Audio By Carbonatix
As a marketing director, nightclub maven Teddi Alyce Segal helped create the chic, upscale atmosphere at South Beach hot spots like the Strand and Liquid. The kind of places where beautiful people congregate to flaunt their VIP status and everyone else hopes they can pass muster with the doormen and make it past the red-velvet ropes.
In fact Segal likes to take credit for introducing to the area “European bottle service,” a system by which patrons with reservations sit in a private area and purchase entire bottles of booze, then have them delivered to their table along with mixers and glasses so they can make their own drinks to taste.
“I felt that it had gone too far,” Segal now says of the elitist system she helped foster. “I left Liquid about a year and a half ago.” In the interim she’s whipped up Velvet Lounge — her answer to partying in lavish digs without the attitude — which opens tonight (January 13).
Leading a recent tour through the newly renovated, 9000-square-foot club in Fort Lauderdale — formerly the home of both Septembers and Bell Bottoms nightclubs — she throws around phrases like “inclusive, not exclusive.”
“We don’t want people to feel intimidated to come here,” she says, later explaining that the reserved-seating-only Bottle Bar with $125-minimum tables is not a VIP area. OK.
Anyway, there are plenty of other hip places to hang at the luxuriously decorated, multilevel club designed by Andrew Kostas, who put together the interiors of Liquid and Bash, among other South Beach destinations. As the name implies, velvet is a staple decorating element here, lots of it: red and black velvet on walls and draped around the Bottle Bar, royal-blue and black velvet couches. Velvet overload is prevented by dark oak floors, exposed beams, and columns, as well as red-brick walls and padded leather hallway walls in camel.
Upon entering, clubbers will find a selection of candy, cigars, cigarettes, and Velvet Lounge T-shirts at the concession counter to the right of the front doors. Straight ahead, a few steps up from the main floor, is the Bottle Bar. Beyond that is the generous sunken dance floor, above which is the stage, where dancers and live acts will perform. Center stage is the towering, altarlike DJ booth, from which resident DJ Tibo will spin sets of acid-jazz, house, and trance dance music.
The far side of the room is occupied by the Gallery Bar, where exhibitions of fine art will change every couple of weeks. That area also features a cozy collection of fuzzy velvet couches, throw pillows, and a wall of candles for ambiance.
Atmosphere is something the place has plenty of. Now all it needs is a crowd stylish yet unpretentious enough to fulfill Segal’s promise of a South Beach scene sans the snobbery.
