| I remember South Beach. I remember the dilapidated Art Deco buildings, fallen into disrepair (to put it kindly). I remember a pitted and stained Lincoln Road that housed the homeless and drunk as soon as darkness fell; adult clubs and dive bars that outnumbered the few burgeoning high-end restaurants and nightclubs; and a population that was one-third elderly, one-third criminal, and one-third young and dumb.
But I also remember the bohemian art hung in independent galleries, the poetry readings at lofts and coffeehouses, the alternative tea parties and drag queen era. I danced at the dawn of the club scene and dined at the hands of the original Mango Gang. I witnessed the incredible renovation—and the ugliness that accompanied it, including horrific crimes committed by former acquaintances—that I never thought I’d see.
South Beach isn't much like this anymore. But I always thought someone should write a book about it. And now someone has. Brian Antoni, a descendant of the second-oldest aristocratic family in the Caribbean, has just released South Beach: The Novel.
The story depends a lot on autobiography and observation: Twenty years ago, Brian moved to South Beach, buying and renovating a run down Art Deco apartment building named The Venus De Milo Arms and an exotic 1930’s home, which he named “Chateaubrian.” He threw huge parties, attended by celebrities as well as neighborhood folks and literary characters—including his brother Robert, who penned the award-winning novel Divina Trace and taught at University of Miami (where I was his graduate student in fiction, funny enough, and went to the parties with him sometimes. Miami is a small town). He also haunted the club scene, working as a doorman at times, and rented his house out for racy photo shoots. For instance, Bruce Weber shot part of an infamous Abercrombie and Fitch catalog at his house, in a photo story entitled, “Can You Find Love in a House of Lust?” And Helmut Newton shot porn star Vanessa Del Rio in his Florida Room in an advertisement for Taschen Books.
“I felt I had to tell the story of South Beach,” Brian says. It became an obsession. The reality of it was much stranger than fiction. I went out every night with a pad in my pocket and I just couldn’t believe the things I saw. I want everyone who comes to vacation here to know how close South Beach came to being totally destroyed, and I want them to know the soul of my neighborhood.”
Do you want to read the story of South Beach? Decide for yourself. Here’s the pitch. Enjoy:
Gabriel Tucker is a globe-trotting, trust fund–endowed twenty-nine-year-old who suddenly finds himself penniless and alone in the world, except for an old Miami Beach apartment building named the Venus De Milo Arms, the last thing of value left to him by his now-vanished family. Lacking skills or resources, he heads to Miami Beach to reconstruct his life, finding himself neighbors with an unlikely mix of tenants: an elderly Holocaust survivor, a lip-synching drag queen, a cynical two-bit gossip columnist, and a rebellious young performance artist who will eventually capture his heart.
Within days, Gabriel is thrust into the outrageous world of South Beach, Miami of the nineties: temptations, quick fortunes, mountains of drugs, notorious murders, nonstop sex, and beautiful women (and men) for sale (or rent) are the order of the day. He is a ringside witness to the excesses and intrigues of Italian fashion empires, Cuban refugee supermodels, rapacious German developers, old-fashioned crooked politicians, and a cast of characters that would make Caligula blush. He is witness to a place evolving from God’s Waiting Room to the American Riviera, from slum to brand name.
It is in South Beach, in this most surreal time and place, unlike any other, that Gabriel will eventually discover the long-buried mysteries of his family and find a soul he never imagined he had and a love he never dreamed he deserved. |
