| |
So if you found yourself inside the Big Room at
Score
on the inaugural
Salvation Sundays,
smack dab in the middle of a dance-happy, hands-in-the-air,
comely crowd, you might have thought, “What? Did the war end?
Is the recession over?” There was such a sense of celebration, so
much joy on the floor, that you had to wonder if a container ship of
happy pills had grounded ashore off
South Beach.
Why was everybody so happy and having so much fun?
Well, for one
thing, there was
Abel
in the booth.
Abel
in a particularly ebullient mood as he mashed up bits and pieces of
favored tracks from the days of Salvation and every year thereafter,
mixing “Killing Me Softly (With Your Song)” with “Put Your Hands Up”
and “Get Your Hands (Off My Man).” And the boyz were loving it:
singing along with Mary J, “G-rrrl-friend… She’s a hundred
percent…” That was
Abel:
one hundred percent ON. He opened up his musical heart—and let
it SING!
As one adorable couple said to us, “We didn’t know what to expect
tonight… It’s INSANE!” Perhaps they were too young to remember
Salvation, but the magic and mayhem of that beloved club was all
over the place. The crowd was a showcase of chic shirts, with
sequins a primary motif, and vintage Salvation tees, unearthed from
storage. And there was Salvation doyenne,
Power Infiniti,
sheathed in white fox, stole and arm muffs, as she (and her back-up
boy dancers) vogued her way through Madonna’s “Give It 2 Me,”
working a tiny go-go box with as much showmanship as if she ruled
the entire stage of Radio City Music Hall.
So many
beautiful boyz in such splendid shirts, unpeeling on the floor to
reveal those
South Beach
bods that Salvation made famous. And boy,
South Beach
was in the house! There was the King of Salvation,
Hilton
Wolman,
of course, with his Queen, Mel and son Myron, and
Winter Party
chair Chad Richter, with Leo the Lionhearted, and Flavio Nisti (sans
Erika Norell!), and
CLICK
hedwig,
Omar Gonzalez,
fresh from his marriage in front of
Miami
Beach
City Hall, and Task Force miracle worker, Alex Breitman, fresh from
New York, and Michael Superman in killer Bermudas, and the
ever-bodacious and vivacious
Tracy Young
(Oh, that girl! That girl!), and the ever-ebullient Equinox
trainers Luis and Alex, and recent b’day boy Thomas Barker, with
photog
Dale Stine,
and a grinning Parzham from
Great Party Pics,
and
Kidd Madonny in
killer sequinned shades, and on and on and on, as Madonna would say—while presiding over it
all were
Score's
consummate hosts, owners Billy and Luis, true gentlemen both.
The party had soul: the soul of
South Beach,
that fabled playground, that sandbox to the stars. And
Abel
kept pumping out the hits, from “(Don’t You Want) My Love” to “Push
the Feeling On” and “You Don’t Appreciate Me.” Oh, but there was no
question that
Abel
was appreciated and everyone was feeling it.
Tracy
trekked up the narrow staircase to the booth to pay her obeisance to
the man—and there was
Abel
loving
Tracy
and
Tracy
loving
Abel—and
everyone loving everyone. Perhaps
Hilton's
Mel put it best when she said, “It may not be Salvation, but it has
the same heart.”
When there’s a need in
South Beach,
maybe a void of some sort, something missing, something not quite
right—then
South Beach
gets a party. There’s a party to make it all good again. The
history of
South Beach
as told in great parties. Or as
Abel
put it, “I Just Can’t Get Enough,” “(I Need A) Miracle,” and “We
Belong Together.” Amen to all that, and to
Power
performing another show, this time clinging to a support column as
she belted out Deborah Cox’s “Things Just Ain’t The Same”—before
gliding over the crowd, their upraised arms supporting her all the
way back to the stage. An act like that takes faith: that the crowd
is there to support you. And yet, with that bunch on the floor,
with all those hands already up in the air, and that mass of smiling
faces, was there ever any doubt? It was a party about supporting
community: a community that plays together and knows that music is
the real religion. And it was fitting therefore, when
Abel
plated
Hilton
and Mel’s favorite, “Shackles” with its uplifting lyric, “I just
wanna praise you.”
Praise be to
Salvation Sundays
at
Score—and
to all of us who know the true power of joy.
|
|
