The Elbo Room, a Ft. Lauderdale Landmark!
Last week, my ladyfriend and I flew, separately, for a wedding to the city first made famous in “Where The Boys Are”. One underpriced Delta flight for her and one overpriced Spirit ticket pour moi. Three glorious nights and two sunfilled days at the Howard Johnson’s on the beach. Would there still exist the same strip of cheap hotel bars that somehow managed to ‘get a pool in the parking lot’? The places with beer for a quarter at 9am, fifty cents at 10am, 75 cents at 11am… you get the idea. Fat guys from one school cheering on fatter guys from other schools in belly flop or ‘boat races’. Girls, six to a room. Texas. Syracuse. Connecticut. Georgia. Virginia. Oh sweet SVA. Chalk people. That’s what U of F girls call Canadians. Would it still be the same? Would it? Could it? It would not. It could not. What started out as a party destination in the 1950s has peaked and been replaced by thousands of beach front condos, hotels rooms, outdoor malls and offices – and not too many people drink in public here anymore. Not that that’s a bad thing. It’s certainly cleaner. And I couldn’t help but think that the bikers sans helmets from Central Casting that cruz by every ten minutes, might be some of those same lost doormen who hassled my Super Bonzai Party Buddy Dave Case for ID all those years ago.
The Elbo Room was established in 1938 and has been a Ft. Lauderdale landmark for sixty years. It all began with the WW2 sailors in the 1940’s, then the Spring Breakers from the fifties to the late eighties, and presently to anyone still searching for that lost old flame that got away. This site offers its subscribers an array of live, full motion cameras with freaky sound from a room that makes you think you are there. And you were. We had an amazing time. Brian and Alex got married in a wonderful ceremony at The Bonnet House. I got some sun, did some shopping. Then at the reception, we had too much to drink and trashed the hotel room – just for old time’s sake. – John Fucile