Palm Beach Post
 
Who you gonna call? Bluefish
 
As you poke your head into the unmarked second-floor suite, you hesitate. Could this be the right place? You followed the directions. But when you pulled into the parking lot, you began to wonder.

You've come, after all, to see a man of singular influence. The chap who can, with just a few pecks at his telephone keypad, turn the most fantastic dreams into reality. Rumor has it, his Rolodex is the envy -- and the wonder -- of the world's most socially connected. His adventurous streak led him from an average childhood in London to a job in Hong Kong to another in Bangkok, gathering friends at each stop. Now Bluefish Concierge, the Geneva-based private travel and adventure company he built on those experiences, has about 200 employees around the globe, and offices or affiliates in almost every country, Including this one in Delray Beach -- his adopted home town.

The people who know the scope of his business agree: He is The Man To Know. His clients -- about 8,000 regulars -- have flown in MiGs over the skies of Moscow; taken zerogravity flights like the ones Tom Hanks took to film Apollo 13; and been on submarine missions to explore the Titanic. Some have partied with Sting at the Grammys, gotten greasy in the pits at a Formula One race, and sipped tea at Buckingham Palace.

One client spent a week as James Bond -- jetting to Monaco with his wife for a $250,000 Octopussy-style escapade that involved more than 200 actors (and a kidnapping from a yacht in St. Tropez). Two others are in cosmonaut training and awaiting Russia's next space flight. It would be fitting, then, that the man in charge of such arrangements would wield his power from behind a vast mahogany desk. With that in mind, you steel yourself for the appropriate degree of intimidation. Except... Instead, you're here -- in a few spare rooms above a day spa on a secluded Delray Beach street.

In the front office (just a small room, really, with tables along three walls and a skeleton staff working on laptops) you're greeted by a cheerful woman. Sure! she says. Steve Sims will be right out.He's rounding the corner as she speaks. And again, your imagined CEO -- a Roger Moore sort with sleek black hair, sharp angles, suave accent and meticulously buffed shoes -- is dead wrong. The man before you wears jeans, T-shirt and an eyebrow ring. He leads you back to his modest office, where he sits beside his desk (rather than behind it). In just a few breaths, he makes selfdeprecating jokes, recounts a tale of whitewater rafting in Nepal that left a couple of his guides with broken legs... and brags liberally about his kids.

In a world of prestige and wealth, he prides himself on staying "real." Intimidation -- fancy offices, designer clothes -- is not his style. Hence the office and home in Delray Beach -- a city he describes as "cool as hell" -- instead of the far ritzier Boca Raton, Coral Gables or Palm Beach, which he initially considered four years ago.

"I like to be me," the 37-year-old says in the easy lilt of blue-collar London. And he and his wife like Delray's eclectic style. "Where else can you pick up a headache tablet, have a beer at a biker bar, go across the road and have fantastic tapas?" This laid-back attitude may be why people allow him and his clients to enter venues others can't penetrate.

"A huge percentage of what he does is celebrity related," explains Bluefish client Keith Fernandez, a financial adviser who lives in Gulfstream. "Those people and their people can sense that he's a good person. He's not awed by them."

When Bluefish was born back in the 1990s, Sims was working as a stockbroker in London. "Your dog could be a stockbroker then," he says. "Everything was going up."That was how he made a living. For amusement, though, he spent his nights crashing the city's best parties with a few friends. "We were just exceptional gate-crashers," he says. His secret? He says it's the fact that he doesn't worship wealth. He's simply good at what people really like: Having fun. Late-night partying meant he'd stumble in to work late, but it also netted his employers a rich client base that the more strait-laced brokers didn't deliver. He grins. "I loved messing around with the whole contradiction." As his reputation for irreverence spread, his network of friends -- and groupies -- grew.

He didn't charge anything, back then, for a ride on his coattails. But he was picky. "If I didn't like someone, they didn't come. I know I'm with cool people." To the people he liked -- the ones he thought would add to the life of the party -- he gave a Dr.Seuss-inspired password. Redfish didn't stick. Bluefish did. These days, of course, he charges for his services -- and makes an ample living at it. Clients find his standard offerings through his Web site, www.thebluefish.com; but if nothing there appeals to them, they can pitch their own ideas. To a degree, of course. "We've refused to arrange something that harms that person or someone else," he says. That includes "the usual illegals" -- mostly requests for drugs -- and a few off-thewall schemes. (There was the guy who asked him to arrange entrance into North Korea's nuclearweapons-testing facilities, for example. "A power-mad freak," he says. "He wanted to detonate a molecule.")

His employees, he says, are trained to screen clients for a certain "cool" factor: "We want you to go there and party and have fun. We don't want people trying to sell insurance... (or people who) expect you to lower your head at their feet."It's more than a personal philosophy: His business depends on it. The company's access to exclusive events is built on its reputation for accepting clients who have something besides money to contribute. To keep that reputation, Sims works almost constantly. So far, he's enjoying it."As soon as it becomes boring, I'm going to stop," he says. "I never envisaged that it would be a job, and it's not."

A few years ago, 38-year-old New York financial consultant Ken Auman found himself with a bit of cash to spare -- and a yen to see the bottom of the ocean And now, Auman can do something only a handful of people can do: He can describe the Titanic. All 900 feet of it -- the bow, the stern, the captain's private bathtub. The starfish that hang out on its deck, Anyone can watch the movie. He was actually there. He anticipated the trip for months. Shelled out over $36,000. Gleefully embraced the days at sea, complete with damp chill, spare menu, gloomy skies and cabin fever And now -- eight months later -- he still can't quite believe it. But he recounts it with gusto. Auman and his fiancée flew to Newfoundland and boarded a 400-foot Russian research boat carrying two Russian government-owned Mir submarines. (The boat was the one used in the opening and closing scenes the 1997 blockbuster Titanic.) The boat churned east for days. It hovered in the fog, its crew waiting for the perfect convergence of prepped machinery, suitable weather and calm seas. Meanwhile, Auman fasted. (There would be no using the restroom once he climbed into the submarine.) To pass the time, he mulled over each of the venture's possible catastrophic outcomes, Asphyxiation, Death in a brilliant fireball of exploding oxygen tanks, Implosion under the crushing weight of 2 1/2 miles of water. In conversations with the boat's research staff, he found a scientist who spent her career studying the Titanic -- but because making the trip to the ocean floor was so expensive, she had never actually been on the voyage Auman was about to take. When the day came, Auman was already exhausted. He checked and double-checked to make sure he carried nothing that could possibly touch off a spark. (Petroleum-based lip balm, for example, could be deadly.) Then he donned a fireproof suit, waited as the submarine pilot cranked up the cabin's oxygen level, climbed in.... and dipped below the waves. The descent took two hours, in darkness tempered only by glowing fish. The Titanic, of course, made up for every sacrifice, "The overall experience was much more overwhelming than I thought," he says. "You can't imagine. It was wild. It looked like it did in all the movies." The only disappointment, he adds, is that the cost was too steep for his fiancée to join him on the submarine. (She waited on the research boat while he explored the wreckage.) But the couple remedied that a few months later, taking another Bluefish-coordinated vacation together -- this time a lap-of-luxury safari in Tanzania (complete, of course, with private airplanes, top-rated campsite chefs, and Masai warriors as bodyguards.) "It was a rippin' good trip," he says. For next year's vacation (and a second dose of wild animal sightings), Auman is planning a Mardi Gras trip to New Orleans. He's hoping Sims will arrange a spot for him on the parade float owned by Endymion, one of the celebration's oldest and most prestigious Krewes. "The guy has an amazing Rolodex," he says. "He'll just get on the phone and work it out."

Michael Weiner, a Delray Beach zoning attorney and auto racing aficionado, took advantage of that Rolodex last year when Sims offered VIP passes to Miami's Grand Prix. He went, and was so impressed -- the private tour of the track and pits, the VIP seating, the fact that everyone there knew Sims -- that this year he went a step further. As far back as he can remember, Weiner has imagined himself at a Formula 1 Grand Prix race in Monaco. Not just as a regular spectator, mind you, but with complete behind-the-scenes access. Walking through the pits. Ogling the $25 million Ferraris firsthand. Chatting with drivers and crews. Sipping champagne as he watches the races from exclusive seats in the grandstand. And at the end of the day, of course -- after soaking in the glamour of the post-race parties --retiring to a fabulous hotel in Nice.Next month, Weiner, 55, will experience it. He's thrilled, of course. But in his mind, he's already planning for the aftermath. And honestly, it's troubling him a little. The question is this: What do you do when your lifelong dream -- the fantasy you've held as long as you can remember, that you've worked toward, that seemed utterly unreachable -- what happens when it actually comes true?

"This may be difficult to top," he says. "You can't get any better than this." He consoles himself with thoughts of taking his own 1970 Porsche to England for a history-laden event called the Goodwood Festival of Speed. He'll do Fashion Week one of these days, too. But "I've been looking forward to Monaco since I was 13 years old," he says. "It's so over the top --like a fairy tale."

Keith Fernandez, an investment firm senior vice president, is considering the same fairy tale. Fernandez, 46, and Sims met two years ago in the most basic of networking arenas -- watching their kids play soccer together at their private school. Last month, Sims arranged entree to The Floridian, Miami Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga's private resort, where Fernandez met his idols -- golfers Gary Player and Seve Ballesteros. "Steve told me there might be a few celebrities, but when I walked in I was completely astounded," he admits. "My head was on a swivel; this was some of the greatest names in golf, football and entertainment.... Michael Bolton sang in a small room unaccompanied by any music other than a piano. "It was indicative of the kind of things Steve is involved in," he adds. "He can essentially provide access to anything."

For his next trip, Fernandez might opt for a repeat of Weiner's Formula 1 fairy tale Or he might choose backstage access at Fashion Week or the Grammys. Another encounter with Gary Player -- this time at the golfer's home in South Africa. Or perhaps a few days spent zipping around London in his own Mini, unravelling a carefully scripted mystery based on the classic '60s movie The Italian Job. One of these days, too, he'll indulge his passion for bird hunting and ask Sims to arrange a personalized, history-rich vacation in the Scottish moors. "Steve may have never planned that particular kind of trip before, but I know when he gets back to me it's going to be exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for," he says. "He's a smart cookie, He's going to get the job done."

And afterward, it'll make for great conversation on the elementary school playing field.
By Lauren Gold, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer