Wednesday, June 28, 11 p.m. Are the artist's paintings so absurd because she knew no one would be looking at them? Not that there's anything wrong with a painting of a little girl kneeling in a snowstorm, playing with a pack of pint-sized white elephants (am I missing a metaphor here?). While there is precious little art appreciation going on at Firefly on Paradise's Midnight Snack Wednesdays, there is plenty of nibbling, grooving, unwinding and imbibing—pure Miami-style lounge life nestled in a strip mall on Flamingo and Paradise.
I'm in the market for a chill night, something removed from the madness and chaotic press of nightclub crowds, yet cool enough to entertain the likes of two smart and sassy Manhattan PR gals scouting out Vegas before their store, Intermix—a New-York based boutique specializing in both established and emerging designers—opens at the Forum Shops in August. "I'm soooo glad we're off the Strip and out of the casinos," one of the fashionistas sighs, easing out of meeting mode and plunging gratefully into a cold beer.
We take a table by the window, one that was once upon a time occupied by a hotel vice president on what he thought was a covert date with one of his employees—one his wife surely would not have approved of. It was a frightful night for me and my date, hiding behind menus, with me literally crouching behind the bar's pony wall to make trips to the ladies room. Part of me wanted to blow his cover but a more influential part of me wanted to keep my job.
"I hope you're writing all this stuff down," my editor has said, laughing at tales of my wild misadventures while getting to know this city. I assure him that when it comes out someday, my book will include all those juicy details, juicy as an overripe berry and guaranteed to get me in at least a little trouble.
Seated now at that very table, I have another agonizing decision to make: red sangria or white? Perhaps one of each? Small plates of spicy, smoky Merguez sausage follow; then red snapper ceviche with fresh avocado, ham and cheese croquettes; and my favorite, bacon-wrapped, stuffed dates, which cause my eyes to roll back in spasms of gustatory ecstasy. The warm, sweet and savory creation, served in a gooey reduction with pungent blue cheese crumbles, is enough to rival dates of the breathing and jacket-and-tie-wearing variety any day.
By 11:30, there is a palpable shift in mood. The already dim restaurant and lounge darken further, the music takes a decidedly trance-y turn for the better, and the crowd's overall level of excitement kicks up a notch. Tonight's gathering looks sophisticated and generally jovial. Pitchers of sangria do wonders, I find, for the room's pulse. The midnight snackers chatter, laugh, argue and tell stories in a volume just over that of the music, moving out to couches in the lounge to better hear the sounds of DJs and promoters Jason Lema and Douglass Gibbs, spinning until 2 a.m.
Attesting to the impermanence of things in Vegas, exactly one week later, on July 5, I return to find that artist Brandy Woods has replaced the former tenant on the walls, and the DJ rig and operation has been uprooted and relocated to the lounge's patio, where percussionist Cayce Woody is warming up amid the crowd. The skin on his calloused hands is hard as oak, and taut as the Naugahyde stretched across the more exotic woods of his drums. He bandages his hands with surgical tape in preparation for the musical assault.
Heads bob and nod in rhythmic union to DJ Supra's (a.k.a. Shawna Dong) beats. Like the wine, the music lulls some into a serene stupor while it charges others up like battery cells. In the course of my two consecutive Wednesdays at Midnight Snack, I easily encounter 10 groups of friends, each out with different missions. Some are celebrating birthdays, such as the Weekly's brand manager, Adrienne Hester; some, like me, catch up on gossip over garlic shrimp and cocktails, and others are just chillin' like villains.
Sometimes you want to go places where the DJ personally greets everyone, where the sangria flows like ... er ... wine, and (sing along with me now) "where everybody knows your name ...." And on that last point, villainous vice presidents should be wary.
Xania Woodman thinks globally and parties locally. And frequently. E-mail her at
[email protected] and visit
www.TheCircuitLV.com to sign up for Xania's free weekly newsletter.