Cool is back in Miami
By Pascal Wyse

It took the 80s cop series to put the cool back into South Beach. Ultra-chic Miami Beach is fast becoming the American Riviera.

On the ceiling in one of the rooms of the Rubel family collection of contemporary art in Miami there is a police marksman's target sheet textured with a consistent pattern that never leaves the upper body. It even carries a signature, like the works of art. "Oh, we just decided not to take that down," says the curator, explaining that the building used to be the police department's warehouse for seized drugs, and that this room was where they put all the cocaine.

"Oh yeah, Miami Vice really put South Beach back on the map - it started the whole regeneration," says a local café owner, all tan, white teeth and eyeballs in the ultraviolet glow of the Mangoes club. The vice here is the fact that the staff - men and women - take it in turns to dance on the bar to an all-night cycle of Latin pop that pays homage, at least every half an hour, to Ricky Martin. "Fifteen years ago it used to just be pensioners and criminals here. You'd take a cab just to go two blocks it was so unsafe."

This town once had the highest murder rate in the US, and a majestic coke habit. It is hard to picture that now on South Beach, with its restored glory of Art Deco buildings - a string of cake-colored blocks piped with neon and soothingly curved edges that basks in the more natural shades of the sand, palm trees and sunset. This is the heart of a trip to Miami: its sassy and often sleazy altar to the sun.

Don Johnson doesn't need to police this adult Disneyland any more, but the beach life has retained its colorful characters: "You wanna stroke my snake?" asks a man as his pet slowly curls in the furnace of the early afternoon; thongs thin enough to floss your teeth with rollerblade by; Ferraris kerb crawl, while strains of dance, hip-hop and Latin music fight for attention, and stretch vehicles snarl the traffic in "limo-lock". And, as the afternoon's 15-minute tropical downpour begins, the khaki-shorted staff of The Tides Hotel arm themselves with umbrellas for the guests scuttling back in.

Confident in its ability to distinguish itself in such rich surroundings, The Tides (one of six "Island Outpost" hotels on South Beach owned by Chris Blackwell of Island Records) describes itself casually as "across the street from the Atlantic Ocean". Designed in 1936 by L Murray Dixon, its original 115-room layout has been knocked through to provide 45 more spacious suites, all of which have a view of the beach (and telescopes to magnify it). Compared with the more obviously designer cool of (ex Studio 54 partner) Ian Schrager's Delano, or Blackwell's own more funky Marlin (interior designed by Barbara Hulanicki, and home to the 72-track South Beach Studios), The Tides's strict decor of steel, khaki, cream, marble, nautical portholes and frosted glass is, in South Beach terms, understatedly luxurious.

There is nothing that hasn't been given The Tides stamp. Somebody, somewhere, even has the job of etching the "T" logo into the sand of every ashtray in the building. You can only marvel at this holistic service and wonder, as you request a cappuccino and different music in the swimming pool, what frantic activity is going on behind the scenes. The heart of South Beach is used to dealing with the glamorous and the peculiar - and part of the Miami experience is pushing the boat out and feeling famous for a day.

Lines count for a lot in Miami: the lines between vice and virtue, the VIPs and the ordinary folk, between Latin America and the US, taste and vulgarity. The celebrity second-homers like to draw the line at exclusivity and privacy, obsessions readily catered for by the islands that satellite the tip of Miami Beach (Fisher Island and Star Island are home to the likes of Gloria Estefan, Oprah and Boris Becker).

Outside the nightclubs of South Beach, the lines continue to be drawn, but by red velvet ropes and bouncers; at Level or Crobar, people groom themselves and flutter fragrantly around the entrances, waiting to be picked out and ushered in -although in reality the queue is just ticking down like any other. Inside, VIP areas are placed like the top layer of a wedding cake, so the privileged few can observe the bouncing mass below. Fickle, fun and absolutely to be taken at face value, these are the super clubs - the glamour factories that, since the infamous Liquid opened in 1996, have put Miami on the dance music scene. Every March, they play host to the Winter Music Festival, making America's own little Ibiza for a month.

In typical American fashion, you generally get a bit extra, wherever you go. There's the laundrette that also has a bar (a favorite lesbian hangout); there's Bed, the restaurant that serves you a gourmet dinner in bed before throwing back the covers to turn into a nightclub; or Tantra, a restaurant and club with grass on the floor, 

water trickling down the walls and a menu of entirely aphrodisiac food. Power Studios, with its nine different rooms and stages covering everything from rooftop cinema, house music, jazz, salsa, dance and food - goes for a full immersion in the arts, and is a fine place to watch Miami's Latin and American flavors (and people) fuse.

Developer Craig Robins, who had been part of South Beach's return to form is doing similar things with the Design District, which is being labeled a South Beach for shoppers, and top designers, artists and restaurateurs - as well as nightlife generators such as Power Studios - are moving back into what was a thriving area in the 1970s.

There are locals, however, who feel that Miami has lost it - that the bubble has burst and left a hollow playground. Perhaps at the peak of its latest rejuvenation (and few places have been knocked out and got back on their feet as many times as this one), it was more of a glamorous well-kept secret with an edge, forced to drop its velvet ropes by the march of tourism. But these are subtle distinctions that needn't bother the traveler. Few places offer such a perfect hot climate of hedonism, such an intriguing split personality: an American engine powered by Latin batteries. - ArtsyStuff Magazine