Rockit singer Nick Ramone swears Marky was ready to sit in: "This guy is a classic. He created a lot of the music that we hear now. It's like if Frank Sinatra walked into a piano bar and said he'd like to play a couple of songs." But, according to Nick, club personnel began breaking down the sound equipment while his crew was setting up.
Promoter Menendez disputes this: "I never heard anything about Marky Ramone playing any drums. A band that wasn't booked tried to get onstage, which isn't cool, so I pulled the plug."
Marky Ramone is back in Japan and could not be reached by The Bitch for his side of the story.
They Only Come Out at Night
Fridays are The Bitch's nights to read, sleep, and study the aqueduct grid of Santurce, but she knows a lot of tail-wagging takes place to the progressive house sounds emanating from Nocturnal's weekly party, Aquabooty. Over the past two years, promoters Joe Budious and Tomas Ceddia have imported some of the world's most talented DJs — recent spinsters include Louis Vega and Miguel Migs — establishing Aquabooty as a Miami nightlife institution. Nocturnal's star-hung rooftop lounge, replete with waterfalls and a panoramic view of downtown, seems the ideal locale for the party's blissfully hedonistic aesthetic.
But Budious and Ceddia are packing up their turntables and migrating to the fledgling Mid-Beach club Glass, formerly Jimmy'z on 41st Street. While Aquabooty may have flown the $13 million coop, the pair didn't escape unscathed.
"Nocturnal — I wish them luck; they're going to need it," the normally dulce de leche sweet Ceddia seethes. "They don't know what they're doing. They don't hire the right people or take the right advice. None of it seems to be working. They brought in these people from out of town that have no relevance to Miami and they ran it into the ground.... I didn't want to say anything before because they owed us money, a lot of money. They've since partially paid up. But we'll see — the last couple of checks they wrote bounced," fumes the DJ, who, with Marlin maven Sami Stormo, is The Bitch's favorite power couple.
And the hatin' doesn't stop there. "We've always done smaller clubs and had total autonomy to do our own thing," Ceddia says. "A lot of our crowd wasn't feeling the vibe [at Nocturnal]. Being downtown, it feels like the seedy Space thing. A lot of our people didn't want to go there. In the long-term, the place just didn't have the right soul."
Nocturnal management did not respond to requests for comment.
A Little Bit of Heartache
Though she remains adamantly against The Man, The Bitch worked her way to a useless art history graduate degree as a minion of Howard Schultz, and thus retains enough affection for the employees of America's number one drug dealer to frequent its many outposts if not for the Gold Coast than to surreptitiously destroy as many Antigone Rising CDs as possible. Plus any hound would be forgiven for thinking a dude wearing a necklace made of bones was advertising his prowess as a kindredly spirited hunter, right? But sometimes human customs confuse The Bitch. So in order to avoid the certain social humiliation of being dissed by the fascinating yet inscrutably haughty baristas at Starbucks #416 (Washington and Lincoln), The Bitch detoured to Starbucks #749 (Meridian and Lincoln), only to discover that, to her Catherine Keener-in-Walking and Talking-like horror, the conspiratorial Melville-referencing fates had created a 416-to-749 staff trade this past Thursday.
Ears and paws ablush, the barkless dog ducked into the comfort of nearby Brownes & Co. Apothecary to find ... a really cool party celebrating the launch of Lavish, a line of clothes and jewelry by local designer Lauren Goldfarb. The merchandise was pretty; dogs were welcome; DJ Marc Vane quietly subdued a rowdy, too-much-junk-in-the-trunk reveler; and a friendly milling crowd seemed genuinely lulled by aromatherapeutic blasts of lavender and ginger.
Later that evening, a similarly soothing scene unfolded on the roof of the Delano for the opening of the hotel's made-over spa. This was a gathering so small that the Delano staff outnumbered the guests, and so relaxing that a rare occurrence of caste-mingling took place when, after one gentleman guest cautiously offered a caterer a Cohiba, everyone chilled together while enjoying the lights below and stars above.
