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South Beach has rebuilt itself for soldiers, retirees, Cuban exiles, television cameras, and condo buyers. Mac’s Club Deuce has survived every version. On Saturday, Sept. 5, the cash-only dive that calls itself Miami Beach’s oldest bar celebrates its 100th anniversary, tracing back to 1926, with a free block party on 14th Street at Washington Avenue. From 4 to 11:30 p.m., bands and DJs take over a street stage while the bar’s pink-and-green neon lights glow at the center of all of it.
“It’s a big deal,” says Mac’s Club Deuce manager Christie Ashenoff of the centennial.
The bar had planned a small party inside until Troy Wright, executive director of the Washington Avenue Business Improvement District, pushed Ashenoff toward a street takeover. The district is presenting the event.
“I was like, Troy, you’re crazy,” Ashenoff says. “He talked us into it, and now I’m really glad that we’re doing it.”
One address, three birthdays
The Deuce is celebrating 100 years, but pinning down exactly what hit the century mark here is tricky. The bar brands itself as “Est. 1926,” but records from that time are hard to find. Prohibition didn’t end until December 1933, which is when most publications date the bar’s true opening. As for the name, it nods to its address: 222 14th Street.
Ashenoff says Mary Klein, the widow of the bar’s namesake, told her the building stored seaplane parts for the military during the war years. After the war and the repeal of Prohibition, it operated as a restaurant and piano bar before dropping the restaurant and focusing on the bar and music.
The current name came about on Feb. 3, 1964, when regular Mac Klein bought the place, added his name to it, and added just about nothing else to the space for decades.
Provided by Mac’s Club Deuce
The man behind the “Mac’s”
Klein was a New York City-born World War II veteran who came to Miami Beach in 1945 to recover from combat wounds in warmer weather. He became a Club Deuce regular, then an employee, and bought the bar outright after owner Harold Schwartz died. He installed the curved bar so everyone could see the pianist in the corner; later, he swapped it for live music, then a jukebox, and he mostly stopped changing things in the bar for five decades after.
Klein at one point told the Miami Herald he considered the bar, “the Shangri-La of Miami Beach. Someone can leave here for 10 years and come back here, and nothing has changed.”
Klein worked seven days a week at the bar, in his signature Hawaiian T-shirts, until he died on March 25, 2016, at 101.
“Being 100 is the greatest experience that ever happened to me,” he told New Times in a 2015 oral history of the bar. In the same interview, he added, “At 100, you don’t give a goddamn about anybody.”
David Suarez for Miami New Times
From neon to Bourdain
Most people today find out about the Deuce through their TV or computer screens – and the bar’s most recognizable feature even came from TV.
The signature pink-and-green neon that outlines the room wasn’t there until the late ’80s, when Miami Vice filmed at the Deuce, including the season-five episode “Freefall,” with Don Johnson’s Sonny Crockett parked at the curved bar. Producers wanted to light the bar in neon for the shoot, and Mac initially said no, Ashenoff says. Mary convinced him to allow it on the condition that the neon stayed when the cameras left. It did, and a piece of that set became the bar’s trademark.
The series even threw its final wrap party at the bar in 1989, with Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas pouring drinks during an open bar.
David Suarez for Miami New Times
Bourdain’s spirit lives on at the Deuce
Bourdain brought the next generation of visitors.
He had been drinking at the Deuce before he ever filmed there, and he featured it three times: on “No Reservations” in 2006, “The Layover” in 2011, and “Parts Unknown” in 2015, where he sat with Mac and called the bar one of his “favorite places on Earth.” Ashenoff says photos of Bourdain wearing a Club Deuce T-shirt sent fans looking for their own shirts.
“We really and truly got lucky with Anthony Bourdain,” Ashenoff says of the spotlight his shows shone on the bar. “They definitely were cut from the same cloth.” Ashenoff has since put plaques on chair backs for regulars and famous visitors. People hunt down Bourdain’s chair for photos, while Mac, Miami Vice, and Guy Fieri have plaques of their own.
David Suarez for Miami New Times
A merry band of misfits
The cast of characters at the bar has always been eclectic and reflective of the times. In June 1989, when a Miami Herald story headlined “All Kinds Make a Merry Mix at Mac’s Club Deuce,” the author counted a poet, an accountant, a cremation urn salesman, a carpenter, a nuclear physicist, a janitor, a yacht captain, and a bus driver at the bar on a single Thursday afternoon. Famously, or infamously depending on who you ask, the bar opens at 8 a.m. and closes at 5 a.m., seven days a week, with a two-for-one happy hour that runs from open until 5 p.m. And, yes, it is still cash only after all these years.
Community has always been central to the bar. Mary, who once owned a restaurant herself, still cooks for holiday parties served buffet-style on the covered pool table for regulars without family tables of their own. On birthdays, the bartenders bring out a urinal cake with a lit candle stuck in it. Misbehave and you might land on the 86 list and receive one of the bar’s 86 cards. Ashenoff says the cards have become such a novelty that some people are proud to earn one.
David Suarez for Miami New Times
Never became a tourist trap thanks to regulars
Ashenoff grew up on the beach hearing about the Deuce, and her mom was friends with Mac and Mary in the ’80s. She met her husband, Argelio “Angel” Diaz Novo, at the bar, and Mary made him manager after Mac died. Angel died suddenly this past January at age 60, and Ashenoff, who previously served as the bar’s social media manager and merchandise coordinator, took over his role.
A hundred years in, the Deuce is a full-blown tourist destination — Bourdain obsessives, Miami Vice fans, and the walking tours of Miami Beach all stop in the bar constantly. It has never become a tourist trap, and Ashenoff credits the regulars. “They don’t want the bottle service, they don’t want the clubs, they don’t want the lines,” she says. “They wanna be able to sit down, have a drink, have a conversation without paying $22 for a beer.”
David Suarez for Miami New Times
Bands, giveaways, and a centennial raffle
Ashenoff says 14th Street will close to celebrate all day, with a stage where bands will play through the evening, DJs between sets, and a late set inside after the street party wraps up. The Deuce will sell 100th-anniversary merchandise and hand out sponsor giveaways throughout the day.
A raffle benefits Heart Heroes, Inc., which supports children and families affected by congenital heart disease, and the Florida Chapter of the Human Trafficking Foundation, which empowers survivors of human trafficking by providing a safe haven where they can rebuild their lives with dignity and hope.
“This event is really for everybody who’s ever stepped foot through the door,” Ashenoff says. “None of us that are here will ever see this again. But I might see 150 if I’m lucky.”
Whatever the next 100 years hold, Mary made the bar’s future plans very clear days after Mac died. “I’m not going to change that bar,” she told New Times. “The only competition I ever had for Mac’s affections was that bar, and I’m not changing a hair on that beautiful woman’s head.”
Mac’s Club Deuce. 222 14th St., Miami Beach; macsclubdeuce.com. Free 100th-anniversary block party Saturday, Sept. 5, from 4 to 11:30 p.m.
