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To most of us, the scene outside a nightclub has become recognizably
iconic: velvet ropes and stanchions, doormen and bouncers, the
crowds, the limos, the cabs—and the music pulsing against the club
walls. And on Sunday night in South Beach, out in front of the newly
reopened Cameo, formerly Crobar, it’s all this—and so much more.
The volunteers, for one thing: Winter Party volunteers in their
matching blue tees, ever-gracious and accommodating to the boys who
are arriving in droves. It’s a little before one a.m. and the air is
balmy. Fourteenth Street has been closed to traffic—and filled
instead with red leather banquettes and coffee tables: an outdoor
lounge should Cameo’s interior prove too steamy.
And let’s face it, we expect nothing less than total delirium, given
that this club has been shuttered for nearly a year. For so long an
integral part of South Beach nightlife, the club once known as
Crobar is now open again, at long last, and tonight is its circuit
debut. It’s a party called Connections, benefiting the Task Force,
and helmed by not one but three deejays whose backgrounds span the
globe: Dudu Marquez from Rio and Kate Monroe of Australia and Manny
Lehman of Los Angeles by way of da Bronx. We’ve been waiting for
months to see this club werk again. We hang around out front,
gabbing with friends, anticipation building—and then unable to wait
another minute…
Right up the staircase to the mezzanine—and into the ancillary room
which at some parties used to be the VIP room, and which is now a
separate club called VICE, and which is already packed, and we run
into Dino who says, “This guy Dudu is crazy. Come get a photo,” and
it’s true, Dudu Marquez, whom we know from Alegria parties, is
definitely delicious, not just to see, but to watch him werk. And
the kids are loving him, already, and he’s got them where he wants
them—and we hang for a while longer….
Until we’re ready again, to head into the Main Room—where it’s
nothing less than explosive. Kate Monroe has just wrapped her set
and the crowd is applauding and cheering and the floor is PACKED,
and the mezzanines are PACKED and the staircases PACKED and—
The club looks incredible. Goodbye, cabana walkways which used to
line the mezzanine. Now the mezz has been opened up and streamlined
like the deck of a cruise ship with lots of reflective surfaces, and
in a nod to its sister Crobar in New York, there’s a huge off-kilter
light wall set on a diagonal with scrims which rise and fall and—
Let’s face it, this is the new South Beach, the billion-dollar
sandbar, steroided and Botoxed from the old bones. Goodbye, cabanas
and coconuts; hello, cruise ship South Beach of the Seas.
And Manny takes the helm, in a mirror ball deejay booth just
slightly above the floor at the room’s head. A booth not unlike the
one Madonna emerged from on her latest tour—which is fitting, given
that the top balcony above Manny’s booth has huge wall-length
fuchsia screens of Madonna as Marilyn, surely the most iconic face
on the globe, and to look up is to see the silhouettes of boyz
dancing in front of Madonna Marilyn’s arched eyebrow…
We’re off and running. Manny opens full-throttle, full steam ahead.
And the boyz are right there with him: a packed floor of boyz,
bobbing to the beat beneath a galaxy of mirror balls. And from high
above, shafts of white light and white silver pin spots wonderfully
reminiscent of the original Saint way back in the day… Lights which
paint teardrops and little stars on the bodies of the boys below: on
their bare chests, their necks, their pecs, their delts—
It’s beautiful, so very beautiful. And mad crazy wild—to see such an
exhibition of complete unbridled joy. Energy in its purest form. And
it seems as if nobody’s missing this party, and it makes sense when
Manny plays “Listen,” because we all have so much to share, if the
world would only listen…
This is a club with history, built from the bones of the Cameo
Theatre, back when the Cameo was a Depression-era movie palace, a
playground for groping in the dark in front of the silver screen. A
building with groping-and-moaning history. And then all those years
as a nightclub, when it was Cameo and Crobar, not long after South
Beach had been rediscovered—after the Scarface years— Nights when
Victor werked this room and made it his— A building with skeletons
and ghosts— A building with a storied past. Oh, come on! This
building has seen it all.
And tonight, it’s all about Manny—and he’s playing the kind of music
which makes you remember exactly why it is you came to South Beach:
to dance. To dance with your boyz, your posse, with all the friends
whom you don’t even know, not yet, not quite, but you love them all
anyway.
And how perfect is it that Manny’s playing Chus & Ceballos “Changing
Shapes” with its lyric, “Nobody told us to stop dancing…” And why
should we? Not when it feels so good. “We have to live the joy of
love”—because there’s just no other way.
It’s too much. Such revelry, such beauty. All these people, so high
and happy. No borders, no boundaries. Why shouldn’t it be like this
always?
And now it’s “Gold Star” and “Praise You”—and we do, all of us.
Praise in the form of uninhibited dance. Is there any greater joy?
And then Manny slips in “U Turn Me (I Only Wanna Dance with You)”,
with its recurrent lyric “turning me, turning me…”and you’re
realizing again how very much you’d missed this club with its boxful
of memories.
Oh, South Beach—and its fabled clubs and all the boyz who came to
the Beach on vacation—and went home with a hubby. Two boyz we know
who met years ago at Cameo/Crobar at Victor’s Sunday night party
during White Party… And another guy who remembers Warsaw on 14th and
Collins, which is now Jerry’s Deli, which currently shares a back
wall with this club… Connections indeed. Connections abound.
Such as how it is that Joe Caro went shopping for replacement blue
lasers—which he finally found at the Office Depot in South
Beach—which is to be expected, of course—that Joe Caro would find
himself there, because what is now the Office Depot used to be
Salvation, the infamous South Beach Saturday night gay club—
Connections and good karma all around—and so many nice boyz. The
kind of boyz who would return a lost pocketbook—or use it. We’re
walking the mezzanine, werking the railings, and then back into
Dudu’s lair, where his wildman magic has boyz like Jake and Jesse
held captive. And also Booty Boy who’s bouncing better than BeyoncÈ,
and another who says that he’s into “ultra-muscle with a pecan tan.”
Very specific, these boyz. And also Richie Dior, and a hottie just
off the box who gets the sweat licked off his nipples by no less
than three—
It’s later, much, for this party without borders. There’s a Greek
giving hand jobs in the balcony, and some boyz are werking, just to
walk the stairs. Carefully down the stairs, those ever-shifting
steps…
And for a while we admire two best friends and how it is they manage
to watch over each other, even when they’ve almost slipped out of
each other’s sightlines. How they dance and play with other boyz,
but keep each other close. How it is they have that intuition, that
sense of connection, even when they’re separated by a sea of boyz.
It’s a gift, one we all share—how to watch out for each other.
And when it’s over, the party, over for tonight, we slip out the
back door and onto Fourteenth Street, where the red leather
banquettes are still in the street— Our hearts still pumping hard,
from adrenaline, and all that we’ve shared— That freedom, that joy,
that sense of belonging…
And in the aftermath, along the walk home and again in the morning,
after sleep, we’re still hearing the music: those snippets of song
and pieces of lyric that won’t leave our head… And we’re still
seeing Christian dancing atop the banquette… And Joe C. with his
blue lasers… And the boy alongside the booth, the one with the
serious abs, werking Manny’s nerves… And that row of beautiful
bodies silhouetted atop the balcony… And the boyz along the
mezzanine… And the sea of bodies below, splattered with white stars,
dancing all through the night…
Oh, what a hot party, in such a fabled club, with the best bunch of
people— Call it what you want—the circuit or a festival or a parade
of inestimable beauty—but we call it mad fun.
Best always,
Mark and Robert
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