Diary of a South Beach Party Girl

[web_norah]

thumbs up for making a quick buck !

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n her debut novel, former party girl Cooper smartly focuses on the fringe freaks who fueled the nightlife in the nauseatingly hip late 1990s South Beach: über-publicist Ricky Pascal, petulant heiress Amy, sexy felon John Hood and a host of bar workers and bar hoppers who hobnob with the rich even as they scramble to make their own rent. Rachel Baum—poet, aspiring publicist and hard-partying diva—narrates the frenetic scene from a prime VIP-room seat. The air kissing, photo-ops and drug-and-liquor indulging is the price of admission to the much more subtle seduction of Rachel and her entourage.

"South Beach was a town in the business of seduction," Rachel notes. "Sometimes the sheer, overwhelming beauty of the place and its inhabitants was so sharp, it was almost painful." Rachel's love affair with the South Beach party scene ends when her search for "stability versus chaos" takes precedence over the addictive charm of a community that so readily forgives and forgets every destructive bender she (and everyone else) goes on. But it hardly matters: South Beach—and all of its neon-vodka-narcotic glamour—is a much better draw than the predictable mellowing of a party chick.

[pod]

The general buzz is "who the hell is she?"

[web_norah]

i thought the same, who the hell is this party girl?

[endymion]

Never heard of her either but I can definitely identify with this:

[quote author=web_norah link=board=6;threadid=38994;start=0#msg435762 date=1176897962]
Rachel's love affair with the South Beach party scene ends when her search for "stability versus chaos" takes precedence over the addictive charm of a community that so readily forgives and forgets every destructive bender she (and everyone else) goes on.
[/quote]

Somehow I found stability living in the middle of this zoo. It can be hard though.

[pod]

It's why I live off the beach. I don't want my apt turning into Grand Central station.

[endymion]

Originally Posted by pod

It's why I live off the beach. I don't want my apt turning into Grand Central station.

Well see I like that part. Sometimes. I have lived here for something like five years and I have seen some people fizzle out from getting caught up in all of the excitement. Not a lot of people, but the ones who get really into coke tend to flare out in really tragic ways. Bad place to live for a compulsive personality. Especially a really hot young woman with a compulsive personality and no particular job skills.

[web_norah]

Well, living off the beach for me was a better deal cost-wise ..and better in the parking dilemma.

[pod]

Heh, funny you bring that up. Remind me to tell you some sordid stories sometime.

I've seen it a million times in the decade I've been in this area. People move to the beach, get swallowed up by the the 'scene', and they end up getting spit out with a whole host of addictions and bad habits.

[endymion]

Originally Posted by web_norah

Well, living off the beach for me was a better deal cost-wise ..and better in the parking dilemma.

If you live here then you can walk everywhere. I don't buy gas and I don't need a gym membership so it can balance out if you plan it right. I don't think that the girl's novel was about parking.

So this is like a Carl Hiassen satirical novel about the South Beach party scene? Sounds like a fun book, I might get it.

[pod]

From the gist of it, it's not satirical really, but more of an account of what this person saw and experienced.

I'd rather it be satirical, throw some people under the bus, ya know.