Anyone who has ever done Art Basel in Miami Beach knows that there are more fairs, events, and activations than anyone can manage. Out of all the global art fairs, it’s probably the one where people party the most, and not just art insiders, but also celebrities. It’s basically a cluster fuck of art, fashion, luxury, design, travel, music and food. I arrive in Miami from California with an annoying cough thanks to an upper respiratory virus my cousin-in-law unwillingly passed along to me during the Thanksgiving holiday. Instead of catching a bug midweek and losing my voice somewhere on the party frontlines of Miami Beach as usual, I arrive without one.

Monday

I land in a mask and rush to my first dinner of the night, hosted by Surface magazine and Olujo tequila, which I later learn is a top-shelf $500 tequila with a very sexy bottle. I arrive at Chateau ZZ’s, the two-year-old members-only club just as remarks were underway, but before the first course was served. I wasn’t planning to drink, but I sat next to Olujo’s brand director, who tells me to have a glass neat. I listen– it was nice and smooth. I decline an invitation to the after-party at Le Specialità, the famed Milanese restaurant that just opened a location here.

Tuesday 

I get a fresh Northern Lights manicure at Vanity Projects because its founder, Rita Pinto, won’t allow me to raw dog during Miami Art Week. That afternoon is Sam Moyer’s opening at Young Arts, after which I head to Mac’s Club Deuce, the notorious dive bar, where Room 13, a global art world members club, is holding drinks after a cruise on Biscayne Bay. Monica Salazar, the founder of Berlin Art Link, is sitting with Callum Hale-Thomson, founder of First Thursday, an app that allows galleries to track all their interactions. After a tequila, I grab dinner at my favorite quick eats place on Miami Beach, La Sandwicherie (SoBe Club: turkey, avocado and brie, and all the accoutrements stuffed into a baguette). We pass Twist, the legendary Miami Beach gay club before arriving at The Wolfsonian, FIU’s museum, where Golden Goose is hosting a party to celebrate Marco Brambilla’s exhibition, featuring a series of animated World’s Fair monuments. We book a car to the newly-renovated Moore Building, now home to a members’ club, where Adam Abdalla, the man who helped kickstart my career, is hosting a party to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his agency Cultural Counsel, which attracted a mix of journalists, curators, and artists. “Should we go to this weird sex room?” I overhear a group of crypto bros ask. I point to what appears to be an electricity closet. I convince a young lad to steal a stray bottle of tequila, which we bring to the first night of Silencio’s residency at the Basement in the Edition Miami Beach. We run into artists Hank Willis Thomas and Derek Adams before going downstairs, where we pass the bottle of tequila around, taking swigs like teenagers. Mickalene Thomas and I catch up on the banquette. I call it a night at around 3am.

Wednesday 

The next morning, I hit the snooze button until I finally get out of bed and pull myself together. I walk to Casa Tua, where Serpentine Galleries is hosting a VIP Brunch before the opening of Art Basel fair. The spread is impeccable so I pile heapfuls of scrambled eggs and potatoes and pray I’ll swallow down my hangover with them. At Art Basel I walk around until I see the name Touch Me Sculpture One More Time by MSCHF at Perrotin’s stand, which, as its name describes, displays a counter which goes up each time it’s touched. Page Six’s Mara Siegler catches me, and we go on our annual hunt for Leonardo DiCaprio. We don’t find him, but we do stumble upon a crowd watching Beeple’s latest sensation, Regular Animals consisting of moving police robot dog bodies, with lifelike heads of three tech titans (Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerburg, and Elon Musk) and three artists (Beeple, Andy Warhol, and Pablo Picasso) shitting out Beeple prints, which are being handed out in plastic bags labeled ‘Excrement Sample’. I sit around hoping Jeff Bezos will appear to stare at his own face. He doesn’t.

Later in the night, while Family Style is holding their annual dinner with Cartier at Cipriani over in Miami, and Japanese female wrestlers battle for the win in the latest Sukeban tournament, I go to 430 Lincoln Road for a Capital One dinner by chef Dave Beran inside Alex Prager’s installation, an ode to Los Angeles, complete with a miniature Hollywood Boulevard. The dinner pauses after the first course so that Diana Ross can go on stage for a performance so exclusive only dinner guests could see it, which started with the 81-year-old Supremes legend singing I’m Coming Out and ended with I Will Survive. After, I go with artist Nate Lewis to Soho Beach House to try and catch 2Chainz performing on the beach at the Porsche party. The line to the beach is so long that Nate tells me we should take the secret way in. I follow, and we arrive just as 2Chainz goes on. It’s so crowded that I lose Nate. The bartender tells me the only water they have will cost me, so I pay $8 for a can of water.

Thursday

I wake up at noon and head to a Burberry cocktail to celebrate its Sarah Morris commission.  After, I escape back to Miami Beach for the Google Shop dinner with Lauren Halsey, except Halsey wasn’t able to be there. The room still had a good time. Ravyn Lenae performed Love Me Not, and Mara spotted Kesha and two Haim sisters dancing in the audience. Afterwards, I went to the Shelborne for Capital One x Nylon’s party and saw a trio of women wearing only black tape. 

Friday 

A broken bowl and a mess of guacamole greet me on my floor the next morning like crime scene evidence. I wake up later than expected, but still in time to meet my college roommate to walk through Untitled, where we start at the American Express and Delta lounge to eat the complimentary food and I see work by my favorite Margate artists Laura Footes, Lindsey Mendick, and Vanessa Raw at Carl Freedman Gallery. I also make sure to stop at Detroit artist Tiff Massey’s solo booth, where I tell her I want her bamboo earrings mirror. She offers a layaway plan. I laugh. I’m feeling rough, so I tell Tiff I need a recovery drip. “So you can keep going,” she lamented. I head to the third floor of the Faena to Taja Drip, where owner Taja Abitbol, who will soon be a star in Members Only: Palm Beach, a new Netflix reality show, tells me to go for the About Last Night IV, a mix of Vitamin B Complex, Magnesium, and Zofran. She also tells the nurse to give me red light therapy and oxygen, plus B-12 AND NAD+ booster shots. Taja helped me biohack my hangover away, and I leave feeling human again. I run to catch Es Devlin’s rotating library on the beach from a distance, before heading to Superblue, where Apple Music and Highsnobiety are hosting an activation complete with a group exhibition featuring eight artists from Henry Taylor to Gabriel Moses. I see Migos’s Offset pose with a new Latinx boy band started by Pharrell Williams called DND (Do Not Disturb). ​​

Perrotin is hosting its annual party at Silencio, so I went back to the Basement. I tried to skip the line, got caught, then Purple PR’s Christina magically appeared with bracelets, and I was escorted in. “Which list are you on? Silencio’s or Perrotin’s?” the doorwoman asks. “Both?” I said. She laughed and let me through. Inside, The Hellp play a set so ecstatic and chaotic I confused them for The Dare because exhaustion makes all hipster white boys in suits blur together. They played Justice’s D.A.N.C.E. as clouds of smoke rose around us. So French. So Silencio. Three different people spilled their drinks on me, which in Miami is a kind of baptism. I leave soaked and convinced that I was seeing the most Boiler Room vibes this year. I’ve never been so wet at an Art Basel party.

Saturday 

The next night, I eagerly await at The Replay Gallery, where music’s past meets its present and future, in the form of back-to-back sets by French DJ and multimedia artist Crystallmess and Detroit legend Moodymann. I’m basically glued to the front row, where I joyfully dance all night, refusing to budge as I ignore my phone, which was getting a bunch of texts from frustrated friends stuck in the snaking queue outside. He’s “Too Good,” says Detroit artist Tiff Massey while Moodymann plays. I nod. He passes out shots of tequila to the entire front row. Wow. “Whatever you do, stay healthy enough so I can see you again,” he told the crowd as he ended the night with Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven. I couldn’t have asked for a better way to end this annual marathon of excess at Art Basel in Miami Beach. In the immortal words of Diana Ross (after Gloria Gaynor), I will survive, and I did.