Words: Chris Menendez @theonlychristhatmatters
It’s the 1980s, and Anthony Kiedis—lead singer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers—has just finished a set at the Cameo Theater. After the show, he ends up with a Sicilian model named Antonina. They head back to her apartment. Kiedis, hyper beyond belief (do the math), starts parading around in one of her dresses.
That was Miami’s alternative scene: wild, expressive, and unapologetically weird.
At the time, South Beach was erupting with creativity. It had become the epicenter of fashion, art, nightlife, and culture—a melting pot where Latin American exiles, downtown New York artists, and European models and photographers all converged. They lounged under palm trees by day and partied on Ocean Drive by night.
When people think of South Beach’s golden era, they picture Versace’s muscle boys strutting in slashed-up shirts or Madonna ordering Dom Pérignon at a Miami Subs drive-thru at midnight. But why did icons like Versace, Madonna, and Sylvester Stallone gravitate to Miami? It wasn’t just for the beaches. They were drawn by the energy of a new creative vanguard: nightlife promoter Louis Canalès, artist Carlos Betancourt, fashion muse Danny Santiago, performance artist Jordan Levin, and it-girl Tara Solomon (also LoHi Magazine's cover star). Together, they defined the Miami Beach underground.
By the ’80s, though, Miami had a reputation problem—arguably worse than Kanye's today. The city was seen as America’s bad boy capital. As the saying went: People move to L.A. chasing fame, to New York chasing success, and to Miami chasing a new identity.
Think: cocaine wars pre-Miami Vice, leathery old men rotting on the beach (not the fun kind), and enough mafia plots to fill ten Scorsese films. Miami was in desperate need of a rebrand—a second act.
But this wasn’t a job for the police or the National Guard. This kind of transformation could only come through two things: art and PR.
In 1983, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Surrounded Islands installation drew global attention to Miami, reminding the art world of the city’s beauty. With AIDS and crack ravaging New York, many artists saw Miami as a chance at a better life.
Miami has always been that friend you call when everything falls apart—but once you’re back on your feet, you bounce. Like Shout.
As the art crowd migrated south, the underground scene quietly began to form. Leather-skinned seniors waved from the steps of their Miami Beach apartments as their new neighbors—armed with bikinis and art supplies—moved in. Young Cuban-Americans and New York drag queens played together on the sand.
Across the causeway, Fire & Ice became the place to let your freak flag fly. If you said you didn’t spend at least an hour on your look, you were lying. Teased hair, fluorescent harem pants, experimental eye makeup—teenage Cubans and New Wave-loving New Yorkers danced to “Tainted Love” like their lives depended on it.
Their hips were used to salsa’s 1-2-3s, but when the synths hit, they invented moves that were wild, electric, and totally their own. Picture a Cuban Janis Joplin krumping to the Beastie Boys in an oversized purple suit with shoulder pads. It was loud. It was ridiculous. It was magic.
So let’s turn off the WiFi and rewind to the pre-digital days of the South Beach underground—a world of whispered passwords, word-of-mouth parties, and insiders who built a “más es más” creative culture that redefined Miami Beach’s identity.
Pictured: Carlos Betancourt, Louis Canales, David Thomas, and Tara Solomon
Now best known as the costume designer for And Just Like That, Danny Santiago remembers scouring thrift stores for vintage suits—bell-bottoms, exaggerated lapels, and faux diamond brooches were his armor on nights out. In Miami’s underground scene, style was a statement, and his looks often earned him invites—handed out on flyers—to exclusive parties at Fire & Ice, a haven for artists, musicians, and fashion obsessives.
Tuesday night’s Abstract party became the beating heart of that scene, transformed weekly by host Howard Davis. Each event had a new theme—Egyptian night, jungle night—complete with hand-painted murals and elaborate props by artists like Overtown’s Purvis Young. “It was all for the sake of art,” Danny recalls. “Well, and partying.”
Jordan Levin
Jordan Levin, a former music editor at The Miami Herald, started out as a downtown East Village club performer, dancing at venues like Danceteria and the Pyramid, often covered head-to-toe in gold body paint. One evening after work, she ran into Craig Coleman—better known as the legendary drag performer Varla—who convinced her that Miami was the next frontier.
Curious, Jordan bought a roundtrip ticket to Miami Beach. She never used the return half. “I traded junkies for old people tanning,” she says. “From a filthy street littered with glass, I could now walk barefoot to the beach from my apartment on Collins and 14th. It felt like a forgotten fantasy world on the edge of the ocean.”
She recalls poetry nights at the Cameo (then run by Paco de Onis and James Quinlan) and wild, anything-goes performances at local theater collectives like Art Act and Area Stage on Española Way and Lincoln Road.
Carlos Betancourt
The early Miami Beach art scene was raw, inclusive, and pulsing with energy. Multidisciplinary artist Carlos Betancourt helped shape that world through his Lincoln Road gallery, Imperfect Utopia. With its doors always open, it quickly became a community hub—equal parts studio, salon, and party venue. “People felt like they belonged just by walking in,” Carlos says.
Digging through old photos, he remembers the growing curiosity around Miami Beach: artists, musicians and celebrities came to see what was brewing. Ricky Martin once lounged on the gallery couch. Another night, Carlos took Madonna to see Cuban singer Albita perform on Calle Ocho to satisfy her curiosity about Cuban culture. “It was the dream: working on your art while surrounded by talented, beautiful people,” he reflects. “Maybe too dreamy—very distracting. But sometimes distractions lead to answers, right?”
One of Carlos’s favorite experiences was the Avenue A parties hosted by Gary James. To get in, you had to call a secret hotline on a specific day to learn the theme and location. He recalls Mermaids in Ecstasy, a party at the Eden Roc Hotel, where guests ended up swimming naked in the pool—giving spectators in the lobby’s underwater viewing windows an unforgettable show.
Another favorite: a party on Monument Island featuring live alligator wrestling. “To this day, no one knows how the alligator got there—or how 200 people got off the island when the cops raided,” says his longtime friend and local legend Michele King Soffer.
Pictured: Danny Santiago
Louis Canalès
The underground is like a magnet—constantly attracting people who make it stronger, weirder, edgier, and smarter. Louis Canalès didn’t just embody that magnetism—he became one with it. “Instead of seeing decrepit Art Deco buildings, what I saw in the early ’80s was the Miami Riviera,” he says.
A seasoned marketing and PR specialist from New York, Louis was a cultural alchemist. He helped transform Miami Beach from a sleepy retirement town into a global creative hub. With vision, charm, and a humanistic touch, he could turn any forgotten corner into an exclusive scene. He invited New York’s underground royalty—Susanne Bartsch, Kenny Scharf, Joey Arias, RuPaul and Fran Lebowitz—to come see for themselves. “Just come once. If you like it, come back.”
Louis played the game well. On weekdays, he’d send faxes to thousands of New Yorkers with the headline: “A Weekend in Miami Beach: Cheaper Than the Hamptons.” The messages included updated flight and hotel deals. “You gotta do what you gotta do,” he says. He was also behind the now-legendary hotline that revealed the location and theme of Avenue A parties—voiced, no doubt, by either a sultry femme or a razor-sharp drag queen.
In the ’90s, media mattered. If you weren’t in the magazines, you might as well be invisible. Louis knew how to generate buzz, flying down journalists and tastemakers to see Miami Beach’s transformation firsthand. Local photographers like David Vance helped define the emerging aesthetic: golden skin, pastel Art Deco backdrops, and abstract, Avedon-inspired poses.
The momentum grew. Interview Magazine devoted an entire issue to South Beach in 1986. New York magazine followed with its 1992 “SoHo in the Sun” cover story. Soon, European fashion photographers and supermodels arrived, capturing Miami Beach’s energy for global campaigns. Want to party with the world’s hottest models? Here’s your chance.
“Here, people had the luxury to be themselves,” Louis says. “It wasn’t unusual to sit down at the Century Hotel restaurant and find George Michael at the next table.” Other regulars included Thierry Mugler, Jean Paul Gaultier, Paloma Picasso, Anna Wintour, Bruce Weber and Nan Bush.
They didn’t just come for the beaches. They came to experience the South Beach underground.
Tara Solomon
Cue the spotlight and turn up the volume—Wednesday nights at Semper’s were the place to be. Hosted by writer and PR maven Tara Solomon, the weekly karaoke party became a melting pot where the New York art world, European fashion scene, and the Miami Beach underground collided.
Tara began her career as a journalist but soon became a defining figure in ‘90s Miami Beach nightlife—known as Mz. Thang, a muse to artists and couturiers, and an “it girl” with magnetic presence. She was, in many ways, the Athena of South Beach’s neon-lit Mount Olympus. When Tara entered a room, people noticed. Not just for her beauty, but for her unmistakable style—custom La Bomba outfits (the same designers who dressed Kate Pierson of the B-52s) and her signature orange Ginger Rogers wig made her unforgettable.
Like the B-52’s lyric, Tara was “underground like a wild potato”—sharp, stylish, and impossible to ignore. Her wit could silence even the most seasoned drag queens. As a columnist for The Miami Herald, her distinctive voice championed the underground scene while catching the eye of major media. With titles like “Queen of the Night” and “It’s Not Your Mother’s Advice Column,” she chronicled the social fabric of the city in a style not unlike Bridget Jones’s Diary—irreverent, glamorous, and authentic.
What unfolded at Semper’s was more than just karaoke—it was cultural alchemy. It brought together creatives from New York, Miami and Europe in a way few parties could. “People were truly able to reinvent themselves. Miami Beach has always held that allure,” Tara reflects. Every karaoke performer got a cassette recording of their set. If they were truly terrible, Tara might hand them a bus ticket home—especially if they were part of the “bridge and causeway crowd” from suburbs like Kendall.
In Miami, we say “Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres”—“Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are.” By that standard, Tara’s social circle spoke volumes. Artists like Carlos Betancourt, designers like Fernando Garcia, vintage fashion icon Debbie Ohanian of Meet Me in Miami and legendary drag queens like Varla, La Wanda and Tomata du Plenty were regulars in her orbit. She had so many drag queen friends, she could’ve filmed four seasons of Drag Race on her own.
Jaime Cardona and friend handing out party flyers on Ocean Drive
Jaime Cardona
By the mid-1990s, South Beach's cultural renaissance was reaching its peak. Gianni Versace had transformed a Mediterranean-style villa on Ocean Drive into what would become the iconic Versace Mansion. Jaime Cardona, a former Versace model who worked closely with the family, remembers the golden years before Gianni’s assassination—years defined by beauty, excess and creative freedom.
Versace captured Miami’s raw energy in his fashion collections and his unapologetically sex-positive editorials, often shot right on the beach. Flipping through Jaime’s personal archive from that era is like paging through a soft-core fantasy—sun-kissed bodies draped in silk, oozing glamor and confidence. As the saying went: “Armani dressed the wife, Versace dressed the mistress.”
Though Gianni wasn’t a regular on the club scene, he was deeply intrigued by Miami’s underground. He preferred intimate gatherings at his villa—with guests like Madonna, Elton John, Mario Testino, the Estefans, and his inner circle—but he kept a connection to nightlife through The Warsaw Ballroom, Miami Beach’s premier gay club. On Saturday nights, a VIP room there was reserved for Versace and his guests. Jaime would hand-pick the crowd, scouting South Beach for the most striking, magnetic individuals. At the time, receiving an invitation wasn’t just access—it was validation.
Soon, celebrities like Sylvester Stallone and Madonna followed Versace to Miami. In true Miami fashion, the city didn’t hound them with paparazzi. Instead, it offered something better: access to a thriving, unfiltered underground scene in a city that let them be. Drugs were abundant. So was self-expression.
Madonna’s book Sex, released around the same time, amplified that freedom. Alongside its full-frontal provocation, it gave the world a glimpse into the avant-garde spirit pulsing through Miami Beach.
In 1997, Ingrid Casares—Madonna’s former partner—opened Liquid, a club that did more than throw parties. In partnership with Chris Paciello, she redefined the game by booking top-tier DJs for Sunday night gay parties. “By bringing headliners to the gay nights, we were putting queer culture directly in front of the straight community,” she explained. If you wanted to hear Danny Tenaglia, you had to party with the gays. It was brilliant—and boundary-breaking.
A documentary about Club Liquid is set to be released later this year. Keep an eye out.
And here’s to the queens who ran in heels—so we could, too.
Editorial photo campaign by David Vance