The desire for transformation—it’s a powerful
motivator: to pull out the platinum tresses and spackle on the
eye shadow, to kick off the wingtips and slide into those pink
mules. Out with our humdrum quotidian lives—and in with the
tragic and the glam. Fortunately, for those of us in the
life, such a metamorphosis isn’t much of a stretch—and given
that nearly everyone in
South Beach is already a charter member
of the FFF (Fierce, Fast and Fabulous) sorority, perhaps it’s
little surprise to see the sandbar transformed into an amalgam
of the fall of Rome, Dionysian revels, pagan rituals, and
reality t.v.
Over the past decade, Halloween has become the de facto
American Mardi Gras, with the Village parade in
New York,
and San Francisco’s Castro block parties—and yet, few
municipalities so completely transform themselves as Miami’s
South Beach. During the height of the Halloween celebration on
Lincoln Road,
it’s possible to imagine that
South
Beach has become Burning Man—a phantasmagoria of anything-goes
libertinism.
For the opening act,
Lincoln Road was all about the kiddies—the real ones—trick or
treating up and down the road, sucking up
Kiehl’s candies and
IceBox Café treats. It’s a tradition:
Lincoln Road
retail gives good candy. Meanwhile, at the Colony Theatre,
there was
ECOMB’s Third Annual Rocky Horror Picture Show
fundraiser. And over at
HALO Lounge (also doubling as
OBAMA’s
Halloween headquarters, complete with placards, stickers, and
literature—VOTE! VOTE!), it was STUDIO 54 redux, complete with
door gods GM Jason and owner Babak channeling their inner John
Travolta as they parted the velvet ropes for the most dazzling
of the glitterati. The place was a madhouse of Seventies
excess—everyone smiling and rolling with hedonistic abandon.
Outside again, in the thrall of
Lincoln Road, where Euclid Circle was a mosh pit of teenage
ravers, every moment was a photo op, with cameras as ubiquitous
as cell phones. CAUTION/SLOW MOVING UP AHEAD: PHOTO OPS
EVERYWHERE.
When finally we made it to
Score, the masses
were pressing against security and door goddess Asia Aviance.
“BACK IT UP, PEEPS,” shouted security, as if it were possible to
move in any direction at all. One of those nights,
murmured
Asia,
unflappable and gracious as always.
There was good reason for the crowds outside
Score, for inside, it was
Abel, a Halloween tradition. What’s
Halloween without
Abel, the master of transformative beats?
With a bassline that’s familiar, he cut-and-paste beats, so that
“One Night Only,” for example, became a symphony of the familiar
and the innovative. With a houseful of haunting echoes and
propulsive grooves,
Abel kept the floor packed with superheroes,
working it out beneath cartoon captions reading POW! WHAM!
CRACK! PHEW! There was the Joker, Batman, and Superman—and
owner Luis, ever amiable and adorable dispensing Red Bull. As
for the most complete transformation of the night? Perhaps it
was the Stone Age Wilma Flintstone crossed with Raquel Welch
from One Million Years B.C.—who finally revealed himself
to be none other than the otherwise unidentifiable and
ever-stylish
Michael Stanley.
Ah, Halloween in
South Beach—where every Dick gets a makeover
and every id comes out to play.
