In spite of its name, it wasn’t the cruisiest bar in town. According to Silber, who lived in Hollywood at the time, “the most popular bar in South Broward was Keith’s Cruise Room in Hallandale. closing hours did not bother bar flies, who simply drove down to Hollywood and Hallandale, where clubs remained open till six. Gay life seemed to revolve around the clock. I myself recall catching Wayland Flowers and Madame at the Venture Inn on New Year’s Eve 1975, cruising at Tacky’s and its adjacent adult bookstore, and partying at the short-lived Tangerine disco, on Federal Highway near Oakland Park Boulevard. Sedlak remembered the Zanzibar and Ruthie’s Golden Garter. Activist Bob Bernacki, who owned the Oasis Motel in 1977, noted that “the destination for people coming from around the world was the Copa,” which opened in 1975. Other clubs competed with the Marlin Beach Hotel (and the hustlers) for the gay buck. Lauderdale many gays make the assumption that all older men want adolescents and are willing to pay for them.” Ed White was not the only observer to notice, as we shall soon see. “The two most common ages are sixteen and sixty – the latter buys the former. Lauderdale is a short, angry strip across the ocean, crawling with teens drugged or drunk or both,” Edmund White wrote in States of Desire (1980).
The combination of Spring Break and gay resort made Fort Lauderdale Beach in its raucous heyday a center of male prostitution. “It seemed the whole strip was turning gay.” Locals have their own fond memories of the Marlin Beach, The late Tom Bradshaw, speaking before the Stonewall Library, called the Marlin “the center of entertainment and cultural life and my home away from home.” Richard Sedlak, who came out in 1973, told me that the community “was pretty well centered around the Marlin Beach Hotel.” “I had some happy memories of the Marlin Beach, agreed Mark Silber, who was just a teenager when he first went there. The home of “the nationally known Poop Deck restaurant and disco ” the hotel was conveniently located across the street from what was then the gay section of Fort Lauderdale Beach. The Marlin Beach Hotel, on Fort Lauderdale Beach, was Broward’s leading gay spot during this pre-AIDS “golden age.” Made famous by the 1960 film Where the Boys Are, the “Marlena” turned gay in the early 70’s when owner Bill Hovan realized the marketing potential of the LGBT community. John Francis Hunter, writing in The Gay Insider USA (1972), listed the Everglades, the Gallery, the Gym Steam Baths, Odds & Ends, Pat’s Odds & Ends II, Ruthie’s Golden Garter, the Saloon, and the Venture Inn. Joe Baker, writing for The Advocate in 1979, called Fort Lauderdale “a ‘B’ city: bars, beaches, boys, broads, beer, boobs, bronze bodies, baths and boogying.” Gay men from all over the world came to Lauderdale to be “where the boys are.”īroward’s gay bar scene multiplied accordingly. Those of us who lived in Miami at the time went “up to Lauderdale” to have fun and let our hair down. Spring Break was in its heyday and “Fort Liquordale” was known as a place to go and be wild. And the people here all had names and were a large family.”īy the late 70’s, Mitchell’s quiet community had undergone a transformation. Because there wasn’t this much night life there was much at-home entertaining.” The late Buddy Markwell, who arrived in Broward in 1962, agreed. “People stuck together a lot more than they do know because they were more closeted. In spite of all that, Mitchell, now deceased, remembered the gay sixties and seventies as a simpler and friendlier time.
They showed the negatives but people were recognized.
“The police raided it, around 1965 or 1966, with TV cameras, TV coverage, the whole bit, and they showed pictures of people entering and leaving the club on TV.
And there was one in Hollywood, Garth.” It was a time of frequent bar raids, like the one on Oakland Park’s “Val’s Catering Service,” which Mitchell witnessed from a distance. “There was the Wine n’ Stein and the Zanzibar and a couple of others but way back then those were the two bars. When Jerry Mitchell came out in 1962, Broward County was not the trendy gay resort that it is today. Twenty-three years later, during LGBT History Month, the article still allows us to look back at Broward’s gay history in the days before we had groups like the Pride Center or communities like Wilton Manors, Oakland Park, or Palm-Aire.
This article first appeared in 1994 as part of a series about South Florida LGBT history that was published in Miami’s The Weekly News (TWN).