People come to Miami to get laid. Maybe it's the heat. Maybe it's the humidity. Maybe it's because our state makes a map of the United States look like that mule who got a little too excited at the petting zoo.
Whatever it is, the term "sex tourism" doesn't have the same nasty connotations as blowing all your graduation money in a dank corner of Eastern Europe. In Miami, "sex tourism" means coming here to do sex stuff you can't back home. Or, even if there is a seedy little swingers club in your hometown, doing sex stuff with people you're almost guaranteed to never see again. So whether it's swinging, experimenting, or getting a ball gag stuffed in your mouth while being called a dirty little boy, there's someone in South Florida ready to welcome you.
You and your spouse ever wondered what it would be like to have people watch you get it on? We've got more swingers clubs than we do good Indian restaurants. Do you find a swift paddle to your buttocks VASTLY more relaxing than some "deep tissue massage"? South Florida is here to help. And if you've ever thought about doing more than kissing another girl and liking it, well, you can't spell bienvenidos without bi. So strap in, strap on, and get ready. Here's your guide to getting freaky in South Florida.
We are the swinger capital of America, and if you're a couple who's ever even half-joking-but-not-really kicked around the idea of swinging, you've come to the right place. The easiest place to find people to "play" with (this is swingers' term of art, like you're going to be striking up a game of backgammon) is Swingers Date Club, or SDC. SDC is kind of like eHarmony, except instead of questions like, "What's the most important trait in a romantic partner?" it asks, "Do you prefer to watch your partner in threesomes or orgies?"
If online swinging just seems a little too embarrassing, and you'd rather not have to lie about your vacation group sex by telling people you met them at Starbucks, we've got no shortage of swingers clubs here too. Where you can do everything from dip your toe into "the lifestyle," to, well, whatever you're imagining. But before you try out anything, make sure you do some swinging prep first.
Rule No. 1 in Florida: Purple neon near a freeway off-ramp means there's sex inside. Nowhere is this more evident than this stalwart swingers club next to the Palmetto Expressway. Though Miami Velvet isn't anywhere near tourist areas, it is still the spot to hit if you're looking to expand your sexual horizons.
The club contains a few different areas. The front is your standard Miami Latin club, where people in normal clothes dance and drink and wink at each other across the room. The difference here is you don't have to go far once that progresses to rhythmic dry-humping. Down a hallway off the dance floor is a "towels-only" area, full of public areas and semi-private rooms where people sit around mostly naked and discuss the finer points of the capital gains tax. Or, ya know, boink each other's brains out.
You can participate as much or as little as you like. So if you and your partner are merely curious, you can just observe. Or you can go in a private room and have sex with nobody watching. Or you can leave the door open and let people watch. Or you can invite them to join you. If you're new to the world of swinging, no place starts you off better than Miami Velvet.
The club is members-only and BYOB. You'll have to pay about $150 as a membership fee to get in -- but think what you'll save by toting in your own Tanqueray.
Ft. Lauderdale's answer to Miami Velvet is Trapeze, more of a swingers club for seasoned veterans. While nobody's going to make you paint a "V" on your face like it's the Rocky Horror Picture Show if you're new to the lifestyle, it's definitely the club of choice for swingers in the know. The crowd trends a little older -- more late 30s to 40s -- but still skews hot.
Trapeze is divided into two areas separated by a co-ed locker room. In the front room a BYOB bar serves up drinks and couples dance is various stages of undress. In the towels-only back area, you'll find one section for singles and one for couples. Only on certain nights can single guys traipse in unaccompanied.
Trapeze charges a one-time membership fee that lasts for six months, typically about $50. Then you'll pay a one-time "facilities charge" which essentially pays the salaries of the poor souls charged with cleaning up the place after you're done. The fee also varies, from $50 on slower nights to $100+ on more popular nights.
While the clubs discussed above are what are known as "on-premise clubs" -- that is, you can have anonymous sex with other couples right there and then go on your merry way -- Bliss parties are different. First, they're not swingers parties. They're what founder Nathan Bliss describes as "erotic-themed events for bi-sexy women and adventurous couples." This is a nice way of saying if you've ever thought about bringing another woman into the bedroom -- or if you're the kind of girl who's said "I'd only do a threesome if I was the other woman" -- this is the place to try it.
The parties are held at an undisclosed location (typically a club) where pre-screened guests are hipped to the address just before the party. In order to get the invite, you need to go to the Bliss party website and apply. The events are held monthly, so you'll have to check the website before you make any plans. And the parties aren't on-premise events, so they're more exploratory social gatherings than in-your-face sex parties. Yes, the crowd is sexy. No, you don't have to be Tom and Giselle to make the cut. If you keep in shape and are of an appropriate age, your chances are pretty good of getting in. Better, obviously, if you're a single female.
You might think SM isn't for you, but despite daily pledges of "never looking at my Facebook feed until 2020" you still do it EVERY DAMN DAY. Why? Because secretly you like the pain, and here in South Florida we've got a latex-clad army of doms and dominatri (just invented that) to help you fucking own it. Or maybe you'd rather be the dominator, or you and your partner would prefer to punish each other for forgetting to take the trash out with a nice crack of a cat o' nine. There's a party for every taste. We talked to Algo, a dom who practices in Broward County, and he gave us the lowdown on the best places to go.
Fetish parties
As far as parties go, the Fetish Factory fete on the second Saturday of each month is the grandest, perhaps in the world -- it attracts people from literally all over the globe. Three or four times a year it also does a hotel takeover and has something like nine parties over four days. For regulars, Fetish Factory throws "extreme players parties," but those are more private events that are invite-only.
The third Friday of every month, the Rooftop Resort in Hollywood throws a fetish party. It’s a smaller, more intimate event. But the entire hotel is a swingers venue, so there's all kinds of other stuff you can get into.
Additionally, the third Saturday of every month brings the Submission parties in Miami. No cameras are allowed (except for professionals, because some people think this is Splash Mountain and want the souvenir shots of themselves lapping milk out of a bowl) and it’s a comfortable, safe environment. Well, relatively.
Clubs dungeons
Some doms have private dungeons where you can rent space, or work with them; Scary Mary Santa is one of the better-known. There's a space up in West Palm called James, too. But most of the scene here is all done through networking and friends. The fetish parties are a great place to meet people and get that in -- you'll find more of the doms and dungeons through them.
In Wynwood you'll find Hammers Nails, which is about as close to a BDSM club as exists in South Florida. The club has frequent parties, so check the website and Facebook to see what's going on.
One of the best souvenirs you can take from a nice trip to Florida is a deep, tropical tan. And some of our visitors ensure that tan extends to places typically only seen by doctors and adventurous tattoo artists. That's why this state leads the nation (yep, another first for Florida!) in clothing-optional resorts.
But clothes-free fun doesn't stop at the gates of your local nudist community. Here in Miami we like to maximize your ability to tan your most sunburnable parts.
Nude resorts
Florida is to nudists what Oregon is to hipsters, but unfortunately most of the nude resorts are on the state's other coast, specifically in Pasco County. If you want to spend the day lounging by the pool in your birthday suit, might we suggest just renting a house with a private backyard. If you had your heart set on a nudist resort, your best bets are going to be north of the city. Specifically, the unfortunately named Sunsport Gardens in Loxahatchee and the Golden Girls inverse-humor favorite Sunnier Palms in Ft. Pierce.
Nude beaches
The main nude beach in South Florida is Haulover Beach, just north of Bal Harbour on Collins Ave. Which means more than a few unfortunate runners from that ritzy beach town have jogged a little too far north and found themselves smack in a sea of ass-naked old people. Watching the looks on their faces is what passes for entertainment when the novelty of said naked old people wears off. (Note: That happens very fast.)
That's not to say that everyone on the beach looks like an old recliner strapped to a beach chair. But you get all shapes and sizes. For every taut German blonde, you'll get five or six wilted dudes with mermaid tattoos. Also, the ratio here skews highly male, so if you're not comfortable looking up and seeing more penis than you would in a YMCA locker room, this might not be the spot for you.
South Beach, especially south of Fifth St, is what you'd call clothing-optional-tolerant. That is, topless (and sometimes nude) sunbathing is unenforced, so much so that softcore adult entertainment features sometimes use the sand as a set. No joke. That said, in recent years the advent of social media, and more specifically skeezy guys with iPhones who THINK they're making softcore adult entertainment features, has discouraged the number of topless sunbathers considerably. What we're saying is, if you want to see boobies, just go to a strip club.
In Miami, everyone has figured out a way to take your money. And nowhere is this more obvious than at our glut of strip clubs, which run from high-end topless joints to places best described as a dive bar with a pole. Strip clubs in Miami can ruin you for other cities, too: We're full-nude, full-liquor, and full-contact. Which means you can mosey up to the tip rail with a gin tonic in one hand and a dollar bill in the other, and stuff it right between a pair of ass cheeks that cost more than your car.
This also means in Miami strip clubs, almost anything goes. That means exactly what you think it does, but make sure you pack your wallet. Because while strip clubs here will give you the opportunity to turn some fantasies into big-time realities, the even bigger reality is the dent it’ll put in your bank account. If you need a deeper look, here are the city’s finest dens of vice. But if a quick primer is all you need, here are a few of the best.
E11EVEN is a black hole that will swallow your Sunday before you can say, "What's taking so long in that bathroom stall?" When 4am rolls around in the prudishly early-closing clubs in South Beach, the hardcore partiers migrate across the causeway to E11EVEN. And many don't realize the sun has come up until sometime around noon. This 24-hour spot is more like a nightclub that happens to have strippers than an actual strip club, where the tip rail is populated more by women than men, and the floors are sometimes literally covered in dollar bills.
The dancers here are only topless, but the main attraction here is stuffing dollars in their G-strings and cleavage. The large number of female patrons seem to enjoy this practice far more than the men, a big reason why this place has a reputation as a club where girls go to behave badly. As in, "get up on stage because you think you can dance better and get arrested" badly. Lap dances are almost exclusively of the private variety, so don't come here looking for a two-for-one special.
The best pure strip club in Miami -- if not all of Florida -- is a little north of the city, in Hallandale Beach. Not only does Scarlett's boast the best-looking strippers in South Florida, it also has LED robots, real EDM DJs who do more than call Trinitee to the main stage, and a surprisingly tasty food menu. For reals. That's a big part of why it's Broward County's de facto after-hours spot, and a fun time even if you don't drop thousands on a Champagne room.
It's also the cleanest and most law-abiding of the big Miami strip clubs. If you're looking for "extras," this might not be the place for you. That's probably best left for a spot just a little south.
Tootsie's is as close to a Vegas strip club as you're getting in South Florida. Except here you can get hard liquor, full nudity, and one of the world's great collections of thigh tattoos. While this spot near Hard Rock Stadium is a Costco-sized emporium of silicon and sin, it typically hosts Miami's B-team as far as crowds and talent are concerned. Does that mean you can't have a fun time? Nah. Trashy can be way more fun than classy, after all. And if you want to actually watch sports in between not thinking about where those dollar bills have been, no club in Miami is better.
Of course, there's always the tried-and-true method of going to bars, clubs, and other traditional gathering places to try and find some kinky excitement. But you've got plenty of those back home. In Miami, we support an entire industry based around finding new ways of getting it on. As long as you're here, you might as well take advantage.
