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December 5,2003
JOURNEYS; South Beach: From Hot to
Cold, Back to Hot Again
By PAMELA ROBIN BRANDT; Mary Billard contributed reporting for
this article.
FOR the past few years, the word has gone out among the
fashionable set: South Beach is so over. The litany of complaints
piled up as this high-profile strip of Miami Beach seemingly fell
victim to its own success. The place was too crowded. The traffic
impossible. The hotel service inept. Ocean Drive now a fraternity-
house nightmare of sports bars, fuzzy navels and hot body contests -
- a "South Street Seaport for tourists," in the words of Brett Sokol, a
columnist for New Times, a Miami weekly.
And thus the hip crowd moved on in search of the new South Beach.
But what were the alternatives? Rio? It's where the beautiful people
are flocking, to be sure, but not for a weekend getaway. St. Bart's?
No direct flights and prohibitively expensive once you get there.
Jamaica? You're chained to your resort because of local crime and
the lack of good restaurants. Puerto Rico? Fine for one visit to the
Water Club, but that's it. The much-touted Fort Lauderdale? You've
got to be kidding.
So, like swallows to Capistrano, the hipsters are returning to South
Beach. And greeting them are signs that South Beach's glory days
are indeed far from over, that the "new South Beach" may, in fact,
be South Beach itself.
The Ritz-Carlton is scheduled to open a 375-room resort on Dec. 18.
André Balazs (owner of the Mercer Hotel in New York and the
Standard in Los Angeles) is giving the pioneering Raleigh Hotel a
facelift, including sprucing up the most gorgeous pool in town and
replacing the idiosyncratic outdoor gym with a beach bar. And in
the last year, the coolly elegant Sagamore Hotel has joined the
nearby Shore Club and the perennially booked Delano as a popular
hangout for the boldface-name crowd. There are new clubs, hot
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JOURNEYS; South Beach: From Hot to Cold, Back to Hot Again Page 2 of 6
restaurants, celebrity sightings and a resurgent real estate market.
Not since the original Art Deco renaissance in the mid-80's has
South Beach seen such action. "I felt for a while that Miami Beach
had lost some of its appeal," said DD Allen, a partner in the
Manhattan interior design firm of Pierce Allen who has been flying
down to South Beach since 1988. "I kept going, but I thought the
magic was missing. The beach is getting that magic back again."
Kal Ruttenstein, the fashion director of Bloomingdale's, was one of
the South Beach pioneers, first going there in the 1970's. He agreed
that there was a time not too long ago when the SoBe scene seemed
finished.
"It went through a tired period," he said. "There was a time when the
bloom was off the rose. Now, I find good restaurants, and art
galleries, and a lot of people are going there." But Mr. Ruttenstein
added that the old South Beach, the one with the "Studio 54 feeling,"
was probably gone forever. "Now it's a restful, relaxing place with
great weather," he said.
"Miami Beach is resilient," said Hal Rubenstein, the fashion director
of InStyle magazine, who started going to South Beach in 1985 and
bought an apartment there in 1991, around the time that the fashion
designer Gianni Versace arrived on the scene. "When Versace
moved there in 1991, everyone was trying to catch that Versace
world, which was part illusion, part aura."
But Mr. Rubenstein said that while South Beach never quite lived
up to its reputation -- "It is not the American Riviera with playboys,
supermodels and people pouring Champagne on each other," he said
-- people who go there now seem to appreciate it for its true virtues.
"It's about sand, surf, getting greasy, not wearing a lot of clothes," he
said. "It is younger, freer, easier, sexier in its own way."
Signs that South Beach is back (or perhaps never went away) were
clearly evident this week, as Art Basel came to town. Last year,
30,000 people descended on Miami for this spinoff of the Swiss
contemporary art show, and Norman Braman, the host committee
chairman and a prominent art collector, predicts that nearly twice
that number will show up this year. Most of the top hotels are fully
booked (as many were last weekend for the annual White Party, a
must event on the gay social calendar), and there are about 15
parties a night being held around town this weekend.
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JOURNEYS; South Beach: From Hot to Cold,Back to Hot Again Page 3 of 6
Mr. Braman said that visitors coming for the Basel show were "just
blown away by the people who make up what South Beach is."
And while some big-name clubs -- Liquid, Salvation, Warsaw --
have come and gone, South Beach night life continues to reinvent
itself. For a while, it looked as though Space, a new club in
downtown Miami, would siphon off the SoBe crowd. But that club,
while arguably popular, has opened and closed a couple of times
already, and the South Beach scene is holding its own.
Right now, much of the club action is concentrated in a two-block
area in SoBe's newly hot northeast area: Mynt (with its high model
quotient on weekends and its popular gay night on Mondays);
Skybar at the Shore Club; the brand-new Rok Bar, an 80's rock
revival club owned in part by Tommy Lee, the Motley Crile
drummer; and for private parties, the newly restored pool deck of
the Raleigh Hotel.
If you're looking for the social epicenter of the new South Beach,
head over to Lincoln Road, the anti-Ocean Drive. Here there are
elegant restaurants (Pacific Time, Sushi Samba Dromo), hugely
popular cafes (Nexxt and the finally opened Cafeteria), a popular
Sunday morning farmers' market, and dozens of hip clothing shops.
"It's an incredible urban promenade," said Mr. Rubenstein of
InStyle. "No Calvin Klein. No Prada. But great young throwaway
fashion."
The resurgence of South Beach comes two years after what many
locals see as its low point: The weeks following Sept. 11. "After
9/11 I can remember going by the Delano, and the pool area was
empty," said Mr. Sokol, the New Times columnist. For several
seasons the ever-present Hilton sisters were about as good as SoBe
star-gazing got. "Now we're seeing celebrities coming back -- J. Lo
and Ben, P. Diddy, Cameron Diaz, Britney Spears, Justin
Timberlake, Matt Damon, De Niro," he said.
More than celebrities are returning to South Beach, according to
statistics from Jeff Lehman, a board member of the Greater Miami
Convention and Visitors Bureau who is the general manager of the
National Hotel. Miami Beach hotel occupancy for the week after
Sept. 11, 2001, was 22.5 percent, he said. This past September, the
comparable week's figure was 55.6 percent.
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Further, seasons that have traditionally been too hot to be hot were
strong this past summer. "Weekends in June, July and August, we
were totally sold out," Mr. Lehman said.
At the all-suite Sagamore, next door to the National, the manager,
Martin Larsson, agreed. "The hotel had 75 percent occupancy in
July, 80 percent in August," he said.
The big news this month is the opening of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
Well, soon-to-be-hotel, that is. The Ritz-Carlton, an expansion of
the historic 1953 Dilido Hotel, designed by Morris Lapidus, was
supposed to open in the summer of 2001 but was plagued by permit
and construction delays. Now it's scheduled to open Dec. 18, though
the curvilinear lobby and classic Lapidus grand-entrance stairway
still segue into construction mess rather than into the planned
Lapidus Lounge.
Ritz executives dismiss the notion that they may have come late to
the South Beach party with a hotel that will charge $350 to $1,800 a
night for its rooms (the smallest measures 450 square feet, a nice
jump from the 275- to 300-square-foot standard rooms in SoBe's
other luxury hotels).
"We certainly don't feel South Beach is over," said Ezzat Coutry,
regional vice president of Ritz-Carlton. "We made the decision to
open in South Beach five years ago and remain confident in our
commitment."
When the Ritz does open, though, it will encounter a tougher
competitive environment than it might have found several years ago.
"Service in SoBe in the 1990's was horrendous," said Steven H.
Haas, an executive with China Grill Management. "The arrogance
was incredible. The Ritz is going to force all others to get their
service act together. Look at the Sagamore, the Raleigh. They
already have."
True. Though from its renovation and reopening in 2002, the
Sagamore has had a contemporary art collection that would rival
any top gallery, it wasn't until Thompson Hotels took over
management early this year that it "had things, like, for instance, a
housekeeping system," Mr. Larsson said.
And since the start of the year, when Ian Schrager, the owner of the
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Delano, took over management of the Shore Club, that nearly
terminally trendy hotel has undergone a radical attitude adjustment
along with an exotic physical "Schragerization" into a sort of super-
souk.
"You can't anymore just have the best bar," said Mathew Pargament,
the general manager. "And the look; that'll bring someone back
once. For repeat business, you have to have unconditional gracious,
attentive service."
That South Beach continues to defy predictions of its demise is
something that the locals have long accepted. "South Beach is the
Madonna of the resort industry -- reinvents itself every year or so to
keep up with the times and the trends and the demands of
vacationers," said Dindy Yokel, a public-relations representative.
Such was the mood at the recent opening on Collins Avenue of the
new Von Dutch store, home of the $99 trucker's hat, a party that
attracted a young and vibrant crowd. One of those guests, Tim
Ronan, a fashion distributor who recently moved to South Beach
from New York, seemed surprised that anyone might think SoBe's
best days were behind it. "Over?" he asked incredulously. "It's all
just beginning."
GOING OUT
The Places to Be Now: A Night-by-Night Guide
IN South Beach, one week's hot spot is the next week's social
Siberia. But right now, the following venues should offer a good
sampling of the current SoBe scene.
PRE-DINNER COCKTAILS -- The rooftop poolside bar at the
Hotel (801 Collins Avenue, 305-531-2222) is an ideal spot to escape
the Ocean Drive/Collins crawl, view the sunset and sip glow-in-the-
dark "electric" cocktails like frozen mojitos, illuminated with cubes
that match the drink's color.
DINNER -- The setting is unpretentious and the New York fashion
crowd seemingly hasn't discovered it yet, but the locals are raving
about Talula, (210 23rd Street, 305-672-0778), where the chefs and
owners -- the young husband-and-wife team of Andrea Curto and
Frank Randazzo -- are producing Italian and Southwestern-
influenced New American cuisine that is among the most solidly
creative in town.
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JOURNEYS; South Beach: From Hot to Cold, Back to Hot Again Page 6 of 6
AFTER-DINNER COCKTAILS -- The perennial favorite, the
Delano (1685 Collins Avenue, 305-672-2000), is still packing them
in at the Rose Bar, in the lobby, but the Shore Club's Skybar (1901
Collins Avenue, 305-695-3100) is the biggest celebrity magnet in
South Beach. Repeat V.I.P.'s in the bar's Red Room (an indoor area
where, starting this season, admission is only to those with a black
membership card) include J. Lo and Ben, Beyonce, Justin
Timberlake, Lenny Kravitz, Matt Damon, Tobey Maguire, P. Diddy,
Jay-Z, and most anyone who's anyone in the hip-hop world.
LATE-NIGHT ACTION -- The scene in SoBe changes from night
to night. If it's Monday, it's Crobar (1234 Washington Avenue, 305-
672-1882). For the hottest new Tuesday hangout, the longtime SoBe
model and door god Fabrizio recommends Hotel Astor's bar, Metro
(956 Washington Avenue; 305-672-7217), as "a locals' night full of
good-looking locals, like the old glamorous South Beach when it
was more exclusive." Models and their entourages are also the
featured locals at the wildly popular Double Wide "locals' night" at
Automatic Slims (1216 Washington Avenue, 305-695-0795), which
features rock and old-style hip-hop, and beers are only $4 (don't
show before 11 p.m.).
Wednesdays go to B.E.D. (929 Washington Avenue, 305-532-9070)
for Michael Capponi's weekly party. Thursdays are Moroccan
Nights at Skybar, from hot young "anti-promoters" Zack Bush and
Erica Freshman ("I hate to even call myself a promoter," explained
Mr. Bush. "We just grew up here, and started events because we
both got tired of going to the same old places.")
Fridays, dress with class and maybe Fabrizio and and his fellow
doorman, Cubby, will let you into Prive, Opium Garden's V.I.P.
club (136 Collins Avenue, 305-674-8630). Saturday, tackle the very
tough velvet rope at Mynt Ultra Lounge (1921 Collins Avenue, 786-
276-6132), or if you favor 1980's rock 'n' roll over Mynt's hip-hop,
you'll soon be able to go right next door to Rok Bar, a pink, white
and black retro-cool club whose co-owner is the former Motley
Crue drummer, Tommy Lee. It is scheduled to open later this
month. On Sundays, Anthem at Crobar is SoBe's biggest gay club
night. PAMELA ROBIN BRANDT
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