The desire for transformation—it’s a powerful motivator: to pull out the platinum tresses and spackle on the eye shadow, to kick off the wingtips and slide into those pink mules.  Out with our humdrum quotidian lives—and in with the tragic and the glam.  Fortunately, for those of us in the life, such a metamorphosis isn’t much of a stretch—and given that nearly everyone in South Beach is already a charter member of the FFF (Fierce, Fast and Fabulous) sorority, perhaps it’s little surprise to see the sandbar transformed into an amalgam of the fall of Rome, Dionysian revels, pagan rituals, and reality t.v.

Over the past decade, Halloween has become the de facto American Mardi Gras, with the Village parade in New York, and San Francisco’s Castro block parties—and yet, few municipalities so completely transform themselves as Miami’s South Beach.  During the height of the Halloween celebration on Lincoln Road, it’s possible to imagine that South Beach has become Burning Man—a phantasmagoria of anything-goes libertinism.

For the opening act, Lincoln Road was all about the kiddies—the real ones—trick or treating up and down the road, sucking up Kiehl’s candies and IceBox Café treats.  It’s a tradition: Lincoln Road retail gives good candy.  Meanwhile, at the Colony Theatre, there was ECOMB’s Third Annual Rocky Horror Picture Show fundraiser.  And over at HALO Lounge (also doubling as OBAMA’s Halloween headquarters, complete with placards, stickers, and literature—VOTE! VOTE!), it was STUDIO 54 redux, complete with door gods GM Jason and owner Babak channeling their inner John Travolta as they parted the velvet ropes for the most dazzling of the glitterati.  The place was a madhouse of Seventies excess—everyone smiling and rolling with hedonistic abandon.

Outside again, in the thrall of Lincoln Road, where Euclid Circle was a mosh pit of teenage ravers, every moment was a photo op, with cameras as ubiquitous as cell phones.  CAUTION/SLOW MOVING UP AHEAD: PHOTO OPS EVERYWHERE.

When finally we made it to Score, the masses were pressing against security and door goddess Asia Aviance.  “BACK IT UP, PEEPS,” shouted security, as if it were possible to move in any direction at all.  One of those nights, murmured Asia, unflappable and gracious as always.   

There was good reason for the crowds outside Score, for inside, it was Abel, a Halloween tradition.  What’s Halloween without Abel, the master of transformative beats?  With a bassline that’s familiar, he cut-and-paste beats, so that “One Night Only,” for example, became a symphony of the familiar and the innovative.  With a houseful of haunting echoes and propulsive grooves, Abel kept the floor packed with superheroes, working it out beneath cartoon captions reading POW!  WHAM!  CRACK!  PHEW! There was the Joker, Batman, and Superman—and owner Luis, ever amiable and adorable dispensing Red Bull.  As for the most complete transformation of the night?  Perhaps it was the Stone Age Wilma Flintstone crossed with Raquel Welch from One Million Years B.C.—who finally revealed himself to be none other than the otherwise unidentifiable and ever-stylish Michael Stanley.

Ah, Halloween in South Beach—where every Dick gets a makeover and every id comes out to play.