by Guest Writer | Oct 28, 2010 | Fort Lauderdale
Surprisingly, with no notice, the new club Vibe located on Las Olas in downtown Ft. Lauderdale opened to the public on Wednesday, sort of. After months of being draped in shockingly tall black screens on the corner of Southeast 3rd Ave. and Las Olas, Vibe finally had its soft-opening. Brought to you by the creators of YOLO, and immediately adjacent to YOLO, the outside unsurprisingly has a very YOLO-esque fire pit (this one rectangular, with brick painted white), to bring the total number of fire pits in that plaza to two. The door man checking his guest list on his iPad, which is apparently good for making lists, said the hard-opening is on Friday, sans list. But Wednesday night, despite the list, he graciously let this FTLC correspondent inside despite my icon not popping up on his tiny computer.
Having come from free-drink heaven at YOLO’s ladies’ night, I expected expensive drinks at this new club, but upon ordering a Miller Lite and a white wine spritzer for my friend, it was all free! Ahh…Wednesdays. Ahh…soft-opening at a new club. That’s what she said. Anyway, I’m classy so I poured my beer in a glass.
Decor…the walls are white and lumpy. Upon closer inspection those lumps (sorry Fergie) are…butts! And boobs! Although honestly, the boobs seemed a bit subtle for Las Olas…again, classy. Regardless, it looks damn cool. Sidenote, that enormous butt in the picture accompanying this article is outside…inside the butts are smaller, or at least the ones on the wall.
Vibe has a stage-ish area for live music next to the dj booth. A live flamenco band (with a booty-shaking dancer) played until sound issues almost-immediately ended their set, never to return. Here’s hoping that going forward the sound is fixed and we get some good live music downtown. You never know.
One interesting fact: no mirrors in the bathrooms. Surely this aggression against all Las Olas is about cannot stand. I am confident Vibe will obtain mirrors.
Overall Vibe: promising.
– Guest Writer Twisted Blond
by Guest Writer | Sep 27, 2010 | Fort Lauderdale
by Guest Writer Brady Newbill
Often times over the course of my life when I’ve sought some kind of peace of mind or understanding in this chaotic reality, I have found such solace in the almost hypnotically wise and natural music of Neil Young. And so a few months ago when I saw the announcement that Neil would be doing a solo show at the Seminole Hard Rock, I threw up in my mouth a little bit. For the Seminole Hard Rock, as I already knew, is the very antithesis of anything natural, pure or wise; and therefore the environmental antithesis of everything I feel when hearing Neil Young’s music. But I went anyway, simply because I had never seen Neil live before and after spending the majority of my life missing him due to circumstantial or financial reasons, I was ready to see him anywhere at anytime….just to see the man.
And so in the weeks leading up to the show I became increasingly excited, feeling a strength in the force upon the imminent arrival of a true Jedi master (it should be understood at this point that one of the only ways outside of Neil Young’s music to draw understanding of the world for me is to realize life as a never-ending series of Star Wars references). The disturbance of having to infiltrate the Seminole Hard Rock (aka “the house” or “the Death Star”) was especially eased on the way to the show when I learned that American musical treasure Allen Toussaint would be opening. “Wow”, I thought as we were sitting in traffic, “that might actually be enough Jedi purity to counterbalance the power of the Dark Side emitted from that God-less epicenter of materialism, superficiality, and greed.”
We walked in a couple of songs into Toussaint’s set and sat in our seats in the front row of the third level, mysteriously facing away from the stage with three steel bars directly in our line of vision. “Oh this is nice,” I thought, “I didn’t actually want to see the stage anyway.” Concerts are always much more enjoyable when you wake up with a sore neck the next day. But that wasn’t my real problem here. Allen Toussaint, musical genius and historic bridge between jazz and rock & roll, is on stage alone at a piano singing songs and telling stories. And that is a wonderful situation completely lost on this crowd- talking throughout his set and even at one point, in the middle of a story, almost boo-ing him off the stage. I was disgusted and ashamed of my hometown crowd- seemingly unwilling to give anything they don’t hear on Big 106 every day a chance to teach them something.
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by Guest Writer | Jul 13, 2010 | Funny, Local Business
by Adelina Ridicolo
Yesterday FTLC showcased the opinion of one man’s distaste with the popular hangout spot, America’s Backyard. Today, we have a rebuttal.
An undifferentiated glob of lameness? Sounds like somebody’s bartender forgot the pillow talk. As a native South Floridian and a loyal FTL downtowner, I especially despise the naïve amateurs rolling in for Spring Break congesting up our beaches and over-crowding our watering holes. But maybe if we weren’t the prime location for these college girls to experiment and for the “Guido’s” to show off their muscles, then FTL wouldn’t have evolved into what it is today. I’d like to take this time to reference back to the 1987 movie Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise, which is based on a college break trip made to our very own Ft. Lauderdale. Not to veer off subject, but my point is it’s not all THAT bad.
As far as Guido’s being a constant clientele at AB, I disagree that this demographic is typical outside of Spring Break Season. I don’t know what the author of the previous article meant by AB “exploiting Latin-Guido culture”, but yes — people of Latin heritage come to AB. We live in South Florida, Latin and Guido are two different classifications, which someone who lives in South Florida surely can tell the difference.
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Surprisingly, with no notice, the new club Vibe located on Las Olas in downtown Ft. Lauderdale opened to the public on Wednesday, sort of. After months of being draped in shockingly tall black screens on the corner of Southeast 3rd Ave. and Las Olas, Vibe finally had its soft-opening. Brought to you by the creators of YOLO, and immediately adjacent to YOLO, the outside unsurprisingly has a very YOLO-esque fire pit (this one rectangular, with brick painted white), to bring the total number of fire pits in that plaza to two. The door man checking his guest list on his iPad, which is apparently good for making lists, said the hard-opening is on Friday, sans list. But Wednesday night, despite the list, he graciously let this FTLC correspondent inside despite my icon not popping up on his tiny computer.
