About 12 years ago I gave up the coolest apartment in NYC right across the street from Washington Square Park to move down to the up and coming town of South Beach: Miami, FL.
This had to be the biggest scam I ever was a part of. Bigger and more self deprecating than the time I bought those Stereo Speakers from the guy in the parking lot of a Mall in Jersey, only to have purchased empty shells of speakers with bricks inside. But I digress. South Beach was supposed to be this burgeoning Mecca of show business, with supposed studios in the works and production crews scouting around and blah, blah, blah. I took the bait hook line and sinker and like a good addict, I took someone very close to me along for the ride. I ended up staying there about two months. This after shipping every single thing I owned down there via Parcel Post and cutting all ties with my hometown. Why the frig didn't I sublet or contact a corporation that puts up out of town employees, I don't know. What I do know is that South Beach was a bust. You saw the same people everyday, in the 8 square blocks of usable terrain. So, if you saw Joe and Beth at the gym, you then saw them at the supermarket, and then you bumped into them when you were buying your Cuban Coffee, and then you saw Joe rollerblading Ocean Avenue while Beth was tanning on the beach and you wrapped up the day with seeing them at one of the clubs. Every Fucking Day, every Fucking Person Living There. I had just went through my fifth job in a month, and the square mile or so mentioned above turned into square footage of space where I could possibly show my face.
My friend Brian whom I had coerced into moving down was experiencing similar woes with the modeling business for which he was pretty successful at. He ended up quitting the business due to the caliber of people who amass the industry, from the bookers to the agency heads and to the cut throat models he was having to see (repeatedly) at go sees. His new Cocker spaniel, Ben was dying of the heat that also permanently stained the armpit spots of many a cherished shirt of mine. Walking one block in the Summer in South Florida is akin to being a break dancer on the Equator.
I, besides hating most of the above, could not stand to be around these so called hipsters and nellies who basically got 86'd from New York for one thing or another. Every drag queen who burned his bridge in the club scene in NY was manning (for lack of a better word) the doors of the clubs in Sobe, as they tried to called it, but embarrasses me just to write it. Every failed waiter and waitress, which means actor and dancer from NYC (myself included) scurried down there. The lure of cheap and plentiful drugs could not entice anyone with half a brain left to consider planting your feet there. So, I left.
Epilogue: I cringed when I read in yesterdays gossip column how Jon Bon Jove could not contain his loud guffaws as Chris Kattan (of SNL) did his Night @ the Roxbury dance as Paris Hilton looked on as well.
2 comments:
What were u looking for in Sobe? Talk to me.
Bart: Like most of my stories, I have once again flown Air Tangent. I went down there because I heard that it would be wise to get my foot in the door of the Entertainment Industry this way because there were so many proposed plans of action by all the major players.
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