Miami in February, an ideal circumstance, the best of all possible worlds. The Tenth Miami Film Festival kicking off with a winter-themed gala, replete with the standard celebrity firepower. Club One opening in the short-lived Ocean Club space on Fifth Street, with fire-eaters, S&M dance routines, and the usual festivites:…
Low life, high life, it’s all pretty much the same thing in the brave new American bordello, this tropic of psychosis. A social career standard set with a bizarre party at Mar-A-Lago, hosted by Donald Trump and Jason Binn of Ocean Drive magazine, the worlds of downtown and uptown colliding…
The social circuit, plowing along heedlessly, the party monster sick, literally and existentially, from a regimen that would kill more sentient beings. A reception at the Doral Hotel for the South Florida International Wine and Food Festival, both ballrooms crammed with our favorite concept: free food and alcohol. Booths from…
After a long dry spell, Miami Beach is once again the nightlife capital of America, a wide-open town with nonstop action, the playground of the Western world. The Euro-chics, the celebrated, and the simply rich, the emblems that guide the rest of the glitter-hungry world are pouring in: Gianni Versace,…
The pop culture world, completely superficial and curiously irresisitible, a movement rolling over all moral, intellectual, and spirtual concerns. Dangerous, offensive, and debilitating as a drug addiction, but still strangely compelling. Sinatra Bar opening in a frenzy of fashion and celebrity, with an Elite Models party and Donald Trump, former…
The shake out, reputations and fortunes rising and falling, clubs opening and closing. Club One in the Miracle Center shutting down and eventually evolving into a department store, with Norman Bedford, who booked in some great acts, looking at a space on South Beach for another Latin-music operation. The Id…
The headless flight toward the New Year, tumbling pell-mell into a world of possibilty, fighting the pull of the mundane. The city popping, clogged with the rich and famous, one big celebrity shooting gallery. New Year’s Eve assuming the competitive dimensions of pret-a-porte week in Paris — designers, celebs, and…
The party zone between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, another dance to the music of time, more clubs, more thematic one-nighters, more lunges at style and senseless pleasure. Saturday night in Coconut Grove, the young and horny cruising the streets, operating on sheer gonad power. An overinflated shopping mall, weird…
The holiday season, the entire populace reduced to a state of low-grade manic depression, the general mood randomly veering between a positively Russian bleakness and giddy elation. Eating too much, drinking too much, the yearly dance before the apocalypse of New Year’s Eve and the prospect of yet another crummy…
The party boy, helpless in the face of an ugly addiction, driven by sensation and the gnawing fear of missing the remotest semblance of a social occasion. A week or two of absolute frenzy, setting a personal worst with ten events in one day. Stop him before he kills again…
Sex, money, drink, and drugs, the heady high-octane mix that fuels the combustion of nightlife. A potent combination not applied, thankfully enough, in equal doses throughout the universe. Sex in short supply during an agitated weekend in London, although alcohol and a somewhat tonier class of society in abundance. An…
White Party weekend, the city full of juice and new talent, the post-Woodstock nation making the unholy pilgrimage to Mecca. The weekend similar in concept to other gay festivals, Aspen gay ski week and the like, with Sodom-town adding a little edge to the usual festivities. Sun, decadence, and a…
Maybe it’s a personal thing, all of life lately coming to seem like one big club: long stretches of taedium vitae alternating with moments of opportunity, true glamour, hope, and glimpses of bliss. Status and one’s place in the world, a frighteningly random proposition, rising and falling without purpose. A…
Paragon, an insensible hour of the night, and the women’s bathroom — equipped with Mo’ Money, an enormous black disc jockey — truly hopping. Men, women, and everything else in between, wearing everything from prom dresses to leather, backed up at the vanity mirror, making the usual adjustments to the…
Moving up to a vague approximation of the East Side, stoked with food and liquor, wallowing in luxury and getting a sliver of the pie. A witness to social history in the form of Thomas Kramer’s coming-out party, the most opulent local affair since David Paul’s French-chef dinner. Pay retail,…
Halloween weekend, the new neurotic holiday feast, the compulsion to have the best possible time akin to the frenzy surrounding New Year’s Eve. Another year, another ritualized program of anticipation, random moments of half-baked pleasure, and the aftermath of suspecting that other people — worse yet, your friends — are…
The Hell phenomenon, another strange story from the naked city. A mysterious German developer, Thomas Kramer, descending on the city out of nowhere and acquiring major-league properties with endless cash: socialite Jan Cowles’s Indian Creek estate, attorney Dan Paul’s Star Island home, acres of lower South Beach for a new…
The regular crowd shuffling in, hawking the dreams of the evening hours: the ultimate conceptual one-nighter, the outfit that will fix your life, the model of the moment. Four One One at the Hotel Harrison on Washington Avenue opening hyperofficially, the usual players working the room with the fervor of…
Looking as good as it gets, only slightly shattered. Hair by Joe Mesa, thickened and tortured. Brooks Brothers oxford shirt, wrinkled to perfection. Khaki pants, same dependable clothier, spotted with ink and gin. Puke-stained Cole-Haan loafers, worn without socks. Loaded with pocket change and attitude, ready to take yet another…
Out, out, Prince Albert of Monaco. Waiting for Bono. Tim Robbie, die-hard David Byrne fan and party animal extraordinaire. Pat Booth, author and Home Shopping Network star. Chuck D., public enemy and fun guy. Miami calling Mick Jones. Herb Ritts, photo-vibrator to Seventh Avenue. Models migrating back to town, the…
The hurricane relief social weekend, high-purpose pleasure, parties of the staunchest moral caliber. Saint Gloria orchestrating a massive relief concert at Joe Robbie Stadium, featuring Jimmy Buffett, comedian Paul Rodriguez, Celia Cruz, the Bee Gees, and just about every other known available entertainer. History in the making, but to a…
South Beach, and the curfew incident, the ultimate moratorium on pleasure, passes into legend. Suffering from the doubly painful withdrawal of being encouraged to limit phone use and not being able to drink during prime-time hours, one prominent local reportedly breaking down at Paragon: “What do you mean you’re not…
