Amika Opening Review

Miami

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home > nightlife&clubs > Amika Opening Review

July 18, 2004 11:24 PM
by

On Friday night I had been invited out with a group of friends to the opening of new hot spot Amika.

The CoolJunkie ‘Boy About Town’ Craig Demo couldn’t make it unfortunately - he was booked for a DJ gig last minute so it was left up to me to cover the action.

I was curious to see what Tony Guerra had done to the old Shadow Lounge space. Hang on wasn’t it Liquid for a heartbeat there? Oh well never mind.

Anyway it turns out my friends had a VIP table waiting at the club so when we got there at 11.30pm we were swept past the crowd and handed a glass of champagne as we walked in. A great way to start the night!

The place was packed but it wasn’t so full you couldn’t have fun. It had an almost retro vibe to it, as all the cocktail waitresses were wearing mod-inspired black and white mini dresses.

The space itself remains basically unchanged. The DJ booth has been relocated from its high position at Shadow Lounge to the back wall facing the large dance floor.

Upstairs there is another lounge area but unfortunately that wasn’t open for the night. The rest rooms and bar are in the same positions thankfully, as the large bar makes it easy to get served.

The crowd were dressed up and out to have fun. And of course there were the usual South Beach faces who always attend club openings.

Buster and A3TV were also there running around filming all the hot girls. There were also photographers everywhere including CJ Photographer Dan Vidal who, wisely staying away from the dangers of the DJ booth, was getting quite a lot of attention from the ladies on the dance floor.

Musically I was impressed. For the time I was there, local favorite Shawn Rudnick was on the decks.

Shawn’s set was all house music, and what made it so great was that he kept throwing in some classic house tracks with lots of vocals to kept the non-music crowd happy and dancing. (BTW Shawn if you are reading this send the interview in!!)

With my old school house music background, I kept saying remember this song? remember that one? to people who had no idea what I was talking about.

Needless to say today I can’t even remember what the heck they were. (Sorry guys you need a better train-spotter for that).

I didn’t notice too many visuals except there were some very cool colored Amika logos floating around on the back wall. Also melting away on the bar was a huge ice sculpture in the shape of the ‘A’ from the Amika logo.

The weirdest part of the night had to be when I was making my way across the dancefloor and the smoke machine filled up the place. For a second it was like something out of the twilight zone as I couldn’t see anyone around me.

Tony Guerra himself was a great host coming over to check we were all having fun.

I am not sure what the regular line up will be but if the great time I had last night is anything to go by, Amika will be here to stay.