24 Aug ClapClap Articles
Five Reasons Blue Martini is the Only Club You Need 90% of the Time
Hey there Miamians and Miamiers, it’s time to talk about the club scene in Miami. The dim lighting, the pounding bass, the flowing drinks, the lovely ladies…everyone knows this is something the city is known for, but does anyone really know the best place to go? The fact is, locals will remain split on the matter because there’s a fairly different going out vibe to each neighborhood. I’m not here to split hairs on vibes though, I’m here to give the everyman and woman the definitive, generalized, best club to go to 90 percent of the time. Let me be as specific as possible here, I am telling you that 90 percent of the time, when you think to yourself, “damn I’d really like to get down with my bad self in the club tonight”, I have the only club you need (for that 90 percent of the time). Ready for the grand unveil? DUN DUN DUN DUNNNN it’s in the article title silly, obviously I’m talking about Blue Martini.
Ah, Blue Martini. Located near Brickell City Centre, this mid-shelf night club services a wide array of patrons, from the bad and bougie, to the humble and plastered. Here are five reasons why Blue Martini is the only club in Miami that you need, 90 percent of the time.
- The Door Experience
Arguably one of the worst things about clubs is that you need to wait in line to get in. These lines can get ridiculously long, and all but kill your buzz and zest for the night. Not at Blue Martini. This club will have you in the door within minutes of getting in line. How do they do it? I’m not sure, because there’s always a lot of people in there, but for some reason the line is remarkably tame every time. If you’re a pretty lady, you’ll be practically escorted in on a red carpet. You’ve got to love a club that makes you feel like it actually wants you to come in.
- The Cover Charge
Just about every club you go to will require some collateral at the door to make sure your presence in there is padding somepockets. This fee can get ridiculously high at the more premiere clubs, however Blue Martini will never charge you more than 15 as you enter. “But that’s still a good chunk of change!” you might say. Perhaps, but remember my friend, we’re talking about clubshere, not bars. You want into the club, any kind of decent club, you’re almost always going to have to pay. Blue Martini is not a top shelf establishment, but it still possesses more than enough of the class one would want to see to feel like you’re actually in a club, not just a sweaty rave pit. Go inside and you’ll quickly see that 15 dollars was a pretty fair deal.
- High Class Ambiance, Without the Pretentiousness
I say Blue Martini is a mid-shelf club, but keep in mind I’m comparing it to the likes of Miami legends such as Club Space and Eleven. If you’re like me and untold scores of others, these places are just too pricey to frequent unless you’re one of those classic Miami ballers (or one of the many music moguls living down here). Yet you’d still like to feel like you’re worthy of some class sometimes, and Blue Martini has it. With a stellar playlist of the latest electronic and pop music (often deviating to some Latin jams), cool blue ambient lighting, a sleek, modern interior design, and the occasional exotic dancer grooving behind the bar, Blue Martini will make you feel like you’ve walked into something high-end, something exclusive even. Yet there’s no pomp and circumstance here, just grab a drink, bob your head, and strike up a conversation; you’re at home.
- Drink Prices
Need I say more? Obviously you can find yourself a bottle of Don Julio and murder your bank account in cold blood, but there are many other affordable options at Blue Martini. Most beers and staple mixies will go for less than ten or eleven dollars and often you can even find deals that will snag you a brew for five or less. The short end of it: you can have yourself a plenty good night here and still find your bank account alive and kicking the next day.
- The Dance Floor
This last reason is not alwaysat top form, but most of the time it can be if you’re in the right mood. Blue Martini’s dance floor is always active in some way, shape, or form, and it’ll generally react to be whatever you want it to be. If you’re feeling chill, you just want to head bob and sip, the table setup on the dance floor’s fringe has plenty of elbow-leaning space and fellow clubbers who are feeling similarly unprepared to cut loose. At the same time, if you’re trying to go hard, you’ll find that people are more than willing to fire up the floor with you. If it’s a quieter night they’ll make some space for you, unless I’m just that frightening when I dance.
Summing up
Honestly, Blue Martini is just the perfect utility club. You’ll get everything you want out of a club, but without paying Miami club prices. The space is cool, the people are chill, and also you can get a hookah, which I forgot to mention earlier. So yeah, 90 percent of the time, Blue Martini is your spot. The other ten percent, you can do what you want with.
To Drive, or Not to Drive: Do You Really Need a Car in Miami?
I remember when I first made the decision to move to Miami, one of the biggest issues I discussed with my parents was how Miami is a “driving city”. It just so happened that the old family minivan had just recently fallen into my possession and was looking fit for one last trek down the east coast, so I went ahead with our assumption and brought the van with me. Now, almost a year later, I’ve learned a lot about the city and how best to get around it, and I think I’m finally ready to tackle the question for anyone else who might be in the same dilemma I was in one year ago.
I’ll start by saying that I agree with anyone who says Miami is a driving city. It’s perfectly possible to walk around the individual neighborhoods, easier than most cities even, since so many people are driving instead of walking. However, the city is spread out over about a fourteen mile stretch from South Miami to North Miami, and public transportation can hardly be relied upon to get you from end to end. If you want to get anywhere on your schedule (I’ll pretend for the sake of argument, that more developed metro systems such as the MTA’s in New York actually function efficiently), you need access to a car.
That Miami is a driving city is not a death sentence for those without vehicles, though. I know a number of people who live here without any kind of vehicle and they manage just fine by getting rides from Lyft and Uber. These ridesharing services flourish in cities like Miami, and they are generally reliable. That would conclude the short end of “do you need a car in Miami?”, but the debate doesn’t end there.
Let’s say you’re someone like me, who lives in the southern limits of Brickell, down by the causeway to Key Biscayne. My nearest grocery store is a twenty-minute walk, the same for the nearest drug store, every other kind of store is at least a twenty-five-minute walk away, and my gym and school are each about a fifteen-minute drive from my apartment. For me to get to literally any of the things that I need, I either need to call a ride or make quite a long walk in Miami heat, then make that walk back while carrying things. This not only creates a dependency on Lyft and Uber that eats at the wallet, it creates what we might call “a pain in the ass”. There are many places in Miami that are situated similarly to my apartment, and for people that live in those places without cars, you’re stuck paying five dollars every time you want to get anywhere. Less than ideal.
Of course, like any city, parking can be a bitch in Miami. I’ve racked up a number of parking tickets at the hands of this struggle, and there are places which I will not even consider driving to because of the lack of affordable parking. If you want to look at the vehicle debate purely through the lens of finding somewhere to put your car, you might end that debate here. Parking smart and learning the areas can mitigate this issue, though.
To sum up: I recommend having a car here, if you already have access to one. At the very least you should have a moped or even just a bicycle. The cost of gas is much cheaper than the cost of calling a ride to go everywhere and you can achieve an independence with your own wheels that becomes incredibly valuable. Lumped in with this independence is your ability to drive away from the city in the face of any large hurricanes. The roads might get crazy, but I’d rather sit in traffic and get away then be stuck in the storm realizing that no Uber or Lyft will come pick you up to go to the airport because they’ve all left.
