Fool's Paradise: Players, Poseurs, and the Culture of Excess in South Beach - Hardcover

Gaines, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0307346277 ISBN 13: 9780307346278

Publisher: Crown, 2009

Synopsis

From the acclaimed bestselling author of Philistines at the Hedgerow comes a remarkably revealing profile of the Miami Beach no one knows–a tale of fabulous excess, thwarted power, and rekindled lives that will take its place among the decade’s best works of social portraiture.

Created from a mix of swampland and dredged-up barrier reef, Miami Beach has always been one part drifter-mecca and one part fantasyland, simultaneously a catch basin for con men, fast-talk artists, and shameless self-promoters, and a Shangri-La for sun worshippers and hardcore hedonists. In Miami Beach it’s often said that "if you’re not indicted you’re not invited." But the city’s mad, fascinating complexity resists easy stereotyping.

Fool’s Paradise is more than just a present-day profile of a dark Eden. Gaines journeys back into the city’s social and cultural history, unearthing stories of the resort’s past that are every bit as absorbing–and jaw-dropping–as those of its present. The book begins with a snapshot of the city’s current excess (this is, after all, a sun-washed hamlet that boasts, on a per capita basis, more bars–and breast implants–than any other place in America), then plunges into the Beach’s origins, chronicling the audacious rise of such hoteliers as the Fontainebleau’s Ben Novack and the Eden Roc’s Harry Mufson, the sharp-elbowed tactics of Al Capone and Frank Sinatra, and the Mac-10 shooting sprees of the Marielito and Colombian drug lords.

From there, the narrative shifts to two wildly eccentric souls who gave their lives to preserving the city’s architectural dazzle and creating its color palette, introduces us to "the Most Powerful Man in Miami Beach," and arrives finally in the modern day, where we meet, among others, a kinky German playboy who once owned a quarter of South Beach and publicly flaunts his sexual escapades; a fabulously successful nightclub promoter whose addictive past seems to have given him a portal into the night world’s id; and a gaggle of young sexy models, dreamers, and schemers on a mission to achieve significance.

Evoking the Beach’s surreal blend of flashy Vegas and old Hollywood glamour, as well as its manic desperation and reckless wealth, Gaines persuasively demonstrates that though the Beach is–in the words of its most famous drag queen–"an island of broken toys . . . a place where people get away with things they’d never get away with anyplace else," it casts an irresistible spell.

About this title

About the Author:

Steven Gaines is an author, journalist, and the host, from 2003 to 2010, of Sunday Brunch Live on NPR. He has written for Vanity Fair, The New York Observer, The New York Times, Los Angeles magazine, Worth, and Connoisseur, and is the nationally bestselling author of more than a dozen books, including Philistines at the Hedgerow and Fool’s Paradise.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

One

Socialites

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

--Oscar Wilde

EVEN IN A CITY WHERE RESTRAINT IS NOT CONSIDERED A VIRTUE, AMBER RIDINGER'S BAT MITZVAH PROMISED TO BE SOMETHING SPECIAL.

It was a balmy Saturday night in November, with air so soft and sweet you could almost taste it, and a big, chalk white moon hung over Miami. Outside of The Forge restaurant and Glass nightclub on Arthur Godfrey Road four klieg lights on the back of a flatbed truck were making loopy pink circles in the sky, part of a pastel halo that seemed to float over the city like the aurora borealis. Miles out to sea, the light show was visible to the thousands of passengers aboard the city-size cruise ships that had disembarked from the port of Miami an hour or so before, all in a line, bow to stern, heading off to the Caribbean like a string of diamonds on a navy sea.

The pink spotlights were part of the hoopla heralding the thirteenth birthday party of Amber Ridinger. At a cost of over $500,000, it was said to be the most expensive coming-of-age celebration ever held in Miami Beach, and the biggest party of its kind since Henry Ford's coming-out gala for his daughter at the Bath Club. More than two hundred guests were expected to attend, including New York Mets catcher Mike Piazza and his wife, former Playboy Playmate Alicia Rickter, who'd given Amber a $10,000 Cartier Pasha white-gold watch for her birthday. Even that largesse was surpassed by the singer and actress Jennifer Lopez, a family friend of relatively recent acquaintance, who presented Amber with the most lavish birthday gift of all--a $100,000, 30-carat diamond bracelet. Rap stars Ja Rule, Omarion, and Marques Houston were expected to entertain, and Amber herself was going to provide divertissement by introducing her own line of clothing called Gossip in an elaborate runway show. The music would be supplied by the superstar disc jockey DJ AM, best known to readers of Us Magazine as Adam Horowitz, the studly serial dater of Paris Hilton's posse. The bat mitzvah girl was also going to introduce her own signature fragrance, Amber No. 13, packaged in custom-designed crystal bottles with Amber's personal logo, each gift-wrapped in pink bows and placed on every table for the guests to take home. The New York Post's gossip column, "Page Six," which doesn't do much bat mitzvah reporting, ran an item saying that Amber, an eighth-grade student at Miami Country Day School, was expected to wear a $26,000 purple-and-silver Dolce & Gabbana gown to her birthday party.

Amber was in "Page Six" because the bat mitzvah also had a publicist, Tara Solomon, of Tara Ink. Ms. Solomon, who hailed from Fort Myers, Florida, was herself a local celebrity and nightlife fixture, a bosomy version of Gidget gone awry, who also wrote an advice column for the Miami Herald called "Advice Diva." Ms. Solomon alerted the gossip columns and sent out press releases about the bat mitzvah, one of which was headlined butterflies and bling--it's a bat mitzvah thing! The press release noted that "a limited number of escorted cameras will be allowed inside the venue," which is why the night of the bat mitzvah there was a wolf pack of jostling television news cameramen, reporters, and paparazzi in front of the faux eighteenth-century French facade of The Forge, attacking en masse every time a stretch limousine or lollipop-colored muscle car pulled up to the VIP carpet to disgorge guests, mostly local Miami Beach celebrities such as Dr. Jeff Kamlet, the town's busiest addiction doctor; Thomas Kramer, Miami Beach's scandal-plagued Bad Boy real estate developer; Michael Capponi, the nightlife uberpromoter and his model girlfriend Erin Henry; Elaine Lancaster, a staple of the social scene and beloved drag queen who is over seven feet tall in her wig; pop singer Vanessa ("A Thousand Miles") Carlton; Irv Gotti, the formerly indicted CEO of Murder Inc. Records; and stylish hip-hop impresario Damon Dash and his wife, fashion designer Rachel Roy.

Inside The Forge restaurant the bordello-like decor had been feebly disguised in keeping with the bat mitzvah's theme as an Amberland of "Butterflies and Bling." From the restaurant's ceiling in the Dome room hung what looked like a swarm of glittering bugs but were in fact synthetic butterflies, dangling on filament thread above the heads of the guests, along with a purported 42,000 sparkling Swarovski crystals, which supplied the bling. The walls had been draped in white satin, pink flower petals littered the floors, and the restaurant's $20 million wine cellar had been turned into a "Candy Land" where two Little People dressed in munchkinlike white overalls and wigs stood on a table spread with candies and sweets as well as a fountain spouting warm chocolate in which to dip strawberries. The Little People grinned gamely at the guests, who grinned back.

Around 9:30 p.m., Amber Ridinger herself arrived, emerging from the back of a stretch limousine in a flurry of strobe lights along with rap superstar Ja Rule and the platinum-selling singer Ashanti. Amber had dark eyes, pale pink lips, and dark hair piled on top of her head, a few strands of which escaped from under a diamond coronet and fell in her face. There was an endearing awkwardness to the thirteen-year-old as she made her way up the VIP carpet in her ill-fitting $26,000 Dolce & Gabbana gown while photographers shouted "Amber! Amber! Look this way!" like she was a movie star.

Inside The Forge, Amber's beaming parents were watching her arrival on a live video feed being shown throughout the restaurant on flat-screen televisions. "The party was really just meant to fulfill Amber's every vision and every dream," Loren Ridinger, thirty-eight, told a reporter. Mrs. Ridinger was dressed in a low-cut red print dress with spaghetti straps, and her husband, James "JR" Ridinger, fifty-five, was wearing a white tuxedo jacket with a white satin collar and a white shirt open at the neck. The Ridingers both had very white teeth, in contrast to their deep suntans, and they looked years younger than their ages.

The Ridingers had been identified that week with a thrift of description by the Miami SunPost as "money-heavy socialites." They'd materialized about ten years earlier from Greensboro, North Carolina, where they created a company out of their garage that sold household products over the Internet called Market America Worldwide, Inc. In 2006, Market America was grossing nearly $300 million a year in revenues, with annual sales projected to reach $1 billion by 2010. The firm was so rich that the Ridingers reportedly had $100 million in cash just sitting in the company's accounts. Back in Greensboro, Ridinger had run into some trouble with the SEC when he created a shell company to take Market America public and then sold shares without disclosing he had an interest in the company. Soon after paying the SEC a fine, the Ridingers moved to Miami. Like so many others, they were looking for fresh horizons and beautiful sunsets over the Everglades.

Miami Beach is a city of neophiliacs where people are mesmerized by shiny new things, and the newcomers du jour quickly rose to the top of the social strata--at least someone's social strata. They built a remarkable $25 million waterfront chateau-style house on North Bay Road, one of the city's toniest streets. The house had a formal living room with a trompe l'oeil ceiling painted with chariots and angels, and there were crystal chandeliers, gold-leaf-gilded crown moldings, and a marble bust of Beethoven. The Ridingers also had their own ballroom, in which they threw galas for the other money-heavy socialites. Mrs. Ridinger owned so many expensive Judith Leiber pocketbooks that they were locked in a display case in her bedroom. There was a stable of eighteen cars, including a Rolls-Royce Phantom, an Aston Martin, and a Mercedes McClaren--one of only five in the United States--and a staff of thirty-one, including chauffeurs and yacht crew. The couple also owned two boats, a $6 million 20-footer and an $18 million, 156-foot yacht, the latter of which they took to Manhattan in the summers to escape Miami's tropical heat. They kept it berthed at Chelsea Piers while they lived in a penthouse suite at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. The couple was also known for their generosity to charities and their friends. They'd befriended an impressive variety of A-list celebrities, including singers Jennifer Lopez and her husband Marc Anthony, and Madonna, who was wary of most people and hard to get to know, yet who felt comfortable enough with the Ridingers to use their six-room guest cottage instead of staying in a hotel when she was in Miami.

Tara Solomon hit a home run for the Ridingers in the press. Amber's birthday party made the front page of the Miami Herald and the cover of the Style section of the New York Times and was featured in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Amber's pink-carpet arrival was seen on the 11:00 p.m. news on several local TV outlets in Miami, and it was featured in segments on Inside Edition, Access Hollywood, and Geraldo at Large. MTV ran a news story about the party called "Torah Down the House," and on CNN, in a segment about expensive parties for teens, Loren Ridinger was seen saying to Amber, "You're a great kid and don't be mad at Mommy if everything's not perfect."

There was just one thing that wasn't perfect.

Amber Ridinger wasn't raised Jewish.

Her father had been brought up Methodist, and the family celebrated Christmas--but Amber's maternal grandmother, who died when she was only seven months old, was Jewish, which made Amber's mother Jewish, and in Miami Beach, that's enough to throw a bat mitzvah. Rabbi Zev Katz, thirty-four, who officiated at Amber's extravaganza, admitted he did not perform a bat mitzvah ceremony. The bearded and jovial Rabbi Katz was the quintessential Miami Beach Lubavitcher rabbi, who could be found weekdays with his "Chabad ...

About this edition

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0307346277
• ISBN 13: 9780307346278
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288