Miami Nights

Ahhh, Bricks. A club that perhaps opened before its time, when the Downtown and Brickell districts were crack-infested ghost towns. Technically they still are crack-infested ghost towns but at least it's gotten a bit better of late. Failing to pull an upscale audience, Bricks seemed to do whatever they could to cover costs, and the overall party suffered. I still have some fond memories of the upstairs terrace and the beautiful views there.

The space is now known as Voyage (pronounced voy-yaj). A new team has taken over the space, composed of a lot of familiar and respected nightlife vets including Eric Major as VIP director (ex-Pawn Shop, Park West, Dolce) and Omar Rosario (ex-Level, Warehouse, Crobar, Bang Music Festival, Park West). The focus here is customer service and treating your paying, loyal clientéle with respect, something that is dreadfully rare in Miami at the moment.

At the same time they are going to attempt to keep things affordable for the locals (who will make up the core of their repeat business), making up the income by having more repeat business. To that end, they have a lot of interesting plans in mind, such as a "VIP card" system that grants perpetual no-cover access at the door, and personalized service from staff. This reminds me a lot of Pawn Shop's focus on personalized marketing during its early days.

Visually they're making some changes as well, changing the flow through the downstairs dance floor, adding some audio-visual stuff, and improving the sound (including a completely drool-worthy vintage Urei 1620 mixer in the booth). They were still making some tweaks during my walk through so I'll report more on this once I see it in action on a regular night. The upstairs terrace (my favorite part of the club by far) is getting a complete work over, improving the sound and appearance.

Challenges? Like all clubs in Miami, Voyage faces a downturn in the economy at the moment, weakening interest in bottle service at most venues, and a rather blah reputation for the last few spots to inhabit that venue. I'm way too jaded to make any predictions about anything any more -- after all, I'm flabbergasted how there can be a successful goth club on Miracle Mile while Studio A has to close -- so I will be watching how this plays out. I'm excited - the more varied spots that open downtown, the better (I could use a few new places to embarrass myself with excessive drinking), and this spot has a team behind it that has a great reputation for throwing good parties.

Voyage opens this Friday (with a disturbingly long open bar), featuring DJ Nemesis playing open format. On Saturday veteran DJ Louis Dee slams some house-leaning music at the crowd. Big thanks to friend of the site Fabian Gonzalez for helping us with this article!