Thursday morning, 4:30, I’m walking back to my hotel from Le Baron, the transplanted French nightclub that sets up shop on Collins Avenue for the week of Art Basel Miami Beach, with Paul Sevigny, a D.J., and Patrick McMullan, a photographer. (Who's buying whom? Read "How Stars Are Born at Art Basel.") Patrick’s been hard at work shooting the parties that have become such a big part of the festival, and Paul’s come down from New York to spin for one of them—I forget which. Ralph Lauren, Pucci, Swarovski, Audi, and UBS, the banking giant that’s the main sponsor of the event, are among the corporate entities that have hosted events tonight, and those are just the ones I can remember. The festival officially opened 12 hours ago, but the serious collectors and V.I.P.’s swarmed the Miami Beach Convention Center starting at noon, and the serious party people had attended dozens of soirees the night before. Iggy Pop gave a concert on the beach tonight, and not long after that I found myself on the lower floor of the Delano at Lenny Kravitz’s nightclub, the Florida Room, chatting with transvestites and trying unsuccessfully to make conversation with Lance Armstrong. (View other art shows around the world.)

In front of the Shore Club, I run across an old friend, a gallery owner from London. We exchange greetings and compare notes on the parties. He’s attended several tonight that I hadn’t even heard about and is just returning from the very exclusive private room above the hotel restaurant Casa Tua. I ask him about his day, and he says he sold everything except his laptop.

“It’s a feeding frenzy,” he says.

He mentions some big sales. “Larry sold that Prince in like the first 10 minutes for one point seven,” he says, referring to Richard Prince’s new De Kooning homage/appropriation at dealer Larry Gagosian’s booth. He tells me the giant Andreas Gursky photograph of a Frankfurt nightclub went for $900,000—which seems particularly apposite at this exact post-nightclub, predawn, intoxicated moment at the start of the sixth annual installment of what has become the world’s most successful art fair, in South Beach, a.k.a. SoBe, a.k.a. Soho on the Beach.

All in all, it’s been a good day from the point of view of a fun-loving art merchant, and he’s trying to decide whether to call it a night or continue the celebration.

“Buddy of mine just called me. He wants to send over this sensational hooker,” he says. “I don’t know. I can’t make up my mind. She’s only $1,500, but I was out all night last night, and I’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

Wednesday, 2 p.m. I arrive at the convention center a good three hours before the general opening. The big fish have already been cruising for two hours. The aisles between booths are jammed with anxious, speed-walking collectors. The international bonhomie is interlaced with an air of competitive anxiety. Even as old friends from New York and Berlin are kissing each other’s cheeks, they are anxiously inquiring about purchases and sightings and trying to figure out how to get to dealer Gavin Brown’s booth before everyone else does. To a first-time visitor, the atmosphere seems like a high-end version of Filene’s Basement: a competition to find and claim the hot merchandise before your neighbor does. You get the feeling that any minute a fight may break out over who gets the big John Baldessari.

By 3 p.m., almost every booth seems to be speckled with the tiny red dots signifying sales, including Merlin Carpenter’s Christopher Wool-like black-and-white canvas emblazoned with the words "Die Collector Scum." Some pieces were bought even before they were hung. Mary Boone’s booth displays a gorgeous suite of five huge Eric Fischl canvases—his characteristic beach scenes—which, according to the Wall Street Journal, had been presold to a single collector for $10 million. The petite, brunette, eternally girlish New York dealer confirms the sale when I find her at her booth but admits that the actual price was $7 million. Within the first few hours of the festival, she says, she also sold her stock of prints by Barbara Kruger, each in an edition of 10, at $30,000 apiece.