It's official: Art Basel Miami Beach is on, and so is the Houston contingent.

At opening night's vernissage ceremony, top collectors toasted the event's ninth year before making way across the street to a posh party at the Bass Museum of Art, where Houston Art Alliance's Jonathon Glus and Alton LaDay chatted with artist Allison Hunter, Libby Masterson and Wade Wilson gallery director Susanna Kise.

Shoulder rubbing aside, Glus is in town to scour the fairs for potential public art commissions that will one day decorate the Houston landscape. The Houston contingent met up on the patio with hot shot dealers and the New York/LA crowd to offer applause to Silvia Karman Cubiña, exec director and chief curator of the museum.

"People are here for the scene," said Kise, adding, "It's great being around so much energy. It reminds me why I do what I do."

While not going to parties or alumni events for Sotheby's Institute, she's scouring the fairs for potential places for Wade Wilson Art to set up shop next year, as well as search for potential second galleries for the artists she represents, all while snapping iPhone photos of prize works to send to collectors she advises in Houston.

"I feel like I'm on this massive treasure hunt," she said.

As for the scene at the Bass party, she confided, "There were definitely murmurs about the upcoming Houston art fair (set to debut Sept. 16-18, 2011)."

"The crowd is good and energized. There's just a lot of interest that wasn't here last year," said Allison Hunter, who noted the Pulse Contemporary Art fair as her favorite spot so far. "I overheard a woman go into a booth at Art Basel and declare, 'I just want to buy something.' That never would have happened in 2009."

While the Houston crowd was locked in party-on mode, upstairs was the unveiling of artist Isaac Julien's "10,000 Waves," a multi-screen video-meets-architecture piece that stunned the VIP parade.

Narratives of international migration, referencing ancient Asian myths and contemporary oil maladies, floated across the dozen-plus projections. Julien inserted a few photographic prints into a gallery of permanent Renaissance holdings, taking a page from Maurizio Cattelan's trickery at this year's Menil Collection exhibition.

Once adequately dazed, the white-pants/gold-bangled crowd shuffled towards the sand for the oceanfront "Art Loves Music" event, with Canadian indie/electro/neogoth outfit Metric taking the helms of the party. Those with a little bit of steam left in them disappeared into the South Beach night; carousing continued into the wee hours for those who whisked past the line into Collins Ave.'s swankier-than-thou Delano Hotel.

A Houston party set was also spotted in a clandestine karaoke bar in the basement of the Sagamore, where Blaffer Art Museum director Claudia Schmuckli broke down "99 Luftballons" to an audience that included husband Matthew Drutt, Liz Anders and Jim Peterson. "She just let loose on that stage," Kise said of Claudia's cameo.

Houston's Sicardi Gallery's Maria Ines Sicardi seemed in high spirits following the fair's first day. "It was good, especially compared to last year, which to be honest, was very depressing," she told CultureMap.

Her space at the crossroads of two aisles was the nexus of a bustling crowd on opening day. Because her gallery spotlights artists from Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela, it has a mounting appeal to Latin American collectors as well as curators and collectors from the United States looking to globalize their art endeavors.

"You meet people from everywhere that would take years to know if you weren't at this fair," she said, while also citing a number of Houstonians checking in to express their pride in having a local gallery represented. "The Adlers, the Sanders, McClain — they're all here."

As a first-timer at Art Basel, I looked to veteran art fair patron Becca Cason Thrash for some insight.

"There's so much going on it's almost obscene," she said. "I'm getting on average eight to nine invitations a night."

Her mantra for managing the Miami madness? "I instruct my driver not to let me stay more than 20 minutes at each party."

Houston's fête femme fatale got an early start on Tuesday, boarding a flight to Miami along with Houston collectors Barbara and Michael Gamson. Thursday evening brought a rigorous string of six dinner parties. First stop: The screening of Julian Schnabel's latest film, followed by a celebratory dinner for the artist (a University of Houston grad) and Sean Penn at the New World Art Symphony. Then it was on to party for Tony Chambers at SoHo Beach House (christened by the New York Times as this season's hotspot).

"All of these parties have place cards, which can be awkward when you don't linger, but that's the one I'm actually going to stay at," Thrash said during an interview Thursday afternoon.

She'll also be exchanging air kisses with New York real estate tycoon-cum-art collector Aby Rosen and wife Samantha Boardman (who happen to own the W where Becca's catching z's when possible), as well as Greek shipping heir Stavros Niarchos.

As for the art, she reports devoting four hour blocks to various fairs, describing the kingpin Art Basel as a "really, really good fair." She also recommends checking out the Art Miami fair, located on the mainland.

"Scope was terrible; Pulse was a little better," she added. "I fell in love with a Georg Baselitz at Salzburg's Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, which is operated by an Austrian friend I know from Paris. To me, it's personal, and he always has the best pieces at the fair, right up there with Gagosian, Pace — and much better than White Cube in my opinion."

Indeed, the line between fashionable friends and fast art is blurred at Art Basel Miami Beach.

"This is so opposite to Art Basel in Switzerland," Thrash said. "It's a sleepy Swiss town and there's nothing to do. I love that fair, but here it's such a scene. Literally: Art. People. Everywhere.

"The art world's not as small as it used to be," she continued, "but in a way, it's still like a little private club. You get tips of which booths to see, like Sotheby's Lisa Dennison pointed me towards a great Twombly, and I got the rundown from the art advisor Kim Heirston at a dinner she hosted at the old Versace villa. It's like getting a Ph.D. in art over the course of socializing."