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Disco Music > Discotheques and Clubs Index > Faces in the Grove
Faces in the Grove
Coconut Grove, Miami, Florida
Faces In the Grove was on the second floor of the Mayfair Shopping Mall in Miami's Coconut Grove main entrance from Mary Street. Great food and wine.
DJs:
Scott Blackwell
Faces In the Grove logo submitted by Dandan23
Please feel free to link to this page by using this URL:
http://www.discomusic.com/clubs-more/5631_0_6_0_C/
COMMENTS ON THIS DISCO / DISCOTHEQUE / NIGHTCLUB
this was an upscale club, you had to dress up to get in, it was nice, but there was alot of plastic chicks from that era.
One of Miami's most exclusive spots,and even if you did dress up in your best digs,that never assured you would be allowed in.
Photo was taken during a Miami Vice party at Faces.
that is correct dressed up or not, you needed to know some one at the door some times to get in, by the way where is the Miami vice photo
The usual high standards of dressing was the same in all of South Florida Discotheques, but this was one of the few places where it was really enforce.
I have not seen or heard the word, discotheques in years, now our days, it is called a bar or a club, but discotheques was very sufisticated. nice picture, I am going to asl a possible stupid question, is faces still opened, because i left florida over 10 yrs ago, and i now that the club seen totally changed down there.
Orlando,
The word discotheque was first used in France by some newspaper columnists that followed the music trends.Like everything else in the nightclub business there were places to go for the sophisticated crowd,for the younger more inmature crowd(ex.Squadron 94,by the Airport)and for the drug traffickers and want-to-be gangs.
Faces in the Grove was not a place to pickup a new date or a new sex partner, it was more like a place to impress your date or your friends, consume a few drinks, maybe have a fine meal and then get the hell out because if you were young and single you definatebly were not going to get laid there.Most singles went from there to another place.
i remember that there was allmost no way to pick up a lady there, the people there, was just to impress the others, and show off their new threads
Faces DJ was Scott Blackwell
Faces was a blast. The owner, Mike Corso, moved me there from Dallas 3 months before it opened. I worked at his club in Dallas called Papagayo. When I got to Miami I was able to get a job fri and sat at Visions in Kendall Lakes till faces opened. Monday was a great party. Every time I see the disco scenes in Scarface it reminds me of Faces. People loved to dance there altho the floor was tiny. Good times.
Hello Scotty, just found this site, hard to believe anyone remembers the club. Glad to see my door policies were remembered, control at the door created the climate along with your music. Same was true for my tenure at Menage.
I'm currently between New York and Miami, owned several clubs in New York in the city and the Hamptons in the 80's and 90's but currently out of the business.
I still see Tony P. in Miami now in the Yacht business and Glenn in Newport Beach a Doctor. Lost touch with everyone else, Tony P. stayed in touch with David the bartender for many years but lost contact.
Scotty wasn't the only Dj at FACES, I worked his off nights, then when he left for BACKSTREET I took over. What I can remember, after all those burned out brain cells, is the women and the drugs.
Viniljunkie/Pete when exactly did you work Faces with Scott?
Did Scott return to Faces after 3/82?
I was Scott's Blackwell backup Dj at Faces in the Grove (along with Charlie Kababi(sp) who did the lights)from around 4/80 until sometime in 1981 when Scott left to work other clubs, (Miami Miami, BackStreet)and then stayed behind as the main DJ 'till around 3/82, my backup at Faces was Joel Hernandez from club Alexander's/Allegro at the Omni, and later Ziegfield's at the Holiday Inn next to Mystique in the Hilton.
I don't know what happened at Faces after we left in '82, never went back there again, from my point of view the Club was doing fine, then out of the blue management wanted to cut our salaries (maybe they wanted a change?? I don't know) in any case we refused the pay cut and left after a few more work nights.
Years later in the late 90's after reconnecting with an old friend that was now coincidently married to a co-worker,(Can't recall his name now) turns out He told me he also Djed at Faces after I left there, and He told me Scott got him the job at Faces.
So, after this conversation, I figured at some point Scott must have returned to Faces after '82 ,not sure , I guess we need to ask Scott over at his entry in this board.
Or maybe you worked with Scott in 82 and beyond??
When did Faces finally closed down it's doors?
For me Faces was a wonderful club to spin at during the time I was backing up for Resident Dj Scott Blackwell and after He left for other clubs..
Around 1981 Scott Blackwell started "New wave Nights" on Monday nights, --later expanded into Tuesday nights,-- and created a phenomenon that was never seen in Miami before.
A packed Club on Monday nights!!
When all other clubs in the city were closed on Monday, at Faces in the Grove lines of people used to stretch out across the Mall's hallway waiting to get in.
The Restaurant was not cheap, but the food was top notch, and Celebrities used to flock to Faces to dine and later to loosen up at the Dance floor.
I remember seeing there the likes of Rick James, The Go Go's girls, the late Margo Hemingway, comedian Gallager, Champion Boxers Roberto Duran and Alexis Aguello, and so many others. (After closing, many times I stayed behind playing Miss Pacman with Boxer Aguello, a fanatic of this game)
New wave nights were not the only nights the club was jumping; the weekend was also packed with lots of beautiful young local Ladies and many others from South/Central American countries that used to visit and/or study at the University of Miami.
At the time we used to spin lots of cutting edge music, from New wave (B-52, Devo, Romantics) to emerging British Techno like Human League and such, and even though the dance floor was small, still people loved to come to dance in this club.
The early 80's in particular were crazy times in Miami's club life, and the Coconut Grove area with it's many new Restaurants, Shops and Clubs/Bars was a favorite destination.
And if you found yourself in the Grove looking to have a great time, the best spot was the Mayfair shopping center and Faces in the Grove.
Octavio, nice to hear from you. Please comment on your time at Cherry Grove when you can.---- While you were at FACES as Scotties back-up, I was at MENAGE and at SAMMY'S EAST SIDE. It was when I was at SAMMY'S that Scott gave me Sunday Nights!Scott he worked a few nights a week, DJ BUTCH spun the other nights. Michael Corso, the owner was brutally murdered, that was the reason Scott left. He never returned. Frank Rizzo was the manager, he later took me to WAY OFF BROADWAY, remember that place!! So we are talking about 1982 and later. I may be off on the time frame, too many years have passed. I worked there on and off in 82, then left and returned in 1986; but I can tell you that when FACES closed in 1986, I was there the last night. A few months later, it was OCEAN BEACH DANCERTERIA!! You were then Rick Alonso's back-up at CATS, while I was at WAY OFF BROADWAY!! Does that answer your question?
FACES was a great club for a while, when Scott was there. But it had a tiny dance floor, and his following left when he did. The deejay became irreverent.I remember DJ BUTCHIE messing that place up, soon it was a has-been club. The crowds rarely came, so playing there wasn't a big deal. CLUB MYSTIQUE and Club Z took the crowds. I know where I was, do you? Frank Rizzo tried to salvage the place in 1986, since I had known him from spinning there on SUNDAYS years earlier, he brought me in, but it was a dead club by that time, a few months later, FACES was gone. At the end, weekdays were dead, and only Fridays and Saturdays did fair!! A sad ending to a pretty good club. Nothing to be proud of!!
I think Faces was competing with The Mutiny(Mutiny Hotel), in the Grove, that is were the action was for three decades.Really, people use to talk about like, "We first goint to hit Faces, for warm up, then this and that place, but The Mutiny is our final destination..."
It was fun while it lasted, best DJ's this country ever had and best display of good sophisticated fashion ever seen.Then everything change to what it is now, a pure display of Harcore Criminal Gang Fashions combine with the worst lyrics and music mix ever invented by civilized man, all in the name of famous GANGS and lowest standards of body language, that you feel that you are watching Morons singing and geting rich on the bad taste of their followers.History will classified this era as the wrost decaying music in the history of the world, no doubt about it.
I went there plenty of times. Scott Blackwell was great, so was Pete Denis. But all the other deejays were bad, especially the guy called BUTCH. He was strange, asked me to go out once, then his girlfriend caught him and promised to punish him?? Why did it close??
hey there Silversea, I love your statement and I totally agree with you, it has gone to hell, the type of music that is playing at the clubs now and the dancing is the worse ever, this generation has gone backwards in dancing skills to becoming degenerates on the dance floor.
Today nightclubs are no longer the FUN places we remember. The music sucks, and the deejays playing it have no imagination and little talent. The "dancers" just move around without any class in their movements. No one knows how to dance with a partner anymore. The good thing about getting old, is that we can look back at our youth, and realize that we got to really dance to great music, and that those times were the best ever!
that is correct, vyniljunkie, that is why I now own a latin dance studio and I am constantly teaching people to dance with partners, that is the real way to dance, when a man has a woman in his arms and leads her around the floor, there is nothing like it, that is a possitive message for a man to know how to respect and lead a woman on the dance floor, and the real ladies love that, not the crap that they see or hear at the night clubs today, unless they are loaded then they (the ladies) dont care and that is when they ladies let go and go wild, other wise to dance with a partner is and wil always be the way to dance, no matter what style of music you dance to, and I do them from Tango to salsa, but yes I miss the hustle, OUR HUSTLE, OUR TIME, THE BEST TIMES EVER. I THANK GOD FOR ME HAVING BEEN THERE, EVEN THOUGHT I WAS NOT ALL THERE AT TIMES BETWEEN THE HIGHS AND THE LOWS. yuu all know what I mean.
Funny! How the times have changed? I believe that everyone that comes to this site, feels like we do. And despite all the drugs, we now appreciate and realize HOW SIMPLY FABULOUS those days were!!
yes my friend they were fabulous days, we had a unique oportunity, we had two choices party and live to talk about it, or party and DIE doing it.
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