wilton manors Archives - Memos and Mirth

The dilemma at the gay bar

November 6, 2011

Leave it to me to have an existentialist dilemma at the gay bar.

Back in Florida Carlos and I would trek up to Wilton Manors to the T. Palace drag show.

This is one of the best performances we saw:

That’s Noel Leon.

I remember thinking how strange it felt recording the drag show. An amazing performance was going on in front of me but I was watching it on my camera screen. It was a tradeoff though because without the video, no one would remember the show.

This implicates that whole art vs. life / creation vs. consumption dichotomy that I spent way too much time thinking about during undergrad. It’s something that Oscar Wilde and Truman Capote grappled with too. It goes like this: you can either be out partying and socializing or you can be at home, working and creating. Each can fuel and yet compromise the other.

So my experience at the Noel Leon show was compromised by the recording, but that recording preserved the memory and allows me to share the experience years later. Fair trade?

Miami / video

Broward Revisited

March 13, 2010

I had already graduated from the University of Miami, it was my birthday week, and I had a flipcam.

One month later I moved to Minneapolis to start law school and Alexandra moved to San Francisco with her fiancé and started grad school.

Carlos is still in Miami because the place would fall apart without him, and we still hit up Broward when I fly down.

2L Winter / memories / Miami

The Circuit

January 10, 2010

Last night, Carlos and I hit up the Wilton Manors circuit.

Alibi. The night starts at the video bar. A tiny man with bug glasses and a messenger bag hits on Carlos. Carlos isn’t feeling it, so the tiny-tot finds a senior citizen.

Boom. We perform for a crowd on the moonwalk stage. The house music gets repetitive so Carlos does hydraulics while I walk it out. Later, Video Phone comes on in the video bar. Carlos stands and laughs while I bust out with the boomkats.
On the way back to the car we come across a pimptastic pair of shoes in the window of Bottoms & Tops, but it was 12:10am and the store closed at midnight. Shucks.
We then head to Ramrod. The bar is so crowded that we have to circle the neighborhood to park. Bartender is morbidly obese, shirtless, and rancid-smelling, but the music is good. I also run into a college crush, who was no longer as charming, but much friendlier.

The next bar is The Manor, a new sprawling club-restaurant-lounge. The club is so big that it is billed as a “complex.” The Manor is beautiful, multi-storied, and sprinkled with thrones and bodybuilders. The main dance floor has blaring 20-minute remixes, and there is also a salsa fest going on in the side bar.

Afterwards we head to Torpedo, which is open later than all of the other clubs in the county. Torpedo is dead until at least 3am, and then it’s suddenly packed. At that point we are just mischievous, doing ridiculous dances, and taunting people.

The night ended at Lester’s, a 24-hour diner near the old Coliseum. Grease, gossip, and decaf coffee.

It was a hilarious, intense night. Although I have no idea how we managed to do the Broward circuit so often in college…maybe I’m getting old?