Miami – The Four-Day Weekend
When Cuba native Julio Cabrera started at the Regent in the last days of 2012, he was determined to create something Miami was lacking: a classic cocktail bar. Cabrera still sometimes mourns the Cuban party spirit he found absent from any “Latin night” he’d ever been to in the States. His word for it: “la pachanga.” It’s also the name of the Saturday night party in Little Havana’s newly unearthed gem, Ball & Chain. Opened in 1935 as a nightclub where Duke Ellington and others later played, it has recently been resurrected as the best place to go on Saturday night, with a live band, people dancing — and dancing well — on the bar, and Cabrera’s tobacco-infused Calle Ocho Old-Fashioneds. “It’s our party,” Cabrera shouts between dance steps behind the bar. “We have to make it!”