Miami New Year’s Recap
Those of you who want to read about my enlightening New Year’s Eve dinner in which I saw both God and TI on the same night, can do so here.
Next, we went to the Gansevoort, where a $300 ticket will get you a premium shelf open bar, a theoretical view of fireworks, and witness to TI’s last concert before he’s carted off to prison. Thanks to a friend of a friend, we weren’t paying. Otherwise, our New Year’s Eve would probably be spent in the fun house at Chucky Cheese.
Miami is relatively easy for New Yorker to adjust to, mainly because all the hot hotels and bars are exactly the same as they are in New York. Anything you hadn’t heard of, you’d for sure seen in LA.
Examples: The Mondrian, The Standard, Mansion etc.
So spending New Year’s at the Miami Gansevoort was oddly comforting, familiar, and annoying.
Since it was New Year’s Eve and my friends and I were being comped, I decided to give my hippie look of flats and no makeup a break for a night. I begrudgingly donned a designer cocktail dress and stilettos. Big mistake.
The outdoor venue was freezing.
Okay, maybe freezing that overstatement, but it was 70° and nighttime on an open air roof right on the water. The chilling ocean breeze was forceful and relentless. It wasn’t even at the point that I wanted to make nice with some guy at the bar for the sole purpose of forcing him to give me his blazer. It was at the point that I wanted to jump around the party incased in a sleeping bag.
Like all New Year’s parties, the open bar was swamped, making the best solution to double fist all night. If any of us ever had access to the bar and were fortunate enough to get a bartender’s attention, we’d order up the wazoo, or as my drunk girlfriend instructed a bartender as she opened her palms and flashed ten fingers at him:
“Give me eight drinks! I need eight drinks!”
Unfortunately, the executive corporate types behind this party were no dummies. They must have had some sort of pep talk with the bar staff in advance, instructing them to make all mixed drinks as weak as possible. In an attempt to be a good time, I drank an amount of gin and tonic that would usually have me doing Steve Martin impressions, but instead left me stone cold sober. By the time we all switched to only drinking champagne (because how could they dilute that?) I’d already given up on being inebriated.
The bathroom situation was brutal and if there were fireworks, I only saw what looked like two falsely lit sparklers in the sky set off by disoriented teenagers. Getting into the auditorium to witness TI’s last performance was like taking part in a stampede straight out of one of those nature videos about animal migration. But that’s okay. These are the kind of things I’ve come to expect from New Year’s Eve. That’s why I navigated myself into bed by one thirty.
The real point here is to pump you up since I’m sure your New Year’s Eve was better than mine. I have a Holiday ‘attitude problem’ which leaves me jealous and fascinated by people who don’t suffer this disease. Nevertheless, I’m convinced 2009 is going to the best year ever, regardless of how we partied into it. Leave your stories below.
Tags: celebrity sightings, miami, New Years, partying, traveling
