Derrick Adams

The in crowd knows that Art Basel, the annual global art fair in Miami, isn’t exactly cool anymore, but they go anyway out of professional obligation, or because certain parties might be cool, or for the same reason people with no interest in football watch the Super Bowl: because it’s the Super Bowl.

Besides, what’s decidedly uncool is worrying about whether the week’s aura has eroded when you could be indulging.

Things were just getting underway on Wednesday afternoon, and traffic — a frequent gripe for Basel-goers and especially Miami residents, some of whom resent Basel-goers — was still relatively light.

Jed Moch, the 33-year-old director of Amity, which was showing for the first time at the New Art Dealers Alliance tent, described the mood as one of “tepid optimism” for art dealers after a period of market downturn and “joyful resignation” for the other attendees.

“People know exactly what they’re going to get when they come to Miami,” he said, noting that the latter half of the week tended to resemble an E.D.M. festival crossed with elaborate corporate branding exercises.

“It doesn’t feel as desperate yet as it will on Thursday and Friday, when the fashion activations kick into high gear,” he added.

Back in Miami Beach that evening, at an outdoor area of the Edition hotel, the artist Derrick Adams unveiled a line of totes and T-shirts, both featuring his paintings and created in collaboration with Google Shopping. As is typical of such occasions, the drinks were free, the bites small and the musical talent high-caliber, with Tierra Whack and En Vogue performing.

A mixture of art, tech and music types bemoaned that they needed jackets in the 60-degree weather as they roamed between the open bar and a grassy hill, waiting for the show to start. Lolo Reskin, who owns Sweat Records, a Miami vinyl shop, said Basel was still more opportunity than annoyance for locals.

“Some of the best art, people-watching and music comes right to our door,” she said. “If you don’t want to take advantage, then don’t, but there’s lots to do.”

“It’s a mess to be a resident of the city during this week,” countered Greg Bloom, a consultant and Ms. Reskin’s boyfriend. “And when you go and participate, it’s very rare that I see something where I’m like, the world is a better place for this thing being in it.”

As Ms. Whack began singing, the artist Michele Pred, 59, stood by the bar holding a red vinyl handbag she had designed featuring the words “We Shall Overcome” in glowing blue lettering. Ms. Pred, who described herself as an activist, felt unnerved by the lack of political engagement she’d observed among fairgoers.

“I think everyone’s left that at home,” she said. “I can’t leave that at home as a political artist.”

Ms. Pred had organized for later in the week a “Feminist Beach Party,” where an inflatable misoprostol pill would appear and attendees would write postcards urging President Biden to make the Equal Rights Amendment law.

Mr. Adams’s and Google’s event began to wind down, and many conversations revolved, as they often do during Art Week, around where everyone would go next.

One option was down the street, to a V.I.P. opening at The Bass, where a queue stretched deep into Collins Park.

Another was farther afield, at the venue ZeyZey in Miami’s Little River neighborhood. There, the musician Helado Negro, who grew up in Miami, sang acoustic ballads in a mix of Spanish and English for a more local crowd. Fans regularly shushed talkers, hoping to soak in every whispery note. They were happy where they were.

The following evening, at one of the fashion activations Mr. Moch had warned against, staff members and journalists at Miu Miu’s Design District store buzzed with mild anxiety as they awaited the appearance of the supermodel Gigi Hadid.

“Where’s the photographer, where’s the photographer?” a man repeatedly asked the room until, after several minutes, someone with a camera appeared and took pictures of espresso martinis and Cosmopolitans.

The location of the event’s numerous photographers was in no question when Ms. Hadid arrived around 7 p.m. Dressed in a pinstripe jacket and a pearl necklace, Ms. Hadid sat at a table in the back of the store’s ground floor, posing and signing clothing tags for a collection of Miu Miu Select pieces she had curated.

“This is actually my first time at Art Basel,” Ms. Hadid said. “I’ve never actually gone into the galleries and stuff, but next time hopefully I’ll come to do more of that.”

As attendees strove to get a glimpse of Ms. Hadid in action, the actress and “Real Housewives” star Garcelle Beauvais, wearing a sky blue dress, stood near a shoe display, smiling and chatting about her charity work and a gallery visit.

Also present was the writer Drew Zeiba, who, glass in hand, dryly commented, “I love to drink cocktails in a store.”

Across the bay, a party for Grey Goose Altius, the brand’s new premium vodka, was underway at a santal-scented private villa on the water. Outside, partygoers danced at the head of a pool while a lifeguard swayed nearby. Closer to the house, a man applied power tools to a branded, wall-like ice sculpture situated between palm trees.

The event formalized, for the span of a few hours, the relationship between Diplo, its headlining D.J., and MSCHF, the experimental creative collective. Kevin Wiesner and Lukas Bentel, the group’s chief creative officers, had brought along a blue edition of their hit Big Red Boots, among other works.

Wearing sneakers of their own design, they spoke at length about their practice, the fairs and the mood at Basel.

“The Trump election — hey, it’s boom time for rich people, baby,” Mr. Wiesner joked. “That’ll probably take the art market back up with it.”

Later in the night, at El Palenque, a Latin club a few miles away, in Miami proper, the artist and director Harmony Korine was throwing a party for his studio EDGLRD to introduce its skateboarding division and premiere a skate film, “Point Cloud.”

Shouting over the pounding club music, Mr. Korine said he was inspired by, among other things, “brain rot.”

When the video came on, the crowd hollered as skateboarders, including Elijah Odom, landed tricks or wiped out onscreen. As Alphaville’s “Forever Young” scored the film’s final stretch, some people clustered around Mr. Korine — a 51-year-old father of three who has been hailed as a creative genius since his early 20s — tilted their heads back and sang the song’s refrain: “I wanna be forever young.”

Afterward, as Mr. Korine and others D.J.ed, and revelers danced and waved branded boards around the crowd, Charlie Freiberg, a publicist, reflected on her experiences talking with A.I. chatbots.

“It’s over, it’s over,” she said of the world as we know it. “So it’s also just beginning.”

By Friday, Art Basel, too, was both over and just beginning. The V.I.P.-only days, when gallerists do the bulk of their business, had concluded on Thursday, and the first of three public days — when anyone with a ticket can browse the sprawling fair — had commenced.

In the booth for Mai 36 Galerie, an H.R. Giger sculpture of a xenomorph, one of the nightmarish monsters the Swiss artist created for the “Alien” film franchise, menaced passers-by.

The creature had sold for less than the asking price of $1 million, to an American collector who received a courtesy discount, according to Henri Gisler, the 33-year-old director of the gallery.

“We also thought about bringing the alien, this dystopic vision, to maybe comment on our times,” he said.

Despite the spectacle, some visitors to Miami didn’t notice that anything specifically art-related was happening in the city

“Art Basel?” asked Britt Nyland, who, with her sister, stood a stone’s throw from the imposing white tent housing Untitled, another art fair. “No, absolutely not on our radar.”

Two bikini-clad women lounging on the beach nearby were, if anything, all too aware of the goings-on. Like many other current and former residents I spoke to, Dani Jane, 31, a Los Angeles-based stylist and dancer from Miami, and Anna Monet, 29, who works in hospitality in Miami, liked the parties and the art but weren’t so sure about the people who flew in for the fair each year.

“I think they’re super rude,” Ms. Monet said. “I hear what they say, and they’re really talking down on Miami.”

All of these goings-on would have been plenty for most people, but I was drawn back out on Saturday night to the design fair by a force even more confounding than wealth or traffic: superstardom. ASAP Rocky and Rihanna were hosting a party of about 100, including Joe Jonas and DJ Khaled, to fete Mr. Rocky, whose design studio, Hommemade, was sharing a display booth with the Italian firm Gufram.

Pointing at two satellite-shaped movie projectors that doubled as lamps, Mr. Rocky, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, said the collection was inspired by “the point of view of a satellite,” a vantage perhaps appropriate given his rarefied celebrity.

What’s on the horizon for Mr. Rocky, who has two young children with Rihanna? “Design,” he said. “I think home ware’s the new vibe. It’s the new direction with everything.”

Asked what she thought of Mr. Rocky’s work, Rihanna, wearing a short MM6 Maison Margiela dress and ripped tights, raised an eyebrow and smiled. “What do I think about my man’s work? Are you kidding me? I’d never let you all see if I didn’t love it,” she said.

“I love to be a spectator,” she said. “I love to see his art, his eyes, his lens — something like this.”