Last month, the commissioners voted to ask the state legislature to raise the admission age to 21 for all night clubs. from as late as noon, and prohibited admission to people under 21. Kasdin of Miami Beach and the city commission moved the after-hours clubs' closing hour to 9 a.m. So far this year, the police have corralled nearly 400 teenagers for curfew violations in the proximity of the clubs, compared with about 30 a month in the last half of last year. So cautiously, the authorities have begun to crack down. ''Eighty percent of the people going to the after-hours clubs use drugs,'' said Chief Richard Barreto of the Miami Beach Police. Vaulting into celebrity as the backdrop of ''Miami Vice,'' the hit television series in the 1980's, this oceanside gem of Art Deco whimsy and former resort of retirees has joined the company of the nation's most impudent and indulgent trend-setting societies, like Greenwich Village or Berkeley or Venice, Calif.īut South Beach has also inspired precarious excesses, especially among the young who frequent night clubs and the after-hours clubs, which first appeared three or four years ago and open at 4 a.m. ''When I leave South Beach and see the sun coming out,'' she said, ''I know it's been a good night.'' She does not use drugs, she said, but she says many kids she knows do.
GAY BAR IN MIAMI FOR 30 LICENSE
Mari, in a red tube top and a clinging black miniskirt, is 20 but has a fake driver's license that gets her into the clubs here every weekend night and has for years, she said. She is a ''roller,'' high on the drug Ecstasy. Three shirtless boys in black pants mill around them, and a girl in a white T-shirt gyrates and claps, lost to a beat that still hammers her head. A boy and a girl stand motionless on the sidewalk, clinging like mortared bricks. It is just past 9 o'clock on a Sunday morning and the Kit Kat lounge in South Beach has closed.