“My old man wrote me a letter from prison once. It said, ‘if you don’t want to end up like me, stay away from Crime, Women and Drugs‘. Problem is, it don’t leave you much else to do, does it?” – The Business – a Nick Love movie
“It’s better to be someone for a day, than no one for a lifetime”.
Here is a real innovative move that I just dug from the crates of The Chambers of The G Manifesto:
One of my attorneys introduced me to couple of real estate cats who owned this building with a restaurant on the first floor and some office spaces on the second floor.
The interesting thing about this building was that it was previously owned by some Albania or Russian Organized cats (I forget which) and they had a bar on the lowers and a gambling den (maybe some hookys) on the second floor.
Since the second floor was a little vice ridden, they installed a “secret door” that you could access from this little stairway in the restaurant. There was a button you pushed, and then the wall rose straight up. Real smooth.
Surprisingly, the multi-colored striped-shirted real estate cats that bought the building actually had the style and taste to keep the “secret door” which lead now to some office spaces.
When they showed it to me, I instantly rented one of the office spaces. Not to do work of course, but to swoop fly girls.
I would take girls to the restaurant below (which was actually pretty decent with a chef with some pretty heavy Wolfgang Puck pedigree) and say, “Let me show you something.”
I would then lead them up the stairway, walk to the wall, and hit the button for the “secret door”. The key would be to act like nothing was out of the ordinary, just a normal night in the life.
Girls would always be amazed.
I would then show them my “office” and go for the swoop.
It was really that easy.
Everyone should try to incorporate this move into their repertoire.
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Ingrid Casares & Chris Paciello Back in Biz with The Light Group at the Delano?
If you believe the rumors, South Beach is about to go retro, back to the days when people actually danced at clubs, when real celebrities came to party because they wanted to and not for a carefully orchestrated, trite tabloid photo op, and when the words South Beach and hip together in the same sentence was anything but oxymoronic. That’s right, we have excellent sources telling us that the Captain and Tennille of 90s Miami nightlife, Chris Paciello and Ingrid Casares, are teaming up again, this time as partners in the food and beverage operations at the Delano left recently vacant by Jeffrey Chodorow, who was bought out by the hotel’s owners, Morgans Hotel Group, for $20 million.
Chris Paciello back on South Beach scene at Delano
For the first time since he was released from federal prison five years ago, Miami Beach’s fallen nightscape overlord has returned to where it all started.
Chris Paciello, now 40 and described by some who have run into him as “subdued and humbled,” is settling down at the Delano Hotel.
He’ll be living there for the next few months as he works to give back to the legendary beachside resort its No. 1 ranking among hipsters and celebrities.
Deja view: Mixed reviews on the return of Chris Paciello
Ever since we broke the news that old school South Beach club guy Chris Paciello was returning to his old stomping grounds and possibly reuniting with his former partner Ingrid Casares in the nightlife biz, the reactions have been as polarizing as the Tea Party vs. the Democrats only, instead of tea, it would be vodka. On one side you have the champions, cheerleaders and aging club kids who can overlook his past and subscribe to the Nostalgia Party (there’s already a Chris Paciello Fan Club and “Chris Paciello, The King Is Back” page on Facebook), while on the other side you have those who say it’s just wrong to glorify the return of someone with a criminal past—we’ll call them the Concerned Party. Both sides will argue back and forth over this until the lights come on in the new Light Group-sanctioned Delano hot spot, so there’s really no end to the debate.
Some say people are jealous or nervous that the reunion of the team some say made South Beach the nightlife capital it once was will ruin their own businesses, and others say that people are downright nervous in general, not for business purposes, but for reasons involving personal safety. It’s no secret Paciello had a violent past, for which he has served time in prison. It’s no secret that he had enemies, some who still live and work on South Beach. We spoke to nightlife veteran Gerry Kelly, currently serving as marketing and nightlife operator at Trio On the Bay, who worked with Paciello and wasn’t exactly BFF with the guy back in the day. “I was surprised to hear he was returning to Miami,” Kelly admitted. “I do believe we all learn from our experiences in life. Miami’s nightlife and entertainment culture has changed so much since the late 90s that we all have to adapt and change to keep up with the never ending new trends. The city is definitely big enough for everyone and I wish him the best.”
‘Limelight’: The Rise And Fall Of The Church Of Rave
On Friday, a documentary ostensibly about the rise and fall of a one time club king named Peter Gatien opened in New York (it opens around the country next month). In the early to mid-1990s – the height of rave culture in the U.S. – Gatien owned the biggest clubs in New York City, including Limelight, which lived in a deconsecrated Episcopal Church in the Chelsea neighborhood. Today Gatien lives in Toronto, where he was deported in 2003 after pleading guilty to tax evasion. And Limelight has become a mall. It calls itself a “Festival of Shops.”
Much of the story told in Limelight will be familiar to readers of Clubland, a book chronicling mid-’90s nightlife written by Frank Owen, who covered Limelight at its height and followed its scandalous end in the pages of local alternative weekly the Village Voice. It certainly was to the documentary’s director, Billy Corben, who read the book as he was pursuing another documentary about the man who ran the biggest club in Miami in the mid-’90s. Owen appears frequently as a kind of expert witness in Limelight.
“I had read Clubland because of our interest in Chris Paciello and Liquid in South Beach, and the Miami angle,” says Corben, best known for 2006’s Cocaine Cowboys. Corben and producing partner Albert Spellman still intend to make a movie about Paciello. But first, they’ve made Limelight, which focuses on Gatien, the eye-patched Canadian nightclub impresario who owned Limelight, Palladium, Tunnel and Club U.S.A., who was brought to trial by the City of New York under mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s mid-’90s crime crackdown, alleging that Gatien was overseeing a massive drug ring in his clubs.
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The Rest is Up to You…
Michael Porfirio Mason
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The Guide to Getting More out of Life
Floyd Mayweather Jr., Mark Cuban and Michael Mason on Patriotism
Best quote by Floyd Mayweather Jr. during Floyd Mayweather VS Victor Ortiz Post Fight Interview:
(Start watching at 17:00)
“It’s so crazy. I am in America. The country that I represent, the Red, White and Blue.
I make money in America.
I feed the American citizens, I feed the people that are less fortunate in America.
Even when I make it rain, I am still throwing money to Americans!.”
The Most Patriotic Thing You Can Do by Mark Cuban
Bust your ass and get rich.
Make a boatload of money. Pay your taxes. Lots of taxes. Hire people. Train people. Pay people. Spend money on rent, equipment, services. Pay more taxes.
When you make a shitload of money. Do something positive with it. If you are smart enough to make it, you will be smart enough to know where to put it to work.
I don’t care what anyone says. Being rich is a good thing. Not just in the obvious sense of benefiting you and your family, but in the broader sense. Profits are not a zero sum game. The more you make the more of a financial impact you can have.
I’m not against government involvement in times of need. I am for recognizing that big public companies will continue to cut jobs in an effort to prop up stock prices, which in turn stimulates the need for more government involvement. Every cut job by the big companies extracts a cost on the American people in one way or another.
Entrepreneurs are needed to create and grow companies to absorb those people in new jobs. If entrepreneurs don’t create those jobs, the government ends up having to spend more money to help them one way or another.
So be Patriotic. Go out there and get rich. Get so obnoxiously rich that when that tax bill comes , your first thought will be to choke on how big a check you have to write. Your 2nd thought will be “what a great problem to have”, and your 3rd should be a recognition that in paying your taxes you are helping to support millions of Americans that are not as fortunate as you.
MARK CUBAN: “Any Budget Plan That Is Longer Than The Current President’s Term Is A Crock Of ****”
These are not meant to be researched items. These are “streams of consciousness” from the conversation yesterday’s post created.
First some housekeeping. I DO NOT like paying taxes. In fact I hate to throw good money after bad and the way our federal government spends money is rarely good. HOWEVER, I think that this country has created unique opportunities for entrepreneurs and paying taxes is a small price to pay. In fact, as I wrote yesterday, I’m proud to pay taxes on the rewards I have EARNED through my efforts in the business world. Taxes are not a bad thing, mis-allocation of the money we all contribute is.
So what can be done? Here you go:
1. Transparency.
It had been promised often and never delivered. If there was transparency in our budgets and the actual spending of our dollars, down to the nickel. Someone has to see it and approve it. If they can see it, US citizens (with the exception of classified defense spending) should be able to see it. The value of transparency is that we would benefit from the collective brain power of the American people who would be able to provide us in depth education and information.The power of the people at its best. Sure there would be tons of misinformation as people play the traditional partisan games, but I think that websites that take apolitical approaches to the issues will emerge that we could follow.
With complete transparency we could have our own online Super Committee to look for the best places to cut costs and improve efficiency. Without it, we are at the mercy of a “Super Committee” formed purely to make politicians happy.
