Those of you who want to do a quick catch up on my Miami trip can do so in installments one (the plane ride) and two (rowdy dinner).

The first nightlife venue we frequented is a place called Rok Bar. As we mingled with the crowd of Rok Bar sidewalk hopefuls waiting to get in, I start chit-chatting with these Brazilian guys we know from New York, one of whom quotably stated: “I came to Miami to relax my problems.”

Me too, man. Me too.

It remains a huge mystery to me why warm places like Florida and the Hamptons don’t have open air clubs. I won’t digress into that rant, let’s just say if I’d wanted to choke on second hand smoke in an overly air conditioned cave I could’ve done so without dropping four hundred dollars for a plane ticket. Rok Bar was disappointingly indoors, yet its décor put New York clubs to shame.

To me, Rok Bar seemed like one giant art instillation. In fact, had you taken me to Rok Bar empty, under different circumstances, and then told me it was actually an experimental floor in the MoMa I probably would’ve believed you.

The ceiling flashes psychedelic waves of purple and black. Deep triangular pockets plunge into the wall with 3D Goth faces digitally flashing in alternating shapes. The best way to describe it is a flat kaleidoscope wall - on crack. Titanic rock posters adorned the wall behind the bar, stretching all the way up to the very high ceilings. The suspiciously good-looking DJ spun perched at the top of a spiral staircase, grooving with the crowd like something straight out of a music video.

Seeing the DJ several floors above made me realize that this place felt uniquely Miami because of the high ceilings. New York’s more into underground caverns, bat-like places where people above six foot have to duck. Miami seemed to party upwards on the vertical as opposed to being suppressed into the horizontal. All energy shot UP. The people jumping up and down probably had something to do with this.

Jumping turned to leaping when a song I’d never heard before, but everyone else clearly had, shot through the speakers. Apparently, this is some sort of Miami tribal theme song.

“Drink all day. Play all night. Let’s get it poppin’. I’m in Miami, bitch”

People went nuts!

Observe…and what’s smash? Some drug I evidently haven’t heard about yet? Watch and enjoy:

Thursday. It came so fast I don’t think anyone was truly ready for it. Even the most professional organizers don’t have much experience dealing with 3-day weekend scenarios in which Friday’s the day off. So after countless emails and what felt like hundreds of debates via MSN, someone in my Hamptons crew made the executive decision that we’d all leave for Long Island post-clubbing at 2:30 AM to avoid traffic. Making this plan possible were two sober drivers and a car service. The most amusing part of our time spent at Kiss & Fly (which wasn’t promoting any 4^th of July party but was just its normal, crowded, cone-filled self) remained that every time the word “Hamptons” came up you’d hear a resounding chorus of, “Yep! We’re leaving right after this!”

So apparently our ingenious idea of partying in the city and driving to Long Island post-club in the middle of the night was something other East-bound fun-seekers had thought of as well. In fact, the more people I spoke to, the more it became apparent that all of Kiss & Fly was heading to the Hamptons as soon as the party winded down. Instead of cruising down a desolate LIE, I realized we could very well be entering some sort of packed, party highway.

So much for avoiding the crowds.

After Kiss & Fly, it took awhile to get everyone regrouped in our ringleader’s SoHo apartment. He tried to sober people up with homemade pressed Paninis, a sandwich that’s easily up for grabs for the title of “best Panini of my life” since it was crisp, meaty and oozing with Dijon. When finally car-bound, we wrestled over who got to utilize the one pillow available in the backseat. Someone upfront with a potent chip craving instructed the driver to stop at a gas station, where they proceeded to buy one of every kind of potato chip known to man. Cape Cod – Doritos Nacho Flavor – Lays BBQ – Doritos Cooler Ranch and Cheetos were consequently passed around until everyone fell asleep sitting up, inhaling crumbs. When I startled from slumber, I realized it was because our car wheels were crunching gravel instead of gliding over pavement i.e. we’d arrived at our house’s driveway in the shortest Long Island travel experience of my life. If only I could be unconscious and high on snack food’s artificial flavorings for all such journeys…

As our group stumbled inside and proceeded to claim couches / beds / lawn chairs / sections of the floor, the head of our house received a message from producer friends interested in pitching a reality TV program / documentary centered around the life of a friend of ours in the house who is launching a noteworthy business venture in coming months. Their idea had been to come to the Hamptons for the long weekend to get some trial footage. The text they sent resembled something like:

“We’ve decided to come. See you all tomorrow. I hope there are enough beds for us and the camera crew.”

To which our first reaction was, “camera crew!?!!?!?” and our second reaction was, “beds!?!!??”

We wrote back that we hoped the camera crew would be okay with sleeping outdoors on lawn chairs, since every Hamptons house on holiday long weekends is PACKED, PACKED still being an understatement.

So we drifted to sleep plotting how to best avoid the oncoming camera and fake an accident in which all the necessary electrical equipment might get destroyed in the pool. The adventures to come…

The good news: It’s a Holiday weekend coming up
The bad news: It’s forecast to rain every single day

The good news: It’s a Holiday weekend coming up
The bad news: Holidays make weird gray relationship even weirder (examples one and two)

The good news: You have extra time off
The bad news: You feel pressured to do something fabulous with it

The good news: You can leave the city for more than 48-hours
The bad news: So can everyone else and their cousin

The good news: Fourth of July fell on a Friday this year
The bad news: That means you need to be organized to leave Thursday, and Thursday’s, like, tomorrow

Panic ensues.

On a separate, slightly more serious note, an issue that’s been troubling my conscious has to do with charity as an excuse to party, and do these events actually raise any money?

This seemed the ultimate party question on everybody’s mind at Steve Nash’s charity event inside SoHo’s Replay store, which I attended exactly one week ago today. On the up side, snaps to Steve Nash for giving a hoot about charity. On the down side, it remained difficult to imagine the shindig would manage to break even since the event included:

2 stocked open bars

6 bartenders

15 attractive cocktail waitresses circling the crowd (my friend noted all the waitresses had legs and shins that looked like a female soccer player’s and asked if I thought they were selected for this exact purpose. I can picture the Craigslist open call ad now: ‘Seeking cocktail waitresses with soccer-esque shins for exclusive event.’)

Unlimited booze

Hamburgers

Mini hot dogs

Chips and guacamole

Vegetables

Quesadillas

Mini steaks

Vitamin water

Gourmet ice cream, and best of all,

Sushi in the shape of mini soccer balls.

Renting out SoHo’s Replay store and hiring a 20+ person wait staff must already have a hefty price tag, not to mention alcohol and food for two hundred people. Less than a dozen jerseys were auctioned off for around a $1,000.


Clearly, I’m missing something because in my mind the numbers don’t seem to add up. Yet I was always a dunce at math, so what do I know? If there is a way humanity can enjoy lux events inside SoHo designer stores while simultaneously helping kids in Africa, I’m all for it.

Ah, the Hamptons (sigh). Home of the $13 bagel and $150 cab rides. If that’s not enough for you, hop into your convertible and take a cruise over to the only place perhaps hipper than South Hampton itself, Shelter Island’s Sunset Beach. Here social hour starts at around 4pm, getting rowdier and rowdier through sunset. After dark, it’s time for more $14 white peach cocktails and frolicking in the sand until the last ferry ride back to mainland reality at 1:15 AM.

The $25 price tag for a platter of carrot sticks isn’t the only thing that’s unbelievable about this place. Sunset Beach is like being transported to a European Riviera on a seven minute, as opposed to seven week, boat ride. You lounge and socialize at the café with strangers (European). You can even rent overpriced lounge chairs on the beach (European). And they even give you glass beverage containers and expensive-looking cutlery, despite that fact that you’re wearing a bikini (also European). The entire experience reminded me of La Huella, the seaside hotspot in Jose Ignacio near Punta del Este – the WASPY American version, of course.

The best news of all is that despite the fact nearly one-third of Shelter Island is owned by The Nature Conservancy and kept in a forever-wild state; its remaining 5,000 acres are big enough to host every single person you’ve ever partied with in Manhattan.

That’s right.

Make sure the sunscreen on your face is rubbed in, because I can guarantee you’ll be bumping elbows with people you never thought you’d see sober (let alone awake in daylight hours, and in swim attire). You might even discover many of your party animal acquaintances have (gasp!) children or (gasp!) wives. I’d recommend bringing shades to guise any bouts of shock that might scramble through your eyes as you run into faces you only thought you’d see distortedly on drunken nights at Kiss & Fly. I for example ran into:

1. A lovable womanizer I know from both Manhattan and Punta, who in a previous incident bit my nail off in a South American nightclub.

2. My philandering ex-boss from half a decade ago who owns New York clubs and restaurants. He used to have us organize his venue’s seating arrangements so he could go on dates while being out of eyesight of his pregnant girlfriend, who’d eat at the restaurant every night.

3. A former model who on previous occasions had threatened to kill me for speaking to her meal ticket, I mean boyfriend, who wasn’t only my co-worker but longtime friend (not to mention I wasn’t even single at the time…)

This unexpected treasure trove of old acquaintances had me sneaking out Sunset Beach café’s back exit, through the kitchen and past the staff porta-potties fugitive style. Nonetheless, not even a run-in with a girl who used to voicemail me death threats could put in dent in the natural beauty or serenity of this place.

As a summer party destination, it’s worth checking out for sure.

part 1 here

About the chef: Our house had a sour-puss chef called M who hated the cruel circumstances he was forced to cook in. M was previously our host’s mother’s cook, before that, he cooked for two presidents. He now found himself in a houseful of forty drunk twenty-year-old and immature thirty-year-olds who’d happily eat Doritos indefinitely and didn’t know the difference between fennel and watercress. Most of the heated arguments centered around the fact that he’d prepare dinner to be served at 9 PM and no one would sit down until 11 PM. If cooking is your life’s passion and food needs to be served hot, I understand how this could be frustrating. M was also fielding questions 24-7 like:

Will you teach my how to make soufflé?

Have you seen my baggie of weed? Oh, are you making brownies? Because if you’re using it for that, that’s cool.

M will you make us Margaritas? I’ll get the blender. (Question asked at 10 AM)

That quiche you made for breakfast was better than the orgasm I had last night. I loved the bacon bits.

Can I lick the bowl?

(Drunk girl) Thank you SOOOOOO much. Can I give you a hug?

(Me watching oven timer) Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, cookies!

Can you call the liquor store and order fifteen more crates of Rose? Just tell them we’re averaging 23 bottles of champagne a night.

Your egg salad is seriously kicks ass, man.

Are you married?

Do shots with us! M, you have to do shots with us!

So upon further analysis, it didn’t surprise me at all that the chef was one of the crabbiest humans I’d ever met who scowled at our compliments as if we’d tossed dog poo at him. On the contrary, this guy deserves some sort of culinary award for cooking in extremely immature circumstances.

About Dune: Night number two we traveled to Dune, the nightclub I wrote about in disdain last year. Nothing’s changed.

Unlike Pink, Dune doesn’t boast an outdoor space. And while at Pink tables are a foot and a half apart, at Dune, they’re six inches apart. I’ve started calling Dune the sweat shop, because in essence, that’s all it is: A sauna in which you can never get comfortable and you’re constantly battling the person next to you for elbow space. The music brings a whole new meaning to the word cheesy.

The basic ambiance – the ropes, shells, tacky ceiling – all looks like a pirate theme in a dive bar. And I know we’ve gone beyond hoping for elegance in Hamptons clubs, but couldn’t we at least hope for something more than creaky, saw dusty, wood floors?

From my limited experience, Dune also seems to have the sloppiest partiers. Maybe patrons let themselves get too drunk to walk because they know at Dune falling down is an impossibility: The tightly packed crowd will hold you upright. One girl in the very center of the club swayed and spun around on top of a banquet like an unbalanced swivel chair, a dangerous accident waiting to happen.

Later, she poured an entire flute of champagne onto a boy (ex-boyfriend’s?) head below. He proceeded to wail and shake the champagne out of his long hair much like a wet dog shakes himself off after a swim.

So if you get off on that kind of thing at $5,000 a table with an extreme crowd and rowdy fun, Dune might be the place for you. Personally, I prefer to be somewhere a lot less sweaty.

We stayed a good forty-five minutes before piling back into our black vans and heading toward the house. There was a lot to prepare for since on Sunday we’d be hosting the house’s very first BBQ / house party of the summer.

To be continued…

Miss Model Behavior’s the nightlife writer for theBlaqlist.com. Feel free to post any nightlife comments or questions on our forum or contact her at MissModelBehavior@theBlaqlist.com

Accepting an invitation to stay in the Hamptons is like journeying into a black hole. No matter how well you know your host or how great they ensure you their set up is, until you’re physically on the premises you should be prepared to accept both a caddy shack and a castle. You can never fully know what you’re getting into. If someone guarantees you a bed, pack an air mattress. If they say there’s a fulltime chef, pack ramen. If they say you have a ride, reserve worst-case-scenario jitney seats.

Do I sound paranoid? Well, New Yorkers are liars, folks. And especially in the Hamptons, it’s every camper for themselves. Plus I had some bad experiences last year which left a particularly bitter taste in my mouth.

Bartok, my friend whose visits I use as an excuse to act like a sixteen-year-old, had arrived Thursday night. Our plan was to train it out to the Hamptons Friday as soon as I finished work around 6 PM, the logic being that anyone driving would’ve already left and that the highway would be bumper to bumper with people having just departed from their office. Immediately, our Hamptons karma seemed to be recovering from last year since we

a) were offered a last minute ride

b) by a driver who wasn’t insane

c) by a driver who also had the good sense to take us out for post-work Grey Goose shots, Coronas, and appetizers at a gemstone of a restaurant called the Water Club, a scenic, peaceful place literally in the river with a pianist and waiters in bow-tie uniforms. This was smart because we

d) missed the hoards of ‘people leaving the city early’ traffic and got to our destination in Watermill in a shocking hour and forty-five minutes.

Getting to the Hamptons that fast on a holiday Friday felt like cheating on a test. By waiting till 8 PM to leave the city, when you think traffic would be detrimental, we actually coasted at a safe speed through clear roads. The satellite navigation system, which I named Sandra, got us to our destination without a single wrong turn. As our kind driver said, “I’ll take shots over traffic any day.” And I hope to use this logic again in some sort of future scenario.

No previous Hamptons house could compare to the kingdom we drove up to. It was large, Great Gatsby-like and impeccably furnished with a pool, rolling grass, hammock, cottage, enormous deck and dock since it was literally on the water. Rumors of the chef were true as well, as he was already dicing onions in the kitchen and looking peeved. Come to find out, the chef was unendingly peeved, but we’ll get into that later.

Survivor-style, Bartok and I took over the first bathroom we could find to shower and make ourselves Hamptons worthy. My friend who’d invited us, who we’ll call Fahotti, is from a Middle Eastern country I’ll leave nameless. For some reason, I’d assumed everyone in his house would share his accent, skin color, and place of origin. Hence my surprise when we joined the group at dinner and found that his male friends in the house were so classically American that unaltered, they could’ve been posing for a J.Crew catalogue. Ladies were present too, and we all enjoyed a delicious home cooked meal of fresh baked bread, mushroom stuffed chicken and summer soup made from scratch.

My largest Hamptons concern has always been the car issue: crazy drivers, drunk drivers, space in the car, getting left behind. All these worries were blissfully eliminated as the home’s organizer had hired two drivers in huge black SUV vans to transport the house’s entourage (which would increase throughout the weekend to number around 60 people on Sunday night) to and from the club.

Gossip floated around for weeks that Pink Elephant would not be able to stay at the Capri Hotel where it enjoys an outdoor space. Some claimed Pink would move into Tavern (too big), others said it would be at Capri but be limited to indoors (too small). Anyway, this hullaballoo was all lies and more lies. Pink is exactly as it was last year with perhaps quieter music outside, which let’s face it, is a blessing when you want to give your eardrums a break or God forbid, have a conversation with someone.

Being May, it remained too chilly for people other than chain smokers to spend a lot of time outside, which means the inside of the club looked like this:

This body mash would’ve been a downer, but our prepared host had ensured we receive a spacious table in front of the DJ booth and near the door (breeze, yes!). Pink in the Hamptons is unabashedly more commercial than Pink New York and primarily played Top Forty while mixing in some old school favorites. Because let’s face it, when you’re drunk and on vacation with your friends, you’d much rather have everyone jumping up and down to Usher than doing that whole sophisticated euro house thing. At night in clubs in the Hamptons, no one’s even going to try and pretend to be sophisticated.

Yes, there was some fun drama and unexpected scuffles. My gold watch that looks like a Bulgari, which I actually bought for $5 from a war veteran by Ground Zero, got entangled in a nearby girl’s fro. I apologized and thought that kind of accident could be categorized as the standard party endangerment one accepts when entering a club packed to the ceiling with Patron-filled people, but she took personal offense and seemed ready to stab me with her shoe horn necklace (being the courageous person I am, I ran away). A Belvedere bottle some how landed / launched / fell onto Bartok’s bare foot, creating a bruise which she complained about for days. And security had to control some intense table feuds and drunk-ready-to-fight frenemy situations. But I learned last year that Hamptons clubs aren’t a classy place. So instead of being appalled, I took in the rowdiness with a smile and sip of champagne.

Clubs are a bout of extra intensity in the all-day fiesta that is the Hamptons. Clubbing seems to serve as an opportunity to get everyone out of the house, a human dog-walking of sorts. Back at the castle post-club, the music continued. Someone who really wanted to see girls get naked had the smarts to turn the pool up to 90 degrees. Everyone can imagine what happened from there.

On this night (night number one), I claimed an actual bed and had the feeling several people would join me. One girl did midway through the morning. Keep in mind that Friday however, we were an assortment of only twenty people. This number would increase exponentially as the weekend progressed.

To Be Continued…

Miss Model Behavior’s the new nightlife writer for theBlaqlist.com. Feel free to post any nightlife comments or questions on our forum or contact her at MissModelBehavior@theBlaqlist.com

Exactly one year ago, I voyaged to the Hamptons for the very first time. The experience was not…how to put it kindly…a positive.

After drinking and changing clothes, it was time to hit our first destination. Memorial Day weekend means the grand opening of most Hampton clubs. We arrived outside of an establishment called Dune after paying twenty dollars to self park our car in a weedy patch of sand. If that cost twenty I was afraid to know the cost of valet? Fifty? It was just midnight and the heard of people already outside Dune resembled this fall’s massive immigration march in New York City. After many uncomfortable moments in line, Scruff finally picked us out of the crowd. We then past a large Maxim ad where certain douchey individuals chose to pose and have their picture taken by some kind of fake paparazzi.

I bee-lined for the outdoor area. If I had wanted to be in a muggy indoor club I could’ve stayed in the city and gone to the bar below my apartment. While Pink’s music and ambiance was a definite improvement, the condition of the people mirrored Dune. I saw older women jumping erratically around the outdoor beds like chimpanzees and an attractive blonde hump a tree only to break into a full out striptease. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a huge supporter of drunken fun, but there’s a difference between a party and a shit-show.

The story ends with me taking a jitney back to NYC before my scheduled departure in an effort to save my soul. I’ve clearly learned nothing however, because now, one year later, I’m going to do it all over again.

Why?

Because this year I’m not a naïve outsider expecting backless evening gowns and elegant ocean side clubs. This year, I’ve mastered the game of the share house, the back up share house, and the back up-back up share house, and the sleeping bag. This year, I won’t be discovering. I’ll be aware and ready to pounce. This year, I won’t be expecting people to take care of me. I’ll be a resourceful superwomen with a premeditated plan. I’ve already negotiated 12 entrance and exit routes.

So with my fantasy Hamptons bubble already burst and the shock factor eliminated, will my feelings be as hostile as last year’s?

More about my exact plan of attack and its results coming soon…

I’ve been putting it off forever, but I guess I can’t really stake claim as a nightlife writer if I refuse to discuss the Hamptons.

Memorial Day weekend is the beginning of the H-Madness that will continue in an obnoxious frenzy until Labor Day. Why it’s fun to lug yourself to Long Island, share an air mattress with three other people in someone else’s share house basement and go to a windy beach with freezing water while massively hung-over is unclear. It just is. Right? Or Wrong?

Let’s examine some of the pros and cons.

Hamptons Pros

Swimming Pools (yes!)

Sun (yes!)

Hot tubs (yes! yes! yes!)

Feeling like you’re at adult summer camp (camper activities: drinking, sunning, hooking up)

Bonfires (warm)

Cheesy events (countless!)

Leisurely walks and bike rides (if you can see straight, if all you can see is champagne don’t leave the sauna)

Group bonding (how can you not bond when it’s ten to a bathroom?)

Hot parties (depending on your definition of hot, but the NYC clubs definitely lose some of their weekend vigor)

Celebrity sightings (if you care)

The beach (if you’re cool with un-Mediterranean water temperatures)

Hamptons Cons

Transport / traffic (a logistics nightmare)

Lodging (bring your sleeping bag and prepare to be molested in your sleep)

Driving (yeah, someone’s gotta be sober)

Distance (stuff is far apart!)

Outrageously expensive cabs (*%$#@?)

Outrageously expensive everything ($8 croissants!?)

Nutty, rich people (somehow they’re on worse behavior in rural areas)

Very drunk people (the vacation atmosphere encourages people to ‘let loose’)

Dependency on others to go places / get around (this is usually my deal breaker)

Ridiculous ostentatiousness

Weird cell phone coverage

The inability to escape the people you’re with

Stuff that I don’t know if it’s a Pro or Con

Seeing everyone you know from Manhattan in beach attire

Going to every club you’d go to in New York ‘the Hamptons’ version

Living with people you’d usually just party with

More after my voyage there this weekend…

Miss Model Behavior’s the new nightlife writer for theBlaqlist.com. Feel free to post any nightlife comments or questions on our forum or contact her at MissModelBehavior@theBlaqlist.com

Think New York and Vegas are hardcore? They are. But nothing can truly parallel Brazil, the culture that gave us Carnival, the caipirinha, and I’m pretty sure the concept of ‘the one night stand.’ Since the weather’s always fabulous and Brazilians are suckers for oceans, lakes, and sunrises, parties are outdoors, last till noon the next day and HUGE – we’re talking about flown in porta potties, massive outdoor tents that make your average celebrity wedding reception look lame, and multiple open bars. Because if you’re not going head-over-heels all out, you might as well stay in and make passionate Brazilian-style love.

My trip originated in Sao Paulo. Then we drove five hours in a bullet proof car to a famed Easter weekend party destination called Escarpas dos Lagos. The Escarpas lakes are outside an area of Brazil called Ribeirao Preto, which my friends described as some of the most expensive agricultural land in the world – valued at a higher price than the most fertile tobacco fields in the US. The main product is of course sugarcane i.e. ethanol, and of course you have some of the wealthiest families with ranches the size of Rhode Island near impoverished towns filled with underpaid workers who can’t even afford shoes. The parties took place inside a gated condominium where most houses had their own helipads. Before even departing from the USA, my friends had been incessantly hyping up Friday’s ‘Marina Party’ or ‘Na Sala,’ apparently the pinnacle event in this Easter weekend of non-stop debauchery.

Their excitement proved to be legit. After a SWAT team checked our tickets, bracelets and frisked us (Brazil’s big on security), we entered the equivalent of an adult party Disney World. This pre-party entrance area had Go-Go dancers above a glowing pool, bubbles galore, a massive Giudo-esque angel serenely overlooking the scene, and a Johnny Walker promotional motorboat filled with cowboys that encircled the party at all times.

And here in New York we think disco balls are elaborate…

Upon closer examination of our angel friend, I became 100% convinced that he was in fact from New Jersey. Despite my immature attempts to seduce him into coming down to talk to me, I still have no way to concretely prove this.

There were also men in silver spandex suits with the equivalent of Christmas lights wrapped around them stealthily slithering through the party. I think these creep-shows represented some unheard of Brazilian vodka brand. Sadly, their reflective suits where so glossy that flash photos of them didn’t really come out: and a huge opportunity for comedy missed. I leave you to imagine. Keep in mind; this was just the promotional fun land at the first bar. Then you entered the actual party:

I’m a newfound fan of these trippy, neon green lights, which lose their full effect in New York since our clubs are essentially tiny, underground hovels. At these house music raves, the lights can extend for hundreds of meters. At one house party, the host even had projections of green frogs dancing on the cliffs across the lake from his house (insane, yet entertaining.) Our Brazilian friends somehow negotiated our entrance into the VIP at the very back end of the tent closest to the water, where you could literally survey the entire crowd from above and feel like the neon vortex was swirling directly AT you.

Other interesting cultural phenomena of note:

-Grape juice and vodka! Brazilians in Escarpas love their grape juice. This was a mixer more common than cranberry or orange. Detrimental if you’re wearing white.

-You know how house music freaks in the US like to dance pumping their fist in the air? In Brazil, you nix the fist and pump your hand in the air while performing a wrist flick. It’s sort of a ‘come here’ movement…I’m assuming to evoke the party spirits/Gods.

-DJs dance! Maybe I’m going to the wrong places, but in New York it seems like the DJs are locked away in some dim booth, always with their head down, studiously flipping through binders of music with a puzzled look on their face, occasionally stopping to survey the crowd and take a swig out of a Poland Springs water bottle. They make standardized testing look more fun. Instead in Brazil, the DJ was the powerhouse epicenter of the party’s universe. I couldn’t even understand how he was spinning since he appeared to be always conducting the crowd like it was his own massive orchestra, flailing his hands, shaking his fingers and thrusting his head. I was the furthest away from the stand and could feel the DJs electric energy from his God-like booth on the opposite end of the tent. Talk about being dynamic!

Partying till long after sunrise is standard in Brazil, so you have the opportunity to play tourist drunk at seven in the morning and get photo ops like these.

Here’s a video I took trying to capture both dawn over the mountains and the rave below. Enjoy!

Miss Model Behavior’s the new nightlife writer for theBlaqlist.com. Feel free to post any nightlife comments or questions on our forum or contact her at MissModelBehavior@theBlaqlist.com