Audio By Carbonatix
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 every word and mannerism suits his devilish name, is an electronic composer, ex-mime, and “passionate meta-physician.” His adoring “concubine” Anitra is a vampy, six-foot-tall New York club kid with glowing eyes who has studied ballet and classical opera. Together they perform as the Gothic/ industrial act Men Smash Atoms. But these days, it seems, most of their energy is spent attacking Carmel Ophir.
I drop by Nicodemus’s “lair” to hear why he’s campaigning against Carmel, who promotes the long-running Back Door Bamby party with Mykel Stevens and Shelley Novak on Monday nights at crobar. Inside the duo’s warm den, there are mystical sculptures, upside-down pentagrams, and graffiti that reads “Fuck crobar.” Dressed in matching black vinyl jumpsuits, they promptly offer me a goblet of their own concoction, a soothing potion made of ginger and honey. I get the feeling I’ll be walking out with a spell on me.
Immediately Nicodemus begins ranting about his nemesis. “Carmel is out to ruin us by sabotaging our relationships with others involved with clubs. He has that kind of power,” he alleges, reading aloud from a notebook as he gestures dramatically with his arm raised in the air. “This is like sex for him, that’s why he’s trying to fuck us!”
At this point Nicodemus begins to stutter, searching for something else to say. He motions to Anitra. “Quick, get me some coke,” he commands. She laughs, but no coke comes. He continues, staring straight into my eyes and sinisterly curling his fingers at me. “Imagine if someone with influence went around telling people, ‘Don’t talk with Humberto, he’s a liar.’ Very subtly, it would severely damage you.” Is this a threat? I almost piss in my pants.
So how was this demonic seed of animosity conceived? Back in the spring of 1998, soon after Nicodemus and Anitra arrived in South Beach, they met Carmel. “I was quite intrigued by their caricatures,” says Carmel during a phone interview. He subsequently booked them for two shows at the Church, a Sunday-night underground party he used to throw at the now-defunct Groovejet on 23rd Street and Collins.
Carmel says the drama started when Nicodemus tried to throw his own party, the Erotic Vampire Ball, on September 19, 1999, at the now-defunct Le Cabaret on 21st Street and Collins. “It celebrated the convergence of the bloodlines of Count Vlad,” says Anitra. The Erotic Vampire Ball was scheduled to take place on the same night as the Church. In spite of the competition, Carmel claims his party drew better business that night. “Nico’s Ball wasn’t a success,” he says. “But instead of rolling with the punches, he came up with this whole conspiracy that I was out to get him.”
Nicodemus counters that Carmel discouraged people from working at the Ball. “I had all these performers telling me they’d be blacklisted if they appeared in my night,” he says.
“Lots of those dancers and acts worked for me year round. Nicodemus threw a rival night. Sure I made people choose,” Carmel admits. “If you go from Ford to GM for a week, I doubt Ford is going to take you back. From there, I started to get crazy phone calls in the middle of the night, and he’d approach me at clubs and whisper things in my ear.”
Carmel and Nicodemus both cite a night at Blue on Española Way in 1999 as the inaugural confrontation. “Carmel threatened to throw me off the balcony even though I wanted to shake his hand,” says Nicodemus.
“That’s the night I realized this guy is off,” says Carmel. “He tells me, ‘You think this is over? It’s only beginning. Prepare to have your throat slit,’ while his wife stands there screeching out some operatic tune. Mind you, man-to-man, bring it on, but when he gets into the hoodoo-voodoo shit, that raises the hairs on the back of your neck, so I’m, like, ‘My man, you’re a sick motherfucker,‘ and I back away. That was the start of four years of harassment.”
The two kept bumping into each other at clubs, with Nicodemus insisting they shake hands only to freak out when Carmel refused. Carmel filed a complaint with the Miami Beach Police Department in 2001 and, without naming Nicodemus, alleged that an anonymous person was “stalking him.” “There really wasn’t anything I could do to stop him,” he says, admitting that he didn’t try to pursue his complaint. “I think Nico just wanted me to hit him so he could sue.”
Nicodemus says Carmel threatened him, too, claiming, “He told me and Anitra that he’d make us ‘disappear.’” He then filed his own complaint with Miami Beach police on July 2002. “If we are found dead or maimed or viciously beaten,” he wrote, “the perpetrator of these crimes will most certainly be Carmel Ophir.” The department responded with a letter stating there was no cause to pursue a case.
But the quarrel didn’t end there. In January 2000 Carmel was hired by crobar as its creative marketing director. As a result, his feud with Nicodemus would spill over into one of Miami nightlife’s biggest institutions. But that’s part two of this soap opera.
