Of course you knew you wanted to be there—because it was the final party of Winter Party Festival 2009, and mostly because it was Abel—but still, you were nearly beat down from a marathon of extraordinary parties—but then you thought about Abel, again—and somehow you got there, to downtown Miami in the middle of a chilly (well, for Miami, anyway) Monday morn—and weren’t you glad you did? As none other than celebutante Dale Stine said, “The man’s on fire.” The club was dark and the music was deep and the vibe was very after-hours, filled with a collection of diehard revelers for whom the beat proves persuasive beyond all reason. People who follow the music wherever. And so you gave in to it, because everyone around you was deep into it as well. Doug and Josh and Larry, for example, and delicious Johnny Hazzard, and Hilton and Mel in the booth, and Joe Caro with his laser, and Shane Rogers, and Michael Circuit Dancer 2.0 in white leather, and Corey in white braces, and those delicious creatures from Le Chat Noir—and then there was Power Infiniti working it out on a platform while seated in an Eames office chair (recalling another huge production number from a party at Ice Palace, at another Winter Party Festival some years ago). And so it went, memories and music—provoked by Abel, the man who always turns it out, whether on a boat or on a beach or deep inside an after-hours. There are those who love the night—and then there are those for whom the night isn’t long enough—and that’s why there’s Red Eye at the tail end of Winter Party Festival.