, please do not enter the premises.” Miami Velvet is a “lifestyles club,” which is a politically correct term for “swingers club.” Truth is, the Velvet resembles a SoBe hot…
Most of the time, it seems like you need to be or at least look like a Very Important Person to get into hot clubs in the Magic City. Even joints that have no business pulling velvet rope snobbery (i.e. State and Butterfly Lounge) are shunning the “masses” in favor…
On April 8 Playboy magazine held its 50th-anniversary bash at Mansion. It shouldn’t surprise anybody that I arrived with my tongue (and tail) wagging. I remained in this rabid state until my first look around inside, when I had to exhale. What a sight. The place was hopping with Playboy…
Carmel Ophir doesn’t show up for his Back Door Bamby party at crobar till it’s already kicking at about 2:00 a.m. By the time he arrives, his Monday-night institution is slammed with loads of stunningly seductive women, along with some men who could very well pass for women. Anyway, Carmel…
Everything about Nicodemus Hammil and Anitra Warren, from their appearance to the eerie, Venetian-style masks hanging on the white walls of their West Avenue apartment in South Beach, is enchanting and mad freaky. Their union is draped in theater and consecrated by black magic. Nicodemus, a high priest-looking Aussie whose…
FRI 4/9 Riddled with cost overruns and delays, the new Miami Performing Arts Center is far from finished and already it has been reported that the acoustics will suck. Set to open in 2006, 16 months behind schedule, the onetime $254 million structure has, thanks to shoddy workmanship and the…
I’ve been living next to the Abbey Brewing Company for eight months, and I never knew it. Like a lot of people, when told about the neat little dive bar where the conversation froths as much as the homemade microbrewed beer, I assumed it was a reference to the Abbey…
If dads in the Midwest knew what some of their daughters were doing on South Beach, their meta-seismic cardiac arrests would cause tidal waves across Lake Michigan. Every adventure for the throngs of college students hitting our beaches this month will assuredly end in a bedroom romp or rounds of…
I woke up in a strange bed last week on Wednesday, surrounded by empty baggies, wondering where the last five days of my life went. That’s a sign of a good Winter Music Conference. But as fun as it was, this year felt like a routine compared with others. For…
Unlike rock and hip-hop stars, dance music’s biggest names aren’t shy about mixing it up with the fans. Perhaps because of the ego-free nature of dance music, DJs are often unrecognized and able to mingle without being mobbed. This remains one of the dance scene’s most endearing qualities, along with…
It takes a lot of work for DBJ to get his records out to the club. First he loads eight metal cases, carrying about 7000 records in all, from the back of his car onto a trolley. Then, with the help of two club employees, he rolls them into State,…
The old, supposedly cursed spot at 1235 Washington Ave. is back in black. Gerry Kelly and Noah Lazes sold what was then Level to the Opium Group’s Milon Brothers last year. The new owners renamed the space Mansion and procured the services of top-shelf promoters Michael Capponi and Antonio Misuraca…
Beloved underground scenesters bolting for shark-infested, mainstream waters in hopes of bigger and better things is part of a perpetual cycle. Here we go again: Many notable gatekeepers of the Design District’s indie scene are flocking to South Beach. The graduates include M-80’s Ana Diaz-Balart, Poplife’s Ray Milian, Jordan Binder,…
You hear it in contemporary pop songs like Missy Elliott’s “Work It” and Iconz’s “Get Crunked Up.” You see it in modern dance steps: the swirling movement of the torso, the stomping of the feet. It’s the clave, “a pa-pa-pa that comes from the Afro-Cuban rhythms, which [have] been more…
When a young woman trying to retrieve a friend from behind the velvet rope is pushed around, called a “bitch” by a bouncer, then handcuffed and placed in a cop car for no good reason, then it’s time to expose those bullies as the pricks they really are. Last week…
Gerry Kelly and Maxwell Blandford have returned to the playful sass they’ve always been known for with the launch of State. The club debuts in the middle of the biggest season South Beach has had in six years. It proves that we’re now completely past the “dark ages” of clubland,…
When I heard Fritz “e” Romeus was taking over a billiards bar, I was afraid to ask what role pool cues and balls would serve in his endeavor. See, Fritz, a tall, dark, Calvin Klein model-type of Euro-Caribbean descent, is the P.I.M.P. behind those famous Skin parties. You know, the…
The stage is set at a shadowy intersection in a North Miami neighborhood. This is the meeting place for a group of young people characterized by a diversity of backgrounds and unified by a precarious plan — to jam the system by scamming cash from auto insurance companies. The first…
The electro-bass underground scene continues to tease with periodic parties that blow up like waifers. You know, first you’re peaking balls, then the feeling dies down only to hurl another wave through your insides. Not that many people are rolling at these parties anymore, though; in fact it’s cool to…
So the senseless wit of improvisational comedy isn’t always as funny as rehearsed routines? At least nobody’s wasting time writing it. And in times when nobody has time, skipping a consuming phase of the creative process embodies modern ingenuity, not laziness. But appreciating the spontaneity of improv is less about…
Most revelers at an Art Miami Wreck 2 party in the now-infamous Rectangle ArtSpace on January 10 were completely unaware that a grisly scene was found there the week before. The decomposing body of an artist was discovered in a loft on the same floor that now housed 70 or…
Michael Robbins, Justin Levine, and Perry Sasson (still the smoothest name in nightlife) of Empire Events — or, as other nightlifers know them, the J Crew — have been hosting a Sno party at Pearl, the elegant restaurant/lounge atop Nikki Beach, on Saturday nights. The plush surroundings make a perfect…
