MiamiNights - Miami Night Clubs, Nightlife

We all know about Washington Ave between 5th and 8th street: you just don't go there. You're going to get shanked, shot, beat up or wrongfully arrested as a suspected drug dealer. While Lackner likes to spend his Sunday nights in the alleys instigating knife fights, the rest of us sane people have avoided that stretch like the plague. And for good reason, the place had degenerated into an under 18 hoodlums paradise awash with spanglish gangeros and chongas.

It wasn't always like that, back in the early days through the early and mid 90's that stretch was the place to be and be seen. But like everyone knows in this industry, times change quickly. Washington between 5th and 8th quickly took a nose dive. Crappy club owners took over once prestigious establishments like The Living Room and Bash and effectively turned the strip into a cornucopia of thugs and cornrolls. South Beach magnate Gerry Kelly makes a pointed observation in the article with this comment:

"It was a gradual decline from 1996 onward -- you could just see it," he says. 'There was a huge influx of people that came to South Beach and saw all the models, all the success of Bash and others, and one year later a lot of people said, 'Owning a club is the next best thing to being a rock star,' so you had a lot of inexperienced nightclub operators...who didn't share the same dress code or the same marketing values."

But things are beginning to change in the area as those old, god forsaken venues (Club Deep, Troy, Goddess, Templo, etc, etc) are beginning to close down and new more intelligent business owners are beginning to move in. Venues like Dek23, Gem, The Angler's Hotel, Heathrow UK Lounge are starting to turn the strip around. We're still not at the point we were during the heyday, but at the very least that part of the strip is walkable again between the hours of 10pm-5am. I personally wasn't old enough to experience the 1990's decade of glam but it seems a new era of club owners wants to bring this dilapidated stretch back to life and they seem committed to bringing us club goers a new and safe area to stumble our liquor laden selves around in, without the threat of a wild Lackner jumping out from behind a parked Vespa wielding his rusty Army surplus store knife.

The seedy area u referred to between 5th and 8th has dramatically improved over the past year. The completion of the street construction project along with the opening of the new Anglers Resort (which is rivaling Prime 112 as the to be seen Saturday night Restaurant) has dramatically improved the area. I remember when I couldn't walk down the street at night with my wife without being harassed. It is nothing like that anymore and there are some decent clubs in that area that are worthwhile checking out, including the new Ora Ultra Lounge (formerly Ink) and Gem Nightclub. Also, a new club is opening up in the space formerly occupied by Goddess and being operated by some South Beach heavy hitters. History shows that hot areas in South Beach change over the years and this little area is heating up again.

As you may have heard, Suite is closed for remodeling. It will reopen at some point in the distant future, but in the meanwhile our friends at Smac have moved their Basic Thursdays party to Dek23. Tonight's opening party features the practiced, careful madness of DJ Ross One along with their talented resident DJ What.

Everyone goes to Dek23 now. I used to laugh at them, send cruel texts, but I guess I'm not allowed now that reality has caught up with my fragmented, judgmental and neurotic world view. People tell me you don't have to worry about that part of the beach anymore, but they also tell me you're more likely to get killed in a car accident than eaten by an alligator, and yet I still don't dip my balls in the Everglades if I can avoid it.

Since we are MiamiNights and have to buy the love we receive, rather than earning it, we are also doing a giveaway. We're giving away a free bottle for one lucky person and his or her closest friends if you can answer a simple question: what nightclub is the setting for this InTheVIP porn movie? Answer quickly because we have to award the bottle around 8pm today.

Friend of the site and house music butchdiva Michael M is performing this Sunday at Click, the super gay party at Dek23. It's a WMC kickoff sort of thing combined with Omar Gonzalez' birthday, featuring lots of drag queens and other things that I am going to pretend to not be really interested in. Cheggit out: click here for full sized flyer!