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Litus Music Installations’ Opus Love Quintet perform at the New World Symphony season opener

 

Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade at the Hublot King Power “305” watch unveiling at the W South Beach

 

Rebekah Keida and Maili Nomm at the New World Symphony season opener

 

Tony and Ximena Cho at the New World Symphony season opener

 

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A star-powered Champagne-ebration unfolded at the W South Beach at the hands of Hublot, the haute Swiss watch crafter, to celebrate the limited release of 40 very expensive, acceptably blingy gold-and-platinum timepieces, dubbed the King Power “305” series. Omnipresent DJ Irie pumped out hits in the ballroom after downpours forced the party inside from Wet poolside, sonically soothing a scattering of impossibly tall former and current Miami Heat players—Dwyane Wade, Udonis Haslem, Alonzo Mourning, and Juwan Howard among them. Actress Gabrielle Union, looking sufficiently starish, rarely left Wade’s side, even during his slightly cheesy bongo-playing pit stop, as the heavily tatted heavyweight Rick Ross claimed a couch and tiny-weight Lisa Hochstein, of The Real Housewives of Miami notoriety, mingled as well as a porcelain doll can. Also seen: man-about-town Alexander Anthony Mijares, Superbowl footballer Jeremy Shockey, and rapper Rico Love. Hublot CEO Ricardo Guadalupe and President of the Americas Rick De La Croix then took the show on the road to Las Vegas, where they hit the Bellagio to throw a charity auction gala featuring legendary fighters such as Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis, Sugar Ray Leonard, and George Foreman, raising $1 million in one night for injured boxers. Philanthropy at its finest.

The Friends of the New World Symphony had their 2012 pre-season opening concert at Frank Gehry’s magnificent New World Center. About 400 suited-up culture lovers poured into the main hall to witness 86 dedicated Fellows lovingly create Jeffrey Mumford’s A Dance Into Reflected Daylight, a magical musical combination of Joaquín Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez,” featuring Manuel Barrueco on Spanish guitar, followed (after a wine-fueled intermission) by Antonín Dvorák’s Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Op. 70. Barrueco masterfully fingerpicked into the hearts of Sony Music’s Jorge Mejia and fiancée Amanda Parker, a radiantly pregnant Stacey Lauren Mizener Glassman and husband Joe Mizener, and venture capitalist Carl Kruse with girlfriend Griselda Lechini. After the last “Bravo!,” a few hundred partiers hit Shore Club for Hip-Hop Symphony, a live collaboration between DJ Irie (see what I mean?) and Opus Love Quintet, a fivesome of violin-, cello-, and flute-playing hotties who burned the Red Room to the ground.

The Fillmore Miami Beach at Jackie Gleason Theater is on a bit of a roll, hosting the hottest concerts in town. The latest: the smoldering hipness of M83. Determined to wow after a failed stint at last year’s Ultra Music Festival, the French group delivered with twinkly lights, dreamy vocals, and walls of echoey guitars and synths. But the hero was the drummer, who deliciously sticked every electronica song live. In the crowd? Every girl for 50 miles who despises pop and hip-hop. Hipsters united again, way down this peninsula.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY HUGO LOPEZ (OPUS LOVE QUINTET, CHO, KEIDA); SETH BROWARNIK/STARTRAKSPHOTO.COM (UNION)

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Kathy Rigal, Sebastian Puga, Gianinna Trivino, and Kelly Ann at The Standard Spa

 

Anna Loeb, Joey Jalleo, and Lucy McIntyre

 

Lisa Marie Fernandez

 

Singer Marcelo Falcão and guitarist Xandão of O Rappa onstage at The Fillmore Miami Beach

 

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Save for the fixed-gear bicycle route between The Electric Pickle Company, Panther Coffee, or Grand Central, The Standard Spa, Miami Beach reigns supreme as the hipster epicenter of the Miami-verse, what with its Scandinavian vibe, André Balazs NY/ LA street cred, and omnipresent ping-pong table. The latter apparatus came in handy when ping-pong enthusiast network SPiN Social and winemaker Chandon sponsored the Bayside BBQ & Ping Pong Tournament, summoning teams from The Webster, Poplife, Wildfox, and The Daily for some civilized table-tennis wars. Torrential rains (oh, Miami) forced the paddle battle inside to the wood-clad, denim-couched lobby bar, where it was all balls flying, bubbly bubbling, and packed with mustaches, American Apparel T-shirts, and rolled-up jeans that screamed, “I pedaled here across the Venetian.” For sure, it was hot in there, as teams sweated, drank, and ping-ponged while DJs Devin Lucien and Johnny The Boy pumped nu-disco. This was no ordinary table-tennis fête—the exceptionally attired (read: almost naked) emcee, Kazuyuki Yokoyama, donned disco-ball glitter shorts and gloves only Michael Jackson could love, while the likes of Sebastian Puga, Jake Jefferson, Aramís Lorié, Veronica Gessa, and Dustin Heil mingled with smoldering hot couple Kelly Ann and girlfriend Kathy Rigal. A semi-odd sighting? David Grutman, the impresario of LIV nightclub, held court on a couch before retiring for a cigarette—who knew he was so “downtown”? To support, even Puga’s nonmodel sister, Romina Puga, ventured south from New York, having just been plucked from obscurity by American Eagle Outfitters, her chic visage gracing a mega-billboard in Times Square itself. Which team won? Who cares? There was no better way, at least on that day, to spend a Sunday.

Media insider Maria Argüello threw herself quite the birthday party, summarily taking over The Federal Miami, the discreet neo-Americana eatery just south of MiMo, where the town’s media elite gathered for endless wine and family-style comfort treats, such as the OMFG-that’s-delicious Jar- O-Duck, a decadent hoedown of candied sweet potato, “charred fluff,” and slow-cooked Hudson Valley fowl. Slide show life-retrospective wall projection? Yes. Suzy Buckley Woodward, Josh Woodward, John Lin, Bill Kearney, and Liz Newman holding down a table? Absolutely. Overcome by emotion, Argüello, looking fab in siren red, took a patio breather with Erica Fickling and Ernest Reyes, while PR masters Jourdan Binder and Lorelle Khan and bloggers Annie Vazquez and Sara Liss mingled, laughed, and awaited the big birthday sing-along. When 80 people show up to your birthday on a Monday night, you’re doing something right.

The hottest band from Rio de Janeiro summarily pummeled The Fillmore Miami Beach at Jackie Gleason Theater with positive vibes. O Rappa (pronounced “uh hah pah”) represented the best of Brazil, salting and peppering the crowd with a dizzying array of rock, reggae, funk, ska, hip-hop, and samba. Only days off from its prestigious main-stage stint at Chicago’s Lollapalooza, hand-picked by festival cofounder Perry Farrell himself, the band, led by the mesmerizingly dreadlocked singer Marcelo Falcão, proved why many have called him the Bob Marley of Brazil. Rarely has rapping about social change and equality seemed so real. And there’s something quite special about Brazilian crowds—they’re so good-natured, so happy, so dance-y, some of them so curvy, even The Rhythm Foundation’s James and Laura Quinlan and promoter Alan Roth couldn’t resist chanting along, “Uh hah pah! Uh hah pah!,” everyone lost deep below the equator.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LUIS OLAZABAL (O RAPPA); MATT ROOT/WORLDREDEYE.COM (RIGAL, LOEB, FERNANDEZ)

Gotye during a set at London’s O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire earlier this year

There’s almost nothing about Gotye, the 32-year-old behind the chart megasmash “Somebody That I Used to Know,” that suggests “mainstream star.” First, there’s his mystifying-to-articulate artistic name (pronounced “go-teeyay”): an alteration of Gauthier, the French version of his Flemish given name, Wouter. But of course, there’s also his music. Though “Somebody That I Used to Know” spent weeks at number one on the Billboard 100, the whispery ditty—with acoustic guitar pops, the tinkle of a distant organ, and an explosive chorus—was unlike anything else in the chart’s upper echelons. In a time when pop music hinges on mechanistic, hard-edged dance-pop based on rigid structural formulas, “Somebody That I Used to Know” is a direct antithesis to that convention.

That may be precisely why it struck such a chord with audiences. This also means that when Gotye arrives in the United States this fall for his first thorough national tour, landing in Miami on October 7 at Bayfront Park’s Klipsch Amphitheater, he will have already graduated far past the club and theater levels. Keeping the performance true to his independent beginnings is at the top of his mind.

“There’s actually a lot of stuff I do that’s not so much about me being the guy singing in the front and more about the texture of the sounds, and the combinations of the arrangement and the visuals,” Gotye says. “But then there are other songs where I know the audience would really want that from me, so I’d want to be as unencumbered by technology and gear as possible, as close to the audience as possible. I’m hoping there are some more stripped-back moments in the set that can still translate to large audiences.”

In fact, Gotye has always chosen that kind of direct involvement with his fans as well as his musical creations. His early releases—the 2003 album Boardface and the 2006 follow-up Like Drawing Blood—were staunchly do-it-yourself affairs: self-recorded, self-produced, and more or less self-released. After increased commercial exposure, 2011’s Making Mirrors yielded his megahit. That’s when he finally relinquished some of the reins. “One of the challenges in the last couple of years is to not be a micromanager of everything, because you can’t when there’s so much going on,” he says.

But Gotye is still proudly keeping total control over his artistic output. While “Somebody That I Used to Know” became a pop smash, the rest of Making Mirrors is often unapologetically strange. T here a re entire t racks featuring robotic, distant vocals and soundscapes, such as the reggae of “State of the Art,” or, at other turns, yacht-rocky slabs of blue-eyed soul, like “I Feel Better.”

With the thousands of new fans who will attend Gotye’s US shows, the artist hopes to also draw people in with the more unexpected material. “Even though I’m proud of everything I do, I sometimes feel like the things that are more esoteric or hiding on the records are closer to my heart,” he says. “But for one song to get so super massive, it’s been incredible to experience, and there have been a lot of curious, and surprising, and exciting things to come from it.” Gotye, 7 pm, Sunday, October 7, at the Klipsch Amphitheater in Bayfront Park, 301 N. Biscayne Blvd., Miami; livenation.com

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Daniela Swaebe and Michael Comras at the SLS Hotel event

 

Jewelry designer Mary Kate Steinmiller at Mercedes- Benz Fashion Week Swim

 

Erica Hosseini at the Oakley Women’s Swim Launch at the SLS Hotel

 

A guest gets crafty at Mercedes- Benz Fashion Week Swim 2013.

 

Nick Cannon and Lil Jon work the ones and twos at the Oakley 2013 Women’s Swim Launch hosted by Trimera Group at the SLS Hotel South Beach

 

Laure Hériard Dubreuil and musician Pharrell Williams pose during Mercedes- Benz Fashion Week Swim

 

Sam Nazarian, Alonzo Mourning, and José Andrés at the launch of Nazarian’s swank SLS Hotel South Beach

 

Ernesto Mathies and Rodner Figueroa at the SLS Hotel fête

 

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SLS Hotel Debut Party
Hot haute hotelier Sam Nazarian’s Los Angeles swank spot, SLS Hotel, grandly opened its South Beach outpost to loads of liberty bells and the kind of sexed-up revelry lifestyle glossies crave. On a 95-degree night with 95 percent humidity, 300 sweating luckies cattled past a platoon of black-clad PR girls to get a glimpse of the most important hotel opening here since the W South Beach.

Inside, two stunning new restaurants tendered delicious nourishment so deftly that you couldn’t walk four feet without being offered refreshments and morsels of all ilks. These new bite spots include Katsuya, a top-notch sushi joint with an amazing hidden upstairs bar, and The Bazaar, a small-plates concept by famed Spanish chef José Andrés, who once worked at El Bulli, the now-closed Spanish gastronomic mecca. Did I mention that every single member of the staff is unsurprisingly, head-turningly attractive? Or that Philippe Starck, of Delano and ICON condominiums fame, designed the hotel? Andrés milled about, graciously posing for photos, as did Emilio Estefan, Lisa Pliner, Alonzo Mourning, Susanne Birbragher, hotel exec Arash Azarbarzin, and glowing newlyweds Vanessa and Michael Leitman. It was hard to tell whether the fête and its fetching food, drink, and staff left no desire unfulfilled, or whether it stoked them, especially when the Champagne “hit.”

Partiers like handbag designer Laura Buccellati, superdentist Nicole M. Berger, and style maven John Lin crashed Katsuya for one last late-night snack, sensibly devouring sushi like, well, unlimited free sushi was meant to be devoured. In the end, the proud SLS team rang the bell—literally, a giant bell—to christen the property, sending the hardiest down to the beachy Hyde South Beach club for a much-deserved nightcap.

Maynard James Keenan Rocks the Olympia Theater
Few musicians can say straight-faced they simultaneously front three critically acclaimed bands in various states of hiatus, but creative genius Maynard James Keenan can. So it came as no surprise that Live Nation hired Keenan’s latest band, Puscifer, to downright rock the sweepingly gilded Olympia Theater at the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts.

This was no ordinary show from the (also) Tool/A Perfect Circle singer; no, this was a mind-melding array of live theater, performance art, comedy variety show, video art, screenwriting, character development, and metal-tinged rock. Keenan strolled out solo onto a barren stage in mustachioed, cowboy-hatted character as a Southwestern desert redneck star named Billy D. Burger, poured himself a glass of wine, and tore into a wide-ranging monologue about creativity, politics, conspiracies, and corporations. He then systematically assembled the stage—hand-pulling an authentic Airstream trailer, a barbecue grill, lawn chairs, tables, guitars, keyboards, and a country wagon containing the drum set—before his six-piece band emerged.

The team viciously ripped through Conditions of My Parole, a concept album. Between songs, video screens alit with sketch comedy featuring another Keenan character, Major Douche, a hapless, smarmy parody of an unhinged military officer. The crowd had never seen anything like it, and might not again. But Miami certainly needs more Puscifer, because one cannot live on DJs alone.

Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Swim Sizzles
Swimsuit models once again totally owned Miami Beach during the annual Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Swim, a five-day summertime sartorial extravaganza that ritualistically anchors the fashion season. Imagine hundreds of the tallest, thinnest, tannest, prettiest, hottest, and scantily claddest 17- to 25-year-old girls on the planet, strutting virtually naked down runways, while the chosen few VIP spectators inspect every square inch of their bodies, faces, hair, makeup, and, oh yeah, swimsuits.

Besides the tents, Mercedes peacocked accordingly, what with its fleet of supercars clogging both roadways and The Raleigh hotel, then throwing bashes around town. In an arts-and-crafts-class-meets- haute-couture event, the car company collaborated with The Webster’s gorgeous Laure Hériard Dubreuil and jewelry designer Mary Kate Steinmiller for Bespoke, an interactive jewelry-making session in which guests fashioned jewelry out of various Mercedes leathers—super cool by The Raleigh’s pool.

Between runway sessions, VIPs like Wilmer Valderrama, Christina Milian, and Sean Yazbeck chilled in the plush Mercedes Star Lounge on The Raleigh’s seventh floor, while a lucky few made it back to The Webster for the Champagne-raining rooftop Sip, Snack, Shop event, catered by Miami superchef Michelle Bernstein. Over at Hyde South Beach, Lil Jon meandered and Nick Cannon worked the ones and twos for Oakley’s daytime poolside shindig commemorating its 2013 Swim collection. As the weekend concluded, Sunday night’s torrential rains forced the La Perla show into the Soho Beach House lobby—models on pedestals and guests scurrying about with food and drinks, rubbing shoulders with La Perla’s Giovanni Bianchi and Suzy Biszantz.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL BUCKNER/GETTY IMAGES FOR MERCEDES-BENZ FASHION WEEK SWIM 2013 (HERIARD DUBREUIL, UEST, STEINMILLER); WORDREDEYE.COM (NAZARIAN, SWAEBE, MATHIES); ALEXANDER TAMARGO/GETTY IMAGES FOR OAKLEY (CANNON, HOSSEINI)

Doutzen Kroes

Victoria's Secret supermodel Doutzen Kroes was spotted several times on Miami Beach's sun-soaked shores and over at the Soho Beach House this past week. Kroes showed us a little local love when she rocked a Luli Fama bikini last Wednesday, August 15.   

Celebrating his summertime smash “Whistle” and its number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 list, Flo Rida hit Bamboo Nightclub in Miami Beach on Thursday, August 16. Divine Delicacies presented Flo with a Billboard-themed cake before the hometown showman took to Bamboo's stage.

Miami Heat star and soon-to-be published author Dwyane Wade hosted his second annual Citi Dwyane Wade Fantasy Basketball Camp at Loews Miami Beach Hotel on Friday, August 17. The camp welcomes men ages 35 and older to hone their skills with some of the industry's top coaches and trainers. Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra also popped in at the weekend bootcamp, which has a $12,500 tuition fee.

Jenine and Juwan Howard

Rémy Martin V and NBA champion Juwan Howard recently celebrated the launch of Kiss the Bottle, a charity initiative benefitting VH1's Save The Music, at FDR in the Delano. Howard and his wife, Jenine, hosted the evening soirée, which also marked the couple's tenth wedding anniversary.

The Howards locked lips throughout the night while sipping Rémy Martin V cocktails and marveling at their intricate Divine Delicacies three-tier cake. Fellow NBA icons Mark Strickland and Alonzo Mourning, there with wife Tracy, also joined in on the festive fête.

Local tastemaker Amaris Jones was spotted kicking back on the VIP couches, while DJ Irie manned FDR's decks. Notable guests each made sure to pucker up and leave their mark on a Rémy Martin bottle. In turn, Rémy Martin promises to match each "kiss" with a ten year contribution to music education programming.

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Alicia Cervera and Ali Lamadrid at Ocean House South Beach

 

Lisa Petrillo, Bill McCue, and Katharine Rubino at Ocean House South Beach

 

Jennifer Jingco, Chris Avery, and Julie Milroy at the Jordan Wines event

 

Kimberly and John Kulhanjian at the Jordan Wines event

 

Federico Diego Papale Schwarz and Jellym Mejia at a Volvo Ocean Race event

 

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Amid torrential rains, storms spewing icy, nickel-size hail, and choppy seas, the Volvo Ocean Race tacked and jibbed into Miami for a two-week stopover to give its world-class seamen a relaxing respite during the rugged round-the-world sailing challenge. Six multimillion-dollar sailing vessels—shinier and sleeker than a Marni clutch, and sponsored by the likes of Puma and Telefónica—docked by the American Airlines Arena and threw a big-racing village party. But it was the Camper ( the Spanish footwear giant) with Team Emirates—sporting the most visually dynamic boat, liveried in reds and purples—that really knew how to party, chartering a four-story, vodkastocked spectator yacht for 150 sunburned VIPs, who also stayed and partied at the Viceroy Miami hotel for three days. Camper even rented Villa Vecchia, the circa-1928, $20 million, 18,000-square-foot private waterfront mansion on Pinetree Drive, to throw an intimate dinner party in its grand ballroom.

Within days of hosting Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell’s exceptional solo acoustic set and Wilco’s rollicking sonic rock jam, The Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theater hosted the legendary alt-artrock gods Jane’s Addiction, led by Lollapalooza founder Perry Farrell and Ink Master’s Dave Navarro. Part circus—with a pop-up tattoo parlor, hair salon, and magician anchoring the lobby—and part epic rock extravaganza, Marshall stacks ruled as the band summarily and triumphantly annihilated the audience with hits and heaviness. Seminude, princessattired backup dancers dangled from the rafters as Farrell guzzled wine and soul-screamed his way through “Been Caught Stealing,” “Mountain Song,” and “Jane Says,” but it was the kick-your-teeth opening notes of “Ocean Size” that triggered the genuinely violent stage-front mosh pit and crowd surfers. At once tribal, primal, visceral, and relentless, punctuated by the brutal last note of “Stop!,” the band was proud and shirtless, the exhilarated crowd was soaking wet, and within moments, the lobby bars hummed with “Now that was a rock concert!” Hands down—show of the year.

When the Miami real estate market nosedived in 2008, lavish, budgetbe- damned condominium opening parties seemed to die along with it. (Cue the violins.) But as Paramount Bay’s Lenny Kravitz-studded opening party and Ocean House South Beach’s über-fête proved, they’re back. Ocean House has just 18 massive, house-size units, so it stocked its party with models, models, and more models: strutting by the pool, pouring Laurent-Perrier and Stoli, serving caviar (and serving cat-looking plastic surgery victims). The intimate, well-behaved, and beautifully dressed crowd was indeed VIP, the guest list having been “triple-distilled,” as one proud PR rep put it. DJ Irie cranked off the beats from a residence balcony overlooking the pool, while Tara Solomon carefully curated models-with-commoners photo-ops. Did I mention there were models?

Last but not least, magnums of vintage 1979 flowed alongside mountains of lobster-laden paella under the stars as Jordan Wines, the California grape-smashers with killer Cabernets and Chardonnays, celebrated their 40th anniversary with civilized whispers on the Soho Beach House rooftop with about 75 VIPs. The dapper John Jordan, the cowboy-booted playboy CEO of the winery, flew his own Gulfstream jet to Miami along with a bevy of blondes and his private chef. Next stop: Manhattan.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY RODRIGO GAYA/WORLDREDEYE.COM (KULHANJIAN, JINGCO); MANNY HERNANDEZ (PETRILLO); RYAN TROY/WORLDREDEYE.COM (CERVERA); AINHOA SANCHEZ (SCHWARZ)

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Ryan Cook and Stacey Kimmel at the Palm Beach Sailing Heals event

 

Tiësto launched his SiriusXM Club Life Radio channel with a live DJ set at Miami Music Week

 

Lil Jon with a Belve Girl at the Belve Music Lounge/ Timbaland party and VIP dinner

 

Susanne Birbragher, Alain Perez, and Jami Kirk at the grand opening celebration for The St. Regis Bal Harbour Resort

 

Delfina Blaquier and Nacho Figueras at The St. Regis opening

 

Buster Cox and Hilda Solano at the Hearts & Stars Gala for The Little Lighthouse Foundation

 

Arizona Muse and Olivia Chantecaille at The St. Regis opening

 

Diane Kruger and Jason Wu at The St. Regis opening

 

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The gorgeously executed, over-the-top grand opening of the majestic St. Regis Bal Harbour Resort proved that no town parties like Miami (in case you had doubts). A long journey through throngs of bowing hotel staff (they seem to have hired the most polite peeps to be found in South Florida) revealed a suitably adult, nonetheless Wonkalevel fantasyland by the pool. Killer live music from the Jonathan Batiste band, endless pours of both Laurent-Perrier Champagne and Jordan Wines, and “are you kidding me” food stations (lobster and Wagyu, anyone?) raised the bar for what a Miami fête should be. It’s amazing how a little lobster can prompt some guests to hoard six skewers at a time. Notable partygoers included St. Regis director of public relations Michelle Payer, property general manager Marco A. Selva, mega-developer Tibor Hollo, actress Diane Kruger, fashion designer Jason Wu, and, seemingly out of nowhere, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. Adding to the pageantry was the most preposterously beautiful fireworks display in memory, and the band spontaneously marching around the pool deck in a New Orleans-style musical trot. The starry poolside celebration raged until rain forced partygoers inside to The St. Regis Wine Vault, a stunning lobby bar where Batiste’s troupe joined the resident St. Regis band for a jam session, entertaining within sardine-like confines—which only delighted further. So inspired was polo stud Nacho Figueras that he tried his hand at sabering open a magnum of bubbly. Of course, he managed it flawlessly. Some guys have all the luck.

The do-gooders over at The Little Lighthouse Foundation again threw a doozy, this time the third annual Hearts & Stars Gala fundraiser at the palatial waterfront estate of George Wallner. Imagine a mind-boggling, zoo-like display of 800 of the prettiest, most socially influential scenesters guzzling bubbles, Absolut cocktails, and food for miles. Miami’s Real Housewives, film crew in tow, caused a stir (as is often the case these days), and Michael Bay, in town filming Pain and Gain, an ’80s bodybuilding/ heist flick starring Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson, strolled the crowd, lending gravitas to an annual party that’s been gaining quite a bit of buzz for such a young organization. Out by the waterfront, DJ Louis Dee handily provided the tunes atop a Saturday Night Fever-ish glowing white dancefloor. Most memorable moment? Condo pre-partying with stunning models Illya Biederman and Jessica Smith before decamping to the Hibiscus Island-bound bus stocked with 40 models, commandeered by Burton Wilkins III. Welcome to Miami.

“Bungalow”—the word has such lovely connotations of lavish leisure. The W South Beach put its own to excellent use during the Winter Music Conference as Belvedere Vodka and SiriusXM chose the location to invite a few hundred lucky guests to intimately party alongside the likes of DJs Tiësto, Sander van Doorn, Avicii, Kaskade, Dada Life, Ruckus, and none other than legendary producer Timbaland. With vodka seemingly precipitating from the skies alongside the oppressive, cornea-scorching rays, the private lawn beside the private pool next to the equally private bungalow was pumping with DJ beats for three days straight, teeming with semi-clad record execs, artists, sponsors, producers, models, bikini’d promo chicks, and sundry music industry lovers. This mini-Coachella culminated with a VIP dinner featuring Timbaland, “World Hold On” DJ Bob Sinclar, and megaproducer Sean Garrett, who has produced tunes for Beyoncé, Enrique Iglesias, and Nicki Minaj. In the end, Sinclar hit Garrett up for his number, probably hoping the hip-hop hitmaster’s gold dust would sprinkle on Bob’s happy house. Yes, maybe even some (egad!) business took place in the Belve Music Lounge, too.

Serendipity and splendor occurred when Italy’s Officine Panerai needed a yacht to bring awareness to Sailing Heals, a Panerai-supported charity dedicated to on-the-water cancer therapy. Wealthy socialite Loren Ridinger happened to have a spare vintage Feadship floating idle behind her $50 million Miami Beach compound. What ensued was a swanky, ultra-exclusive, lunchtime waterborne soirée off Palm Beach island, with slabs of ahi tuna and bottles of Perrier-Jouët for a handful of doctors, patients, and VIP supporters. One-hundred-sixteen gleaming feet of white vessel, teak deck, and early-century furnishings set the tone. Onboard? Former model Ryan Cook and girlfriend Stacey Kimmel, and an anonymous captain who commands mega-vessels for billionaire Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder and Key West crooner Jimmy Buffett. Chats of Italian Navy history, seaplanes, and $144,000 timepieces like the black ceramic Panerai Tourbillon ensued. Cancer, at least for that afternoon, seemed held at bay by the gobs of good onboard vibes, flag-flapping winds, and Windex-blue skies.

Since this column is titled “Up Late,” no event rings truer for publication than the recent Guns N’ Roses appearance, and who better to stay up late with on a school night than Axl Rose himself? The band stormed into the Fillmore Miami Beach at midnight with a raucous, relentless, precise aural onslaught for three riff-a-riffic hours until 3:10 am. With nary a Slash in sight, it would be easy to say Guns was no longer Guns. But Rose was a man possessed. A deep ethos of triumphant redemption permeated his very sweaty and literally rose-colored visage. The Fillmore, a historic 2,700-capacity venue, proved a delightfully intimate descent from the 80,000-rocker stadiums that litter the band’s sex-and-drugs history. The show was, in short, an amazing display of perseverance—part Vaudeville, part camp, part guitar world championships, part over-the-top whiz-bangboom rock spectacle—from all eight exuberant members of Rose’s band until the acoustic vibes of “Paradise City,” “Welcome to the Jungle,” and “Patience” finally exhausted the screaming throngs.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATT HORTON/THE ARTIST GROUP (COOK); WORLDREDEYE.COM (COX); GUSTAVO CABALLERO/GETTY IMAGES (BIRBRAGHER, KRUGER, BLAQUIER, MUSE)