To most of us, the scene outside a nightclub has become recognizably iconic: velvet ropes and stanchions, doormen and bouncers, the crowds, the limos, the cabs—and the music pulsing against the club walls. And on Sunday night in South Beach, out in front of the newly reopened Cameo, formerly Crobar, it’s all this—and so much more.

The volunteers, for one thing: Winter Party volunteers in their matching blue tees, ever-gracious and accommodating to the boys who are arriving in droves. It’s a little before one a.m. and the air is balmy. Fourteenth Street has been closed to traffic—and filled instead with red leather banquettes and coffee tables: an outdoor lounge should Cameo’s interior prove too steamy.

And let’s face it, we expect nothing less than total delirium, given that this club has been shuttered for nearly a year. For so long an integral part of South Beach nightlife, the club once known as Crobar is now open again, at long last, and tonight is its circuit debut. It’s a party called Connections, benefiting the Task Force, and helmed by not one but three deejays whose backgrounds span the globe: Dudu Marquez from Rio and Kate Monroe of Australia and Manny Lehman of Los Angeles by way of da Bronx. We’ve been waiting for months to see this club werk again. We hang around out front, gabbing with friends, anticipation building—and then unable to wait another minute…

Right up the staircase to the mezzanine—and into the ancillary room which at some parties used to be the VIP room, and which is now a separate club called VICE, and which is already packed, and we run into Dino who says, “This guy Dudu is crazy. Come get a photo,” and it’s true, Dudu Marquez, whom we know from Alegria parties, is definitely delicious, not just to see, but to watch him werk. And the kids are loving him, already, and he’s got them where he wants them—and we hang for a while longer….

Until we’re ready again, to head into the Main Room—where it’s nothing less than explosive. Kate Monroe has just wrapped her set and the crowd is applauding and cheering and the floor is PACKED, and the mezzanines are PACKED and the staircases PACKED and—

The club looks incredible. Goodbye, cabana walkways which used to line the mezzanine. Now the mezz has been opened up and streamlined like the deck of a cruise ship with lots of reflective surfaces, and in a nod to its sister Crobar in New York, there’s a huge off-kilter light wall set on a diagonal with scrims which rise and fall and— Let’s face it, this is the new South Beach, the billion-dollar sandbar, steroided and Botoxed from the old bones. Goodbye, cabanas and coconuts; hello, cruise ship South Beach of the Seas.

And Manny takes the helm, in a mirror ball deejay booth just slightly above the floor at the room’s head. A booth not unlike the one Madonna emerged from on her latest tour—which is fitting, given that the top balcony above Manny’s booth has huge wall-length fuchsia screens of Madonna as Marilyn, surely the most iconic face on the globe, and to look up is to see the silhouettes of boyz dancing in front of Madonna Marilyn’s arched eyebrow…

We’re off and running. Manny opens full-throttle, full steam ahead. And the boyz are right there with him: a packed floor of boyz, bobbing to the beat beneath a galaxy of mirror balls. And from high above, shafts of white light and white silver pin spots wonderfully reminiscent of the original Saint way back in the day… Lights which paint teardrops and little stars on the bodies of the boys below: on their bare chests, their necks, their pecs, their delts—

It’s beautiful, so very beautiful. And mad crazy wild—to see such an exhibition of complete unbridled joy. Energy in its purest form. And it seems as if nobody’s missing this party, and it makes sense when Manny plays “Listen,” because we all have so much to share, if the world would only listen…

This is a club with history, built from the bones of the Cameo Theatre, back when the Cameo was a Depression-era movie palace, a playground for groping in the dark in front of the silver screen. A building with groping-and-moaning history. And then all those years as a nightclub, when it was Cameo and Crobar, not long after South Beach had been rediscovered—after the Scarface years— Nights when Victor werked this room and made it his— A building with skeletons and ghosts— A building with a storied past. Oh, come on! This building has seen it all.


And tonight, it’s all about Manny—and he’s playing the kind of music which makes you remember exactly why it is you came to South Beach: to dance. To dance with your boyz, your posse, with all the friends whom you don’t even know, not yet, not quite, but you love them all anyway.

And how perfect is it that Manny’s playing Chus & Ceballos “Changing Shapes” with its lyric, “Nobody told us to stop dancing…” And why should we? Not when it feels so good. “We have to live the joy of love”—because there’s just no other way.

It’s too much. Such revelry, such beauty. All these people, so high and happy. No borders, no boundaries. Why shouldn’t it be like this always?

And now it’s “Gold Star” and “Praise You”—and we do, all of us. Praise in the form of uninhibited dance. Is there any greater joy?

And then Manny slips in “U Turn Me (I Only Wanna Dance with You)”, with its recurrent lyric “turning me, turning me…”and you’re realizing again how very much you’d missed this club with its boxful of memories.

Oh, South Beach—and its fabled clubs and all the boyz who came to the Beach on vacation—and went home with a hubby. Two boyz we know who met years ago at Cameo/Crobar at Victor’s Sunday night party during White Party… And another guy who remembers Warsaw on 14th and Collins, which is now Jerry’s Deli, which currently shares a back wall with this club… Connections indeed. Connections abound.

Such as how it is that Joe Caro went shopping for replacement blue lasers—which he finally found at the Office Depot in South Beach—which is to be expected, of course—that Joe Caro would find himself there, because what is now the Office Depot used to be Salvation, the infamous South Beach Saturday night gay club—

Connections and good karma all around—and so many nice boyz. The kind of boyz who would return a lost pocketbook—or use it. We’re walking the mezzanine, werking the railings, and then back into Dudu’s lair, where his wildman magic has boyz like Jake and Jesse held captive. And also Booty Boy who’s bouncing better than BeyoncÈ, and another who says that he’s into “ultra-muscle with a pecan tan.” Very specific, these boyz. And also Richie Dior, and a hottie just off the box who gets the sweat licked off his nipples by no less than three—

It’s later, much, for this party without borders. There’s a Greek giving hand jobs in the balcony, and some boyz are werking, just to walk the stairs. Carefully down the stairs, those ever-shifting steps…

And for a while we admire two best friends and how it is they manage to watch over each other, even when they’ve almost slipped out of each other’s sightlines. How they dance and play with other boyz, but keep each other close. How it is they have that intuition, that sense of connection, even when they’re separated by a sea of boyz. It’s a gift, one we all share—how to watch out for each other.

And when it’s over, the party, over for tonight, we slip out the back door and onto Fourteenth Street, where the red leather banquettes are still in the street— Our hearts still pumping hard, from adrenaline, and all that we’ve shared— That freedom, that joy, that sense of belonging…

And in the aftermath, along the walk home and again in the morning, after sleep, we’re still hearing the music: those snippets of song and pieces of lyric that won’t leave our head… And we’re still seeing Christian dancing atop the banquette… And Joe C. with his blue lasers… And the boy alongside the booth, the one with the serious abs, werking Manny’s nerves… And that row of beautiful bodies silhouetted atop the balcony… And the boyz along the mezzanine… And the sea of bodies below, splattered with white stars, dancing all through the night…

Oh, what a hot party, in such a fabled club, with the best bunch of people— Call it what you want—the circuit or a festival or a parade of inestimable beauty—but we call it mad fun.