For Frying Out Loud Page 16

  The Boathouse was a spacious room, with a long bar at one side, and a big dance floor at the front. At high tide on the bay, water sometimes crept up to the porch, which was out over the water. Former patron David Leigey remembers that more than once customers helped sweep out the tidal waters from the brick floor.

  With a clientele of 70 percent men, and 30 percent women, the place was generally packed with area visitors and the increasing number of gay men and women settling in coastal Sussex.

  Former patrons tell amazing tales about the Boathouse. In addition to the hundreds of gays vacationing in Rehoboth and coming to the Boathouse, the club attracted FBI and CIA agents, U.S. senators, and members of the Washington Redskins. People came to Rehoboth just to go to the Boathouse.

  Longtime couple Lee Mills and Don Gardiner, who now have a home and business in Rehoboth, remember a visit here in the summer of 1975. “The stretch between Ocean City and Dewey was a barren wasteland except for the Nomad – which is where we heard about The Boathouse. We drove to Dewey, turned off Route One and just followed the stream of boys heading toward the water from all directions.

  “The place was really jumping. It was magical – even though it was in town, it was like a desert oasis,” Mills recalls.

  But the good times lasted only a few years, until the Boathouse burned down. Was it intentional – a hate crime before that phrase was even made into a law? There are suspicions but no answers.

  In May 1980, the Renegade dance club, owned by Glen Thompson, a D.C. bar operator, opened on Route 1 just outside Rehoboth. Condos and a carwash now occupy the site.

  Busy from the first night, the Renegade was a smash. But less than eight weeks later, on July 4, 1980, the place burned to the ground in the middle of the night. Was that a hate crime? Thompson doesn’t think so. “We really had no trouble with the local people.”

  Whatever the fire’s origin, it devastated the business and the summer crowd. Determined to rebuild, Thompson worked closely with Sussex County officials, who did everything possible to help the Renegade get its permits to reopen by Labor Day, Thompson recalls.

  By a conservative estimate, 30,000 people dined, danced, saw shows, and in later years sang karaoke at the Renegade each year. It was also a custom for clubgoers to wind up at the Robin Hood Restaurant on Rehoboth Avenue for late-night breakfasts.

  “Rehoboth was an integral part of my coming out,” says Eastern Shore native and former Rehoboth resident Jon Mumford. “It was magical because it was the only place I knew there to be other gay people. I remember crazy nights at the Renegade.”

  While the early years saw the Renegade hosting many more men than women, by the mid-’80s, when the dance floor filled for the disco tune “It’s Raining Men” there were lots of women there, too.

  Rehoboth resident Julie Peters remembers good times at the Renegade. “It was really the only place to go to dance and it was always packed.”

  THE MOON RISES

  The late ’70s and early ’80s hold special significance for Rehoboth’s gay community because it was the dawn of Rehoboth Beach as a culinary destination. Within a couple of years of each other both the Back Porch and the Blue Moon restaurants opened. The Back Porch came first, opening in 1974 under owner Victor Pisapia and partners. Then, a few years later, Pisapia teamed up with Joyce Felton, a former New Yorker who worked at the Back Porch, to open the Blue Moon. It began a partnership that would dramatically alter the resort dining and gay nightlife scene.

  On the weekend before Memorial Day 1981, with the polyurethane floors still drying and the liquor board due any second to check the place out, Pisapia and Felton opened the doors. And the Moon was mobbed.

  The restaurant took off that first summer, as Pisapia and Felton concentrated on establishing a dinner crowd and staying open on weekends until 4 a.m. to catch patrons coming back from the Renegade.

  As the Blue Moon received excellent notices from food critics at the New York Times and Gourmet magazine, the establishment got a different kind of notice from some folks in Rehoboth. For all the people delighted to have this upscale, urbane restaurant in town, there were others, very vocal, who were not happy at all.

  Sometime during the first summer of operation, Rehoboth Mayor John Hughes, who has since completely changed his negative feelings about Rehoboth’s gay population, called Pisapia and Felton into his office. It seems that somebody sent the mayor an article describing what he called “gay food in Rehoboth.” Pisapia, who was closeted at the time, stayed very quiet. Joyce, on the other hand, wanted to know just exactly what made food gay.

  “It’s your clientele,” came the answer. The mayor explained that there was no way this town wanted a gay restaurant. It was a warning.

  While Pisapia and Felton worked seven days a week to keep the restaurant going, a mobilization began in town. There were meetings, sides were drawn and, as Felton recalls, rumors of an organization called AGVO – anti-gay vigilante organization. Just as Pisapia and Felton were frightened by the reactions the Blue Moon unleashed, so too were the members of the opposition frightened by this new community they feared and didn’t understand.

  Amid the controversy, the Blue Moon continued to attract its diverse crowd and diverse reactions. It wasn’t unusual for the restaurant to be pelted with tomatoes or beer cans from passing cars, just as it wasn’t unusual for the dining room to be filled with both gay and straight diners, local business people and politicians.

  According to Felton, on the night then-Governor. Mike Castle was having dinner at the Blue Moon, a full 16-ounce can of beer was hurled through the window just moments after his party departed. Fortunately, no one in the dining room was hurt – physically.

  Things really heated up when the Blue Moon’s neighbors got into the act, calling the City to complain about the bar and its clientele. If the police backed off and took a less aggressive stand about complaints, obsessive phone calls against the eatery forced them right back into the middle. Complaining neighbors and anti-gay residents had an agenda and the police were bound to investigate every call.

  The harassment and threats continued for years.

  But the customers kept coming. All kinds of customers. In addition to the loyal regulars, gay and straight, who savored the Blue Moon for its sophisticated food and ambiance, high profile customers like Frank Perdue, Baltimore Oriole Jim Palmer, Congressman Barney Frank, and Govovernor. Tom Carper dined at the Moon.

  “The crowds didn’t care about social unrest. They kept us in business,” says Felton. “We just kept going.”

  In 1988, a disco named The Strand, backed by a group of Rehoboth business owners, including Felton, opened in the center of Rehoboth Beach, turning a shuttered movie house into a hot nightspot. Two years later, Steve Elkins, who had worked at the White House for President Jimmy Carter, and then in computer sales, was asked by his friend Joyce Felton to move to Rehoboth to manage the BYOB club. Elkins and his partner, Murray Archibald, an artist, traded their decade long weekend life in Rehoboth to move to the resort full time.

  Under their watch, up to 700 bodies could be found dancing under disco glitter balls long into the night. The party was grand. But when the Strand continued to apply for a liquor license, the Rehoboth Homeowner’s Association and other residents drew their line in the sand. “There was a petition passed around citing noise, traffic and parking concerns to bolster their pleas for denial,” Elkins recalls, “but they got people to sign it by asking ‘Do you want a gay club in your backyard?’

  Other downtown businesses, afraid of losing their own rights came off the sidelines to support the Strand, but it was too late. The homeowners won. In 1995, the city voted to ban bars altogether, permitting only establishments that served food to hold liquor licenses. Today, the ordinance still states, “No person shall sell, give, dispense, provide or keep or cause to be sold, given, dispensed, provided or kept any alcoholic beverage on the premises of any dance hall establishment.”

  Several weeks afte
r the vote, state troopers raided the Strand in a drug bust, arresting six people. Sadly for all its fans, the Strand could not survive the lack of a liquor license as well as the growing anti-gay sentiment in town. The Strand danced on for a while, but filed for bankruptcy protection in 1993, and, according to Steve Elkins, closed the next year.

  CAMP REHOBOTH IS BORN

  More trouble brewed. With gays and lesbians being much more visible in town by the early 1990s, many longtime residents feared their town was being overtaken by these newcomers. Bumper stickers appeared saying “Keep Rehoboth a Family Town” – which the gay community interpreted as anti-gay – and there were some violent gay-bashing incidents and less serious but equally upsetting instances of name-calling and harrassment.

  Ron Tipton, now retired to the area from Philadelphia remembers being on Poodle Beach when “young toughs would occasionally stop by and threaten us.”

  It was then, in 1991, Murray Archibald, Steve Elkins and their friends in the business community thought about forming an organization to promote understanding between the gay the straight communities.

  While more and more gays and lesbians headed for Rehoboth on summer weekends, drawn by the beautiful resort and the growing number of gay-friendly businesses, something needed to be done to bring the gay and straight communities together – and keep gay citizens safe.

  According to Elkins, a frightening incident happened on the Boardwalk in 1992 when a man was attacked with a broken off champagne bottle and very seriously injured. A group of five teens – one old enough to be tried as an adult – was arrested and convicted, with the adult sentenced to five years in jail.

  “Sadly,” says Elkins,” City officials did not want to make a statement about the incident. “They wanted to brush it under the rug.” However, Elkins says, Rehoboth Police Chief Creig Doyle insisted it become public and Elkins was interviewed by the newspapers and WHYY-TV. One City Commissioner, Roger Poole, contacted Elkins the next day and thanked him. “I knew we had to reach out and let people know this was not acceptable,” Poole remembers.

  So, the organization CAMP Rehoboth was born, with CAMP being an acronym for Create A More Positive Rehoboth, along with a nod to the gay community’s hallmark campiness. Since one of the interpretations of the Biblical word “Rehoboth” is “room for all,” the name CAMP Rehoboth was a natural.

  This fledgling nonprofit organization of gay volunteers (along with some straight allies) hosted meetings with local government, conducted sensitivity training with the police department and met with homeowner associations to try to bring the diverse communities closer.

  CAMP Rehoboth started with a four page newsletter, a small board of directors with Archibald as president, and a tiny office space in the courtyard at 39 Baltimore Avenue, just down the street from the Blue Moon.

  Along with its mission of bringing the communities together, the gay community itself needed a hub. While there were a growing number of places to dine and dance, with an increasing number of welcoming B&Bs, restaurants and shops, there was no central focus – a place people could come for information about the community. And it wouldn’t hurt to have a way of reaching out for understanding and cooperation between members of the gay and lesbian community and the local merchants, government, year-round and summer residents, and anyone else calling Rehoboth home.

  “Our goal was to work with the entire community,” says Elkins, currently executive director of the organization. “After all, if we were isolated, with divisions in the community, we wouldn’t really be a living representation of what the rainbow symbol, long associated with the gay community, means.”

  MAKING PROGRESS

  The organization, in addition to providing events and programs for the gay community, reached out to fight discrimination by promoting political awareness and developing relationships with the local media, police, government, community and clergy.

  As time passed, CAMP Rehoboth, its volunteers and small staff became well-known in the community, assisting other non-profits, like the library with its book sales, the Independant Film Festival with volunteers or Beebe Hospital with its fundraising benefits. As local homeowners got to know these volunteers personally, the division between gay and straight residents started to narrow.

  In May 2003, a sexual orientation anti-discrimination law was passed unanimously by the mayor and commissioners of Rehoboth Beach.

  And since its formation in 1991, CAMP Rehoboth has seen incredible growth.

  That four page newsletter has been known to go over 120 pages now, and instead of being available at a handful of sites, the magazine is delivered to Rehoboth area businesses, and many more in Washington, D.C., New York City, Philadelphia and Baltimore.

  Gay life changed, as well. With more acceptance and visibility, people had more options for places to meet and spend time. As was the trend nationally, big dance clubs had trouble sustaining business other than on weekends. The Renegade, which closed its doors in 2003, gave way to smaller venues, mixing dining and dancing, and a gay community that was out and visible in the entire community.

  On May 30, 2009, 19 years after its inception, CAMP Rehoboth held the grand opening for the new wing of its community center on Baltimore Avenue. The tiny starter space has grown into two adjacent in-town properties that house the CAMP Rehoboth office, a beautiful new room for events and meetings, a lending library and public computer access, as well as a home for businesses which rent space around the center courtyard.

  The crowd at the grand opening included city commissioners, local business owners, politicians, bankers, and hundreds of CAMP Rehoboth supporters – gay and straight.

  In another milestone, the signing of the bill that added the words “sexual orientation” to Delaware’s nondiscrimination law took place July 2, 2009 at CAMP Rehoboth, with Governor Jack Markell and several legislators who had worked for passage of the bill in attendance.

  Former Commissioner Roger Poole sees a big difference over the years. He and his wife Joyce are best friends with their gay neighbors and enjoy all the diversity the town offers. Roger was delighted to find his photo in a recent edition of Letters from CAMP Rehoboth. “Today I think that almost all of the residents here are comfortable sharing our town with the gay community.”

  Is life perfect, with discrimination entirely gone? Of course not. But it is infrequent and only whispered to like-minded individuals. “They are missing out on good friends,” says Poole.

  Today, Rehoboth Beach and the surrounding areas are home to a large gay population, many businesses owned and operated by gays and lesbians and a throng of gay visitors seamlessly blending with the community at large.

  Joyce Felton finds the difference in the last quarter century amazing. “I’m truly grateful to have had the opportunity to live in a time and place to help make change – even if it was challenging and traumatic at times. My life has been enriched for it.”

  One example of how Rehoboth has evolved as a place with “room for all”: In 2008, as USA Today called the resort one of America’s best gay beaches, Reader’s Digest anointed it one of America’s top retirement destinations.

  Part-time resident Peter Rosenstein has been visiting Rehoboth for many years and sees a huge difference today, from the 1980s. “It’s the freedom today to be yourself and not be afraid of what others will think, it’s the openness of the gay community and the feeling that Rehoboth is now one big community and not two separate ones.”

  As Steve Elkins is fond of saying, recalling that old bumper sticker, “Rehoboth is still a family town – for all kinds of families.”

  January 2010

  IT’S A SMALL RIDE AFTER ALL…

  Disney on New Year’s Eve. What was I thinking?????

  For the first time in a decade, my mate and I ventured outside Reho for the holidays. Given our current economic diet we simply could not pass up an invitation to spend a week with good friends in sunny Florida.

  Alas, we actually had to get there,
which required cramming the car with two suitcases, two overnight bags, two sets of golf clubs, two Schnauzers, and two winter-weary humans. Is there an uglier, more boring route that I-95? Our favorite roadside attractions included pictures of bloody fetuses on anti-abortion signs and a huge billboard erected by some pissed off people warning “Waldo, FL Speed trap!” The Chamber of Commerce must be pleased. Sure enough, there was a black and white with sirens atop lying in wait. Thank you, billboard people.

  Lots of us have navigation systems now and it was eerily obvious when we hit a traffic snarl. Dozens of cars, us included, peeled off like lemmings through suspect neighborhoods at the insistence of, as we call her, the bitch on the dashboard. We blindly followed the pack until we came out the other side of the back-up. But frankly, she could have led us to the Amityville Horror House for all we knew. Does anyone else think this blind obedience is a little spooky?

  Ah, the gourmet food choices en route. My favorite is Sonny’s Barbecue, which, if I recall, was the last place I ever entered with an intact gall bladder. Sometime in the mid 1990s, returning from the South, I ate an enormous lard-laden dinner at a Sonny’s and several miles down the road my gall bladder became an improvised explosive device.

  As I moaned in pain, Bonnie said “I have to get you to a hospital!”

  “Not in South Carolina you don’t!”

  So we drove non-stop, nine hours back to civilization so I could have surgery where we might be treated as a legitimate couple.

  But this time, filled with plenty of gall, but gall-bladderless, we stopped at Sonny’s, with nothing left to lose. Just dignity. It was unwise eating all those baked beans and getting right back into the car. Turnabout is fair play: the Schnauzers sat in the back fanning the air.

  But after a mere 19 hours of mindless driving we reached our destination.