Ciao, Baby

Whatever you’ve heard about South Beach is probably true: Yes Virginia, there are Ferraris and topless beaches everywhere. After spending a recent weekend in South Beach, I now want to live there, but I don’t think I have the means. I spent $500 on food and drinks in a period of 24 hours, and dropping $182,500 per year on sustenance is probably outside my budget. But you see, I was hanging with Laio and I didn’t want to let him down.

Laio is an Italian who used to own a restaurant but sold it for an apparently extravagant sum. Now he spends his days enjoying the Miami good life with his hot girlfriend, Suzie. Normally I’m contemptuous of profligate Euros, but after spending the better part of a weekend hanging with Laio, I became accustomed to the ways of the playboy. I could probably get used to going to only the best clubs and bribing bouncers and lounging by pools all day and never drinking tap water. Someday I might even tip the guy in the restroom who hands you a paper towel. OK, I won’t—I’ll always resent that. Although I might be inclined to pay for hand-drying if the guy would let me push his forehead like a button and then make a “whooooooooshhhh” sound as he blows on my hands. That would be fun. What was I talking about?

Laio sets a high standard for leisure. I discovered this right away, when I suggested that our party stop at the Clevelander Hotel, which is on Ocean Drive and features a pool surrounded by multiple outdoor bars and a dance floor. Sounds like a good time, right? Wrong. “The Clevelander is filled with tourists,” Laio said, as if I’d suggested that we go Dumpster-diving for new underwear. “We’ll show you some good places that the tourists don’t know about.” Laio’s right, tourists are so pathetic, I thought as I pulled my “Party in the City Where the Heat Is On” T-shirt down over my fanny pack.

One of Laio’s favorite places is a club called Privé, which, fortunately, is open to the publique. “You can’t even get in here unless you know the bouncer,” Laio told us. Knowing bouncers is important in South Beach. I suspect that if Laio had enough disposable income, he’d hire a bouncer to stand in front of his apartment and give him a hard time when he comes home at night.

Once we got into Privé, I was expecting a scene reminiscent of a particular Master P video, which Mr. P described thusly in an MTV interview: “We wilding out. That video, I got an elephant with a Gucci hat and some Gucci trinkets you put around an elephant. I got my Gucci helicopter in there. It’s a party. You gonna see a lot of midgets in this video.” That’s what I wanted in Privé. Rappers, elephants, Gucci midgets. The funny thing was, for all the drama over getting in (Laio had to catch the bouncer’s attention and then bribe him), the club itself was generic. Meanwhile, the adjoining club, Opium Garden, looked like a Coleridge trip come to life. Think “immense dance club outdoors in a Chinese garden.” It had no line at all. This is the influence of the Laios at work. If all of the Laios and Suzies in South Beach decided that hanging out at Burger King was cool, you couldn’t get your hands on a Whopper Jr. without slipping the drive-thru guy a 20.

Other favorite Laio moments: when we were at the beach and he called and told us that we were at the wrong part of the beach, and the beautiful people were two blocks south. Or when we ordered sushi and he made a point of telling the waiter that he’d eaten at that restaurant the day before and the edamame was too crunchy, and it should be cooked longer next time. Or when he gazed disdainfully at the parade of high-end cars and pronounced, “None of these people live here. They drive in from other places. Anyone who lives in South Beach doesn’t take their car out at night.” It’s not enough to have a nice car—to really fit in you’ve got to have a nice car but not be bothered to actually drive it. The ultimate would be to buy a Ferrari and just leave it at the dealership.

I appreciated Laio’s attempts to show me his favorite places in South Beach, but I think we’ve got different tastes. He appreciates the finer things, I appreciate renting a Mustang and driving to the nearest hot-body competition to do some hollerin’. Really, the only question is who’s cheesier. ∂