The city now is home to the Pride Center, a community center that hosts “safe-space” meeting groups, activities and support for the LGBTQ community in Florida the annual Stonewall Pride Festival and Parade, which attracts some 30,000 people yearly and the expanded Stonewall National Museum - Wilton Manors Gallery, an LGBTQ-focused cultural institution with historic artifacts, digital archives, and visual exhibits aimed at promoting understanding. More Gay and Lesbian establishments followed.
Wilton Manors and the LGBTQ Community in Florida It began about the time DeRosa first moved there, about the time Georgie’s Alibi, the first major gay bar, opened in a boarded-up bank branch up the block from where To The Moon now stands.
It has about 140 per 1,000, putting it second only to Provincetown, Mass. “It’s nice to be able to walk down the street holding hands with my partner and not have people yell things out.”Īccording to the 2010 Census, Wilton Manors is the country’s “Second Gayest City” – at least in terms of couples. Still, in Wilton Manors he found something missing in other places he’d been. “I did the classic ‘move to Florida and come out,’” he says.ĭeRosa stands as large as his pseudonym suggests. That’s what attracted roller derby promoter and Wilton Manors resident Derrick DeRosa, who goes by the stage name Bear Lee Human. It’s also “the epicenter of the gay community in South Florida,” says resident Jason Gonzalez. The street is the heart of the city, the center of activity and, if the steady stream of customers is any indication, a sweet tooth’s heaven.
The candy and collectibles store sits on Wilton Manors’ main thoroughfare, Wilton Drive. “My boyfriend loves Pink Floyd so I wanted to get it for him.”
THE EAGLE GAY BAR FORT LAUDERDALE FULL
The rest of the store is crammed full of novelties, classic toys and collectibles – Gumby and Pokey, Bozo the Clown party favors and, among the rows of tin school lunchboxes by the front door, the Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon” box Mandarine Toledo came specifically looking to buy. There’s also Jiffy Pop, raisin crackers and Sanders fudge, and sodas you might have thought had long disappeared: Sun Drop, Cheerwine, RC Cola, Moxie. There are Oh, Henry bars and Tootsie Rolls, of course, and hard to find brands like Bean Boozled, Junket and My T Fine – over 13,000 kinds in all. “If he’s from Brooklyn he’ll know these.”īoxes, bags and bars of candy fill the floor-to-ceiling shelves along one wall and a head-high row across the aisle. “Well, where’s he from?” Dumas quickly asks, and, as soon as she answers, leads her to a section with candies from the Northeast. “I wanted to get him something authentic.” This time the customer is Tara Jackerson, who came in, she says, to buy her dad a gift. The list goes on, delivered by To The Moon’s owner, Antonio “Ralph” Dumas, as he leads customers along the packed shelves of candies. Then 75 types of homemade chocolate covered items, 115 types of black licorice, 100 types of dark chocolate bars …” The first two racks beginning here have mostly the candies that were famous in America from 1806 to the mid-1990s. “We have candy from 87 different countries. Wilton Manors gayborhood in Florida has a lot to offer: walkability, waterways, and wildlife – as in the kind that lives in the wild, and the kind that is wild. Wilton Manors, South Florida’s famous gayborhood, combines a small-town atmosphere with all the amenities of urban life.