"Those who might hesitate to pick up a modern social history of Miami Beach will be relieved to know that Madonna appears only briefly in “Fool’s Paradise,” Steven Gaines’s entertaining chronicle of sleaze and vapidity in the Florida tropics.
Madge is not missed, for there are plenty of other outrageous characters for Gaines to spotlight. Few are especially complex or compelling, but this is a book about South Beach. Most people don’t go there for intellectual enrichment; they go for the sex, dope and parties.
That wasn’t exactly the original idea. Back when the mangroves were razed and the sand was dredged from the ocean bottom — yes, even the beach is fake — the developer Carl Fisher envisioned the place as a respectable winter getaway for well-to-do Northerners, an American Riviera.
As it turned out, gangsters also prefer sunny climates over snow. By 1928, Al Capone and other thugs had discovered Miami Beach, and organized crime was taking over the town. Gambling, bootlegging and prostitution became vibrant sectors of the economy, and corruption was epidemic. Today Ecstasy has replaced smuggled Cuban rum as the nocturnal vice of choice, but the attitude hasn’t changed.
As in “Philistines at the Hedgerow,” his wry dissection of the Hamptons, Gaines sees symptoms of social dysfunction in architecture, like the garishly emblematic Fontainebleau Hotel on Collins Avenue. It was the product of a tumultuous collaboration between an obstinant developer named Ben Novack and the architect Morris Lapidus. The two couldn’t stand each other, and went to their respective deathbeds claiming sole credit for the design of the massive, weirdly curved structure, which was built in less than a year.
Maligned by critics, the Fontainebleau instantly became a lively hangout for card sharks, mobsters and movie idols. Frank Sinatra performed there regularly for 20 years — free, according to Gaines — and in return got unlimited use of a penthouse suite. Gaines asserts, “The only thing Sinatra paid for was his hookers.” Well, at least he didn’t forget the little people.
The author cites a Justice Department memo suggesting that Sinatra sang gratis out of duty, because the Fontainebleau was secretly run by some of his Mafia pals — a charge Novack always denied, even after he sold the place.
In any case, the resort had lost its gleam by the early ’70s, and so had Miami Beach. Hotel Row faded toward shabbiness, while a new theme park called Disney World diverted millions of Florida-bound tourists upstate. The area called South Beach, from roughly 21st Street to Government Cut, was then home to thousands of elderly Jews who had migrated from the Northeast, only to see their apartment buildings crumble around them. It was not, as Gaines breathlessly declares, one of the worst slums in America. But life did get much more dangerous after the Mariel boatlift in 1980, when Fidel Castro salted a sea of fleeing refugees with thousands of hard-core criminals, the dregs of Cuba’s prisons. Many of the worst headed for Miami Beach, where helpless victims were abundant.
Gaines’s description of the ensuing crime wave isn’t exaggerated — there was authentic mayhem on the streets. Recalling that not-so-long-ago time makes the rebirth of the South Beach district seem all the more astounding, though it came at a cost. Most of the old folks were displaced, or died off in loneliness.
An influx of artists and a fierce preservation movement initiated the area’s stunning turnaround, though some pop observers credit the television show “Miami Vice.” Certainly Michael Mann’s cameras made the Art Deco esplanade of Ocean Drive look enticing, even as Sonny and Rico were shooting it out with Armani-clad cokeheads under the palms. With that kind of advertising, it’s not surprising how the new Miami Beach turned out, and who showed up.
One successful poser was a gym rat from Brooklyn who called himself Chris Paciello. Twenty-three years old and unemployed, Paciello arrived in South Beach and within days somehow purchased a nightclub, which he refurbished as a local dive. After that burned down, under predictably disputed circumstances, Paciello opened a club called Liquid, which soon became the hottest draw for models, actors and pro athletes.
Paciello’s real name was Christian Ludwigsen, and he was a violent felon who federal investigators believed was tied to organized crime families. When his mottled résumé was illuminated by The Village Voice, it only enhanced Paciello’s studly stature. The club crowd thought it was way cool to hang with a genuine goon.
According to Gaines, Madonna phoned Paciello on his 27th birthday, singing, “Happy birthday, dear mobster, happy birthday to you!” The following year he was charged with racketeering and bank robbery, as well as felony murder in connection with a botched home-invasion heist on Staten Island. He copped a plea, ratted out a dozen no-neck pals and swaggered off to prison, leaving South Beach temporarily without a pied piper.
If Paciello returned tomorrow, he could be on top again in no time. That’s the sort of place SoBe is. As one party promoter told Gaines, “People will forgive anything for a good time.” They should etch those words on the city’s seal.
Gaines evidently spent many nights hanging with the young, beautiful and clueless. Shockingly, they take lots of drugs and have lots of stoned sex and then wonder what it all means. They are walking, talking clichés in a town that is ebulliently cliché, but it doesn’t mean there’s not an occasional glimmer of insight.
Listen to a male fashion model named Matt talk about his season on South Beach: “Well, for months now I’ve been living in a shallow, delusional place. I’ve lived in a society with absolutely no culture and where money and fame are everything. . . . I began to wonder, ‘Is this really it? Is it that simple? Am I really such an incredible guy because I look like this?’ ” That’s not Jay Gatsby ruminating — just some kid trying to figure out when to bail.
Gaines is a good interviewer, and he does plenty of legwork. One of the best parts of “Fool’s Paradise” is his visit with Alex Daoud. As the flashy mayor of Miami Beach in the ’80s, Daoud packed a pistol and rode with a rogue crew of cops that stomped suspects in back alleys. Daoud was also a gregarious crook, taking bribes and favors from dope dealers, bankers, even the owners of a strip joint.
The mayor, too, turned snitch and did a prison stretch. He now manages a modest apartment building, whines about his weight and implores anyone who will listen to read his own self-published tell-all. Daoud declares, “Miami Beach is a non-place populated by rootless people.”
He’s only half-right. There is a there there, and many people, like the preservationist Barbara Capitman, have given it their hearts. Yet, throughout the eras of Capone, Sinatra and Madonna, South Beach’s economy has always been juiced by sybaritic hype and a stream of fun-loving, fast-talking mooks. It has never, thank heaven, aspired to be a family destination.
These days the club scene still cooks, but the heat of the ’80s and ’90s is gone. Gaines cites as a transformational event the 1997 murder — assassination, to be precise — of the fashion designer Gianni Versace on the steps of his Ocean Drive estate. The killing shook SoBe in the same way that John Lennon’s murder shook Manhattan, yet Gaines skates over the bizarre crime in a few paragraphs.
The fact is, in any South Beach bar you’d do well to find more than a handful of patrons who know anything about Versace. Most of those on the dance floor would still have been flossing their braces when he was gunned down.
It’s not the fault of Gaines that, from gorgeous airheads to slimy swindlers, “Fool’s Paradise” is overpopulated by characters straight out of central casting. That’s the story of Florida. As any journalist can attest, just because a place is shallow, corrupt and infested with phonies doesn’t mean it’s dull.
In fact, there’s probably not another square mile of American real estate more amusing than South Beach, in small doses and with the proper precautions."
FOOL’S PARADISE
Players, Poseurs, and the Culture of Excess in South Beach
By Steven Gaines
Illustrated. 274 pp. Crown Publishers. $25.95.
Madge is not missed, for there are plenty of other outrageous characters for Gaines to spotlight. Few are especially complex or compelling, but this is a book about South Beach. Most people don’t go there for intellectual enrichment; they go for the sex, dope and parties.
That wasn’t exactly the original idea. Back when the mangroves were razed and the sand was dredged from the ocean bottom — yes, even the beach is fake — the developer Carl Fisher envisioned the place as a respectable winter getaway for well-to-do Northerners, an American Riviera.
As it turned out, gangsters also prefer sunny climates over snow. By 1928, Al Capone and other thugs had discovered Miami Beach, and organized crime was taking over the town. Gambling, bootlegging and prostitution became vibrant sectors of the economy, and corruption was epidemic. Today Ecstasy has replaced smuggled Cuban rum as the nocturnal vice of choice, but the attitude hasn’t changed.
As in “Philistines at the Hedgerow,” his wry dissection of the Hamptons, Gaines sees symptoms of social dysfunction in architecture, like the garishly emblematic Fontainebleau Hotel on Collins Avenue. It was the product of a tumultuous collaboration between an obstinant developer named Ben Novack and the architect Morris Lapidus. The two couldn’t stand each other, and went to their respective deathbeds claiming sole credit for the design of the massive, weirdly curved structure, which was built in less than a year.
Maligned by critics, the Fontainebleau instantly became a lively hangout for card sharks, mobsters and movie idols. Frank Sinatra performed there regularly for 20 years — free, according to Gaines — and in return got unlimited use of a penthouse suite. Gaines asserts, “The only thing Sinatra paid for was his hookers.” Well, at least he didn’t forget the little people.
The author cites a Justice Department memo suggesting that Sinatra sang gratis out of duty, because the Fontainebleau was secretly run by some of his Mafia pals — a charge Novack always denied, even after he sold the place.
In any case, the resort had lost its gleam by the early ’70s, and so had Miami Beach. Hotel Row faded toward shabbiness, while a new theme park called Disney World diverted millions of Florida-bound tourists upstate. The area called South Beach, from roughly 21st Street to Government Cut, was then home to thousands of elderly Jews who had migrated from the Northeast, only to see their apartment buildings crumble around them. It was not, as Gaines breathlessly declares, one of the worst slums in America. But life did get much more dangerous after the Mariel boatlift in 1980, when Fidel Castro salted a sea of fleeing refugees with thousands of hard-core criminals, the dregs of Cuba’s prisons. Many of the worst headed for Miami Beach, where helpless victims were abundant.
Gaines’s description of the ensuing crime wave isn’t exaggerated — there was authentic mayhem on the streets. Recalling that not-so-long-ago time makes the rebirth of the South Beach district seem all the more astounding, though it came at a cost. Most of the old folks were displaced, or died off in loneliness.
An influx of artists and a fierce preservation movement initiated the area’s stunning turnaround, though some pop observers credit the television show “Miami Vice.” Certainly Michael Mann’s cameras made the Art Deco esplanade of Ocean Drive look enticing, even as Sonny and Rico were shooting it out with Armani-clad cokeheads under the palms. With that kind of advertising, it’s not surprising how the new Miami Beach turned out, and who showed up.
One successful poser was a gym rat from Brooklyn who called himself Chris Paciello. Twenty-three years old and unemployed, Paciello arrived in South Beach and within days somehow purchased a nightclub, which he refurbished as a local dive. After that burned down, under predictably disputed circumstances, Paciello opened a club called Liquid, which soon became the hottest draw for models, actors and pro athletes.
Paciello’s real name was Christian Ludwigsen, and he was a violent felon who federal investigators believed was tied to organized crime families. When his mottled résumé was illuminated by The Village Voice, it only enhanced Paciello’s studly stature. The club crowd thought it was way cool to hang with a genuine goon.
According to Gaines, Madonna phoned Paciello on his 27th birthday, singing, “Happy birthday, dear mobster, happy birthday to you!” The following year he was charged with racketeering and bank robbery, as well as felony murder in connection with a botched home-invasion heist on Staten Island. He copped a plea, ratted out a dozen no-neck pals and swaggered off to prison, leaving South Beach temporarily without a pied piper.
If Paciello returned tomorrow, he could be on top again in no time. That’s the sort of place SoBe is. As one party promoter told Gaines, “People will forgive anything for a good time.” They should etch those words on the city’s seal.
Gaines evidently spent many nights hanging with the young, beautiful and clueless. Shockingly, they take lots of drugs and have lots of stoned sex and then wonder what it all means. They are walking, talking clichés in a town that is ebulliently cliché, but it doesn’t mean there’s not an occasional glimmer of insight.
Listen to a male fashion model named Matt talk about his season on South Beach: “Well, for months now I’ve been living in a shallow, delusional place. I’ve lived in a society with absolutely no culture and where money and fame are everything. . . . I began to wonder, ‘Is this really it? Is it that simple? Am I really such an incredible guy because I look like this?’ ” That’s not Jay Gatsby ruminating — just some kid trying to figure out when to bail.
Gaines is a good interviewer, and he does plenty of legwork. One of the best parts of “Fool’s Paradise” is his visit with Alex Daoud. As the flashy mayor of Miami Beach in the ’80s, Daoud packed a pistol and rode with a rogue crew of cops that stomped suspects in back alleys. Daoud was also a gregarious crook, taking bribes and favors from dope dealers, bankers, even the owners of a strip joint.
The mayor, too, turned snitch and did a prison stretch. He now manages a modest apartment building, whines about his weight and implores anyone who will listen to read his own self-published tell-all. Daoud declares, “Miami Beach is a non-place populated by rootless people.”
He’s only half-right. There is a there there, and many people, like the preservationist Barbara Capitman, have given it their hearts. Yet, throughout the eras of Capone, Sinatra and Madonna, South Beach’s economy has always been juiced by sybaritic hype and a stream of fun-loving, fast-talking mooks. It has never, thank heaven, aspired to be a family destination.
These days the club scene still cooks, but the heat of the ’80s and ’90s is gone. Gaines cites as a transformational event the 1997 murder — assassination, to be precise — of the fashion designer Gianni Versace on the steps of his Ocean Drive estate. The killing shook SoBe in the same way that John Lennon’s murder shook Manhattan, yet Gaines skates over the bizarre crime in a few paragraphs.
The fact is, in any South Beach bar you’d do well to find more than a handful of patrons who know anything about Versace. Most of those on the dance floor would still have been flossing their braces when he was gunned down.
It’s not the fault of Gaines that, from gorgeous airheads to slimy swindlers, “Fool’s Paradise” is overpopulated by characters straight out of central casting. That’s the story of Florida. As any journalist can attest, just because a place is shallow, corrupt and infested with phonies doesn’t mean it’s dull.
In fact, there’s probably not another square mile of American real estate more amusing than South Beach, in small doses and with the proper precautions."
FOOL’S PARADISE
Players, Poseurs, and the Culture of Excess in South Beach
By Steven Gaines
Illustrated. 274 pp. Crown Publishers. $25.95.
