Walk Wilton Drive with me. Here you’ll find every bar, landmark, and turning point on the street that became the beating heart of South Florida’s LGBTQ+ community, told in order, block by block.
I’ve lived here for two years. For most of that time, “The Drive” was just the place I learned more about who I was and who I shouldn’t be on a Saturday night. The locals don’t say “Wilton Drive,” they say The Drive, the way you’d say downtown or home. This story of the drive isn’t going to lay out with a spectacular video and carefully correlated transitions because what you will take from all of this is a handy guide you can keep with you as you explore The Drive yourself.
So let’s get into what I didn’t know when nobody tells you when you move here, that this two-lane stretch of a two-square-mile city has more documented LGBTQ+ history per block than almost anywhere in the country. So I did what I do: I went to the archives, walked the street with a notebook, and tried to separate what’s on the record from what people just say. Here’s the walk, south to north, the way the addresses climb.
One housekeeping note, because it’s how we do things at Properly South Florida: I split everything into Record (it’s documented), Rumor (people repeat it, the paper trail is thin), and Legend (the story the community tells about itself, true-in-spirit).
Before the neon: the part everybody skips
If you ask around, you’ll hear that the gay Drive began in 1997 with one bar. Tidy story. Slightly wrong though, and I do apologize for that misspeak… because, after all… we can’t forget the “L” in the LGBTQA+ and I sincerely apologize. To be fair, though, with as many people who have read this, y’all could have submitted a tip.
Sixteen years before the strip “came out,” the first light was already on. I now also think about that every time I pass The Pub because I believe that is exactly where it sat. Correct me if I am wrong, queens.
The milestone nobody can name
1993 to 1997: the spark
The modern Drive really catches in the mid-’90s. In 1993, the Pride Center at Equality Park, now one of the largest LGBTQ+ community centers in the Southeast, put down roots just off the strip. Then, in March 1997, the city zoned Wilton Drive as an Arts and Entertainment Overlay District, and the dominoes started.
2266 Wilton Drive
RECORD
Georgie’s Alibi (now Georgie’s Alibi Monkey Bar) opened in April 1997, the first major LGBTQ+ business of the new district, and the anchor everyone still cites as the moment the demographic shift became visible. Four spaces in one, the Main Bar, the Times Square Bar, the Monkey Bar, and the Patio. Regulars have called it part church, part therapy, part community center. After Pulse, that wasn’t a metaphor.
LEGEND
“Georgie’s started it all.” It didn’t, JJ’s got there in ’81. But Georgie’s started this: the loud, neon, all-in version of the Drive we know now. Both things are true. The legend just forgot the first chapter.
The nightlife spine
2345 Wilton Drive
RECORD
The Manor Complex owners, Paul Hugo and Brett Tannenbaum, opened in 2009: 16,000 square feet, two levels, the cavernous Epic Room. It’s the late-night engine of the strip, built as much as a community gathering space as a club hosting iconic themed events that both cater to both the LGBTQ+ community and the allies that support our heels, created for only the visionaries, such as us, who could pull off these events with the most fashionable attire.
Between the anchors mentioned above, the Drive fills in with these now-standing must stops as well:
Hunters Nightclub owner Mark “Hunter” Seymour, one of the oldest rooms on the street, sources put its opening at 1980, which is its own small mystery I’m still chasing. Perhaps we should all have one big “on the drive” meeting to hash out which diva is the truest revolutionary? Eh? Y’all know where to find me.
Here is how your typical Sunday should go down if you are doing it right. This applies to both the locals and tourists alike.
Start at Rosie’s Bar & Grill for the infamously iconic brunch every Sunday, where you’ll meet yours truly. P.S. BLT, as a wrap, add avocado, add Brie… it’s kind of my thing so trust the process and thank me later.
Once brunch ends, make your way down to Scandals for the country-western Sunday pre-tea dance party (to be honest, I forgot what it’s really called, but it’s a good time. Your final stop has you walk back onto the dive, where you will find literally every queen across all of Fort Lauderdale for the friendliest neighborhood tea dance gathering. Hunters Nightclub is the host of the Sundown Tea Dance (again, I don’t know the official name), but here you will be welcomed, loved, and accepted. I am counting all y’all to make these visitors feel welcome here… You listening?
Aside from the typical Sunday, The Eagle takes on its iconic role on the drive regardless of which evening you decide to make way through that long dark hallway entrance to the dance floor. Gym Bar is where the sports guys like to hang, just make sure to be a good boy and hand them their beer and stay out of their line of vision to the television. I love being told I am good. The low-lit DrYnk, is perfect for when you need to spill some tea and clock it before cruising the dance floor at No Manors, which brings us to, perhaps, my favorite non-bar discovery, to the Moon, a candy shop offering unique finds you wont get anywhere else with sweets from 87 countries, stockings for all the Daddy’s out there, along with a variety of the best gifts you can take home to the people you love or as a keepsake for yourself. It’s open past midnight, so you can sugar up between rooms.
How the story holds up
The big civic milestones are clustered on this street too: by 2000, Wilton Manors had the second gay-majority governing body in the country. In 2015, after same-sex marriage became legal in Florida, the city threw a Valentine’s Day “We Do!” mass wedding at City Hall, 37 couples, many together for decades, married at once. In 2018, it elected the first all-LGBTQ+ city commission in Florida. In 2023, it formally declared itself an LGBTQ+ Safe Space, which I feel is truly a safe space for all of us. That kind of feeling has a way of spreading, and I find it across all of Fort Lauderdale, really. You care for us, and honestly, it’s the most rewarding and grateful sensation that just makes this community pour itself back into growing others through the people, the organizations, and the businesses that use its more unique qualities and differences to somehow bring us all closer together. Crazy how I used to dream of a place like this, and by way of the road less traveled, I found my way home to what I had been dreaming of all along. Anyway, I digress…
Two years in, here’s what walking it block by block taught me: the Drive isn’t a nightlife strip that grew a historical architecture of locations to merely exist. It’s a history recorded for our present-day place of sanctuary that happens to have the most iconic locations to grab a cocktail, restaurants to taste a little bit of everything, and people who are going to support one another no matter what. Because what we do here is create a better tomorrow, for all of us, not just the few. I’ll end with this: the first light went on in 1981, and it hasn’t gone off since. Let that drive us forward.
Historical research for this piece was conducted at the Stonewall National Museum, Archives & Library in Fort Lauderdale. Several dates and firsts on the Drive remain contested in the public record; where the sources disagreed, I said so rather than smoothing it over. If you can fill a gap, especially the name behind 1988, I want to hear from you.
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