Audio By Carbonatix
These are perplexing times for the hip, at least in Coral Gables. New is old, old is chic, and, to paraphrase that hepcat Bob Dylan, when you think you’re at top of the heap, you just might be on the bottom. Then again Dylan is over 50 now.
In a packed elevator rising to the top of the fifteen-story 550 Biltmore Way building, two women in minidresses are taking turns touching each other’s pebble-size engagement-ring diamonds.
“It’s really beautiful!” one says.
“So is yours!” responds the other, her red garment lighting up the lift.
Then a man in a navy-blue sport coat and tie chastises another hombre for not phoning him. “Thanks for calling me back,” he says.
“I was on the road,” says the other, also in coat and tie.
“Thanks for calling me back,” repeats the first.
They go on like this several times. Decked in the latest Fifties and Eighties-style fashions, these neo-glitterati are on their way to Zarabanda, “a new experience in South Florida nightlife,” according to a press release from the owners. The place is the brainchild of salsa singer Willy Chirino and local insurance executive Pepe Alvarez.
None too soon, the elevator doors open and taped salsa music washes over the group as they bear left through glass doors. And there it is: the red-brown marble floor, black marble pillars with gold Corinthian tops, a small stage with a glittery orb revolving overhead, and Oh my God, the view. Through large windows the guests gaze over Coral Gables and points north, then breeze to one of two bars flanking the dance area. At the far end of the room, through more glass doors, are two open-air patios. In one WSVN-TV (Channel 7) news celebrity Rick Sanchez, who was the first to arrive, stands smiling, teeth twinkling. Other members of the new avant-garde like Coral Gables Mayor Raul Valdes-Fauli, WTVJ-TV (Channel 6) news personality Willard Shepard, and the grandfather of nightly noticias, Guillermo Benitez of WLTV-TV (Channel 23), soon arrive to strut their stuff. It’s May 18 and the place is teeming with revelers: men clad in tuxedos and slicked-back (or balding) hair; women in stiff, low-cut bodices resembling sequined body armor.
“God, the girls are gorgeous,” exclaims 63-year-old Bob Insco, a doughnut-size gold ring shining from his left-hand pinkie as he chows appetizers from a table far from the dance floor. A lifelong Miami resident who cuts a Winston Churchill-esque figure, Insco plans to open a pawn shop later this year. In the first five minutes after arrival, he and his 59-year-old buddy Charlie (who asked New Times not to print his last name) had already decided not to apply for Zarabanda’s $300-per-year membership. “I’m used to belonging to a club where you can enjoy playing tennis and golf, where you have amenities other than dancing and eating,” Insco comments. Charlie’s review is more succinct: “It’s too small, it’s too expensive, and there’s no food. You call that food? I thought they might have some real food. Steak, lobster, you know, real food. Not raw tomatoes on stale bread. But that’s okay, I’m overweight anyway.” He’s got a different word for members. “They’re called suckers,” he sneers. “This is a disco. This is not a club.” He gives Zarabanda six months to live: “It will close by the year 2000. But that’s okay. This is America.”
Charlie’s prognosis hearkens to the Eighties, when private nightclubs like Regine’s, Ensign Bitters, and Stringfellow’s became cultural dinosaurs, then closed. But apparently Charlie missed the press release: Zarabanda is “innovative,” “breaking new ground,” and “the place to see and be seen.” With luck it will be cooler than the private club called Havana Hideaway that folded in this very same space in 1997 after a four-month run.
But if everyone knew the definition of chic, no one would pass muster. Over by the stage Zarabanda’s eponymously named house band (formerly La Banda del Callejon, a fixture at the nearby Giacosa restaurant) is mesmerizing a crowd that, unlike Charlie, knows hipness. The music stops and Chirino thanks the sea of dancers for coming. He says something about Zarabanda breaking new ground. Then Father Jose Luis Menendez of Corpus Christi Catholic Church blesses Zarabanda and prays for “love, peace, and justice.” A painter gives Chirino a huge portrait of the singer. The band resumes, and eventually Chirino croons. Flute player Mercedes Abal, who performs with entertainer Albita Rodriguez, flutters for a while, followed by trumpet player Arturo Sandoval.
As far as owner Pepe Alvarez is concerned, Zarabanda has to be cool. “We’ve put a lot of money into this place,” says the dapper and diminutive 54-year-old native of Cuba, who arrived in Florida in 1970 via Chicago. How much? “$300,000,” he confides, stoically observing the three-stepping bohemians bouncing on his new dance floor.
Alvarez is the CEO of AIB Financial Group, a Miami insurance firm. He says he and Chirino thought up the idea this past November over lunch at Caffe Abbracci, a swanky Coral Gables eatery. There was a lack of places to go out and dance after dinner in the sleepy town that Merrick built. “And we have over 400 cigar humidors,” he adds. Alvarez also owns the Cigar Connection, a local retail operation. His son David manages the new club.
Puffing a cigar on one of the patios, Scott Poulin, chief investment officer at Gibraltar Bank, envisions schmoozing clients at Zarabanda. “We need a place like this in Coral Gables,” observes the 31-year-old Connecticut native. His wife is Rikki Ricciardelli, a 29-year-old vice president at her father Rick’s Underwriters Guarantee Insurance Company. She and her husband have outgrown the Washington Avenue scene. “Coral Gables brings together the more elite crowd, separate from the South Beach crowd,” Ricciardelli ruminates amid the patio prattle. “It’s more of a corporate, executive atmosphere. It’s more, what’s the word? …” Sophisticated? “Yeah, sophisticated. That’s a good word.”
The Alvarezes have a plan for keeping the crude excesses of youth at bay: No one under age 25 will be allowed to join. But what about mature 23-year-old millionaires? New Times asks Chirino, who is age 51. “Of course we’ll bend the rules a little,” he says while standing next to an impressive oil painting of a nude woman, sitting with bent knees and draped in a sheet.
No longer able to bear the uncoolness, Charlie splits, missing by a matter of minutes the delicious vegetable risotto that a chef begins to dish from a timpani-size pot on the west patio. Insco lingers long enough to down another snifter of eight-year-old Bacardi rum. “You’ve got to be fucking crazy to pay $300 for a club that’s going to close,” he snickers. He leaves, saying he wants to get to bed early because he’s got a date the next night. He’s taking her to a place that serves steak.
But dozens dance on in their tuxes and bodice armor, and the liquor continues to flow as copiously as the hubris does. When the band finally quits and the taped salsa resumes, the crowd thins out. A trio of women in bustiers prance onstage, lip-synching and pretending to play the keyboard. About midnight the sound man thanks everyone and puts on Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York.” Zarabanda’s party beasts sing along: “I’m king of the hill, top of the heap, A-number-one.” Through the plate glass windows, Coral Gables is dark, but farther north the lights of the little people in Little Havana and Hialeah are aglow.
