there's no champagne room (Art Basel Weekend in Miami, Part I)

Bohoken is an anxious flier. His anxiety stems more from the idea of flying, but he has a legit fear of turbulence. Which justifies a legit prescription for Xanax. So when he asked me if I wanted to go to Miami (I'd never been), I was a bit concerned when he couldn't book two adjacent seats on the plane down.

Thankfully, I'm a major planner when it comes to travel, so I made him check us in that morning online. Not only were there two seats together, but they were exit-row! And at 6'2", a small upgrade fee is well worth it.

I'd left work early but later than planned. I was starving, but I'd remembered that we didn't have a TSA-compliant container of lube (and when's the last time you saw Wet Platinum at a damn drug store). At that point, I had time for one or the other.

image from amazon.com 

. o (Well, shit. They got food at the airport...)

Many say that public transit is a no-go with NYC airports. I say the LIRR isn't so bad (better than paying to sit on the Long Island Expressway in rush-hour traffic) for JFK. Especially with a to-go cup of champaign from the cafe in Penn Station. And the $50 (flat rate from Manhattan + toll + tip) a cab would be to LGA is much better spent on drinks and go-goes navigating an unfamiliar city. 

Bohoken suggested the E train to JFK. Now, I used to live at the end of the E train, which does go to the AirTrain, so I should have known better. And after 50 minutes of waiting, crowding and silently cursing everything around me, I finally caught up with Bohoken at the AirTrain.

Our flight was uneventful, and we caught a cab that seemed to have half the exhaust piped into the interior. I had to basically perform obstetric surgery to get the seatbelt to function. These were certainly not NYC cabs.

Now, you would think that after the pre-Atlantis-cruise hotel fiasco, I'd be a bit more attentive to making reservations in Miami. But Bohoken said our hotel was near all the South Beach hotness, so I went along with it. Y'all, we pulled up to the address and couldn't find it. That's because the front is an Italian restaurant, and the only indication that a hotel exists is a small sign over an archway that leads to the restaurant's outdoor seating. Imagine how fun it was to drag our luggage between tables of people having dinner to get to the "front" desk.

The Impala Hotel has no wireless. "I mean, we have a modem, and you can plug it in..." Very useful for an iPad. Or an iPhone with crappy reception (Bohoken's iPhone 4S was having trouble all weekend). We would have done a better hotel, but this particular weekend, it was Art Basel, a huge, international art festival that basically draws all of Manhattan.

After freshening up, Bohoken suggested a stroll down Ocean Ave. We passed a bunch of restaurants with hostesses on the sidewalks tempting us with 2-4-1 happy hours on fishbowl-sized florescent drinks. But around midnight we stopped at Ocean's 10, a sparsely populated outdoor straight bar, because they had an awesome cover band playing! Hopefully they're there every Thursday because they really know how to hype up a crowd (but I forgot their name)!

Next, we headed to a Josh Wood party at Lords Hotel (a non-officially gay hotel on Collins), which was basically one of his Manhattan parties on the ground instead of on a rooftop (but at least this one was in a somewhat gay venue). It was open bar, and there was a photoshoot for Slick It Up, the fetish gear website.

I was waiting at the bar for our second drink for the longest (these were certainly no NYC bartenders), and a guy worked his way to the bar beside me. One of the bartenders finally turned our way, and the guy's gesturing got the bartender to start serving him first. Bohoken saw this going down and gave a very New York "Really?!" The bartender was frozen in confusion for a good 2 seconds before turning to us and taking our orders. I didn't see the other patron's reaction, but it was a small victory.

Bohoken: "And it's not like he didn't notice the 6-foot black guy standing next to him. He just tried to make himself more important than you. I probably would have let it go if it happened to me, but I get pissed off when people do it to you!"

That, my readers, is a sign you got a good one. 

We ended our night at the legendary South Beach staple Twist. The name makes sense because the damn club has so many different rooms connected by winding hallways. We explored several areas and landed in the room with the go-goes. Picture Cock Fight Wednesdays at No Parking (except lap dances happen on the back wall because there's no champagne room).

Did I mention Miami clubs close at 5am? Yeah. 

Click here to check out that one time I met up with TheMaverickMen.