Left leg out

My experience of the famed Miami nightlife has so far been limited to a couple of trips to South Beach in the company of some other grad students. We've gone to a few bars that were pretty grotty, kicked about the streets a bit, gone home. Nice enough, but given the place has a reputation for a thriving club culture, I was looking for a bit more.

So when I saw that Mala and Skream were playing at a SoBe venue, for free, on Friday I was determined to go. So determined that I was prepared to go alone, even if that did mean an hour- and a half journey each way on public transport that really does seem to like eight hours' sleep a night.

(Mala and Skream are dubstep DJs from the UK, big on the scene, usually you could expect to pay a tenner or so to see either play out).

In the end, I managed to recruit a couple of my fellow grads, which was a surprise - their tastes in music seem to run mostly to rock of various kinds. Also a relief, since it meant I had lifts there and back. Wasn't sure what they'd make of it, didn't really care that much.

So, a drive through the night to South Beach. SoBe, the southern portion of an island just off the mainland to which it's linked by several causeways, is more like movie Miami. It's full of bars, clubs, 'glamorous' people, and there is of course a beach. As the driver said as we headed through downtown's illuminated skyscrapers and on to one of the causeways, it's like you're going to a different city - a world apart from the sprawling, quiet suburbs.

My first thought on entering the bar was: wow, that's a lot of bassbins. Unfortunately, this was soon followed by: oh, they're washing machines. The place is called the Laundry Bar, and the gimmick is, it really does double as a laundrette. You can come along anytime it's open (day and night) with your dirties and clean them in the lovely hygienic bar atmosphere (Florida still allows smoking in clubs and so on).

The place is small, 150 capacity tops I'd say, and the PA wasn't, as it turned out, the most stomach-churningly bassy I'd ever heard. But it felt more like what I think of as good club/bar; less of the tacky decor, more of the tacky floor, dim lights, and people there for the music as much as anything else. Dubstep is a small scene in the UK, and here it's tiny - this was the first time, I think, that a 'name' DJ had played in Miami, and people had flown from Georgia and Texas, amongst other places, to be there.

So the crowd was pretty excitable, and when the warmups stopped and the main men started, they went for it in a way I've never seen at a UK dubstep night. The music lends itself to a slow, languid kind of dancing, but these people were going like it was fast fast jungle, hanging off the staircase near the DJ booth, whooping, cheering every tune they knew. The music helped that, I think - there was more variety of tempo than in most of the dubstep sets I've heard, plenty of tunes that really did double up the snares instead of just suggesting a faster speed via the hats. Lots of records I hadn't heard, lots of them really good, the sets were everything I'd hoped for.

And the people I'd dragged along enjoyed it too, it was completely new to them but I was surprised at how positive they were about it; dubstep maybe isn't the most amenable form of dance music if dance music isn't your thing. So we all left happy at about half three, with the party still going strong. I think I'll still need to broaden my social circle from the philosophy department if I want to do this kind of thing more regularly, but for now at least, I've finally managed to get to something good. Nice one.