I am back from my vacation and rested and ready to continue our quest to SAVE the BOOM!!!
There has been a lot going on the past several weeks.
We have surpassed our goal of collecting 5,000 signatures to SAVE the BOOM!!! Thanks to a great effort by the volunteer coordinator, jeff Delancy and the many volunteers who helped in this effort. We are still collecting signatures thru the Labor Day weekend and would ask you to please send in any outstanding petitions to SAVE the BOOM, 1278 Glenneyre, #20, Laguna Beach, CA 92651
We have received a large amount of press coverage on the good news that Mr. Udvar-Hazy has agreed to allow the historic coast inn and boom boom room to remain open for at least one more year. He renegotiated a one-year lease extension with hotel and club operators, Patrick O’Loughlin and James Marchese.
There was a big celebration at the boom last weekend. Here is the link to the photos and coverage of the party from the Orange County Register’s Laguna Beach News-Post on page 13:
And here are some other links to more coverage that we received.
and the lead editorial in Friday’s Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot
And special thanks to Gregory Stevens who has been one of the best signature gatherers of this entire campaign. He has 7 petition clipboards in his salon and has had a SAVE the BOOM!!! banner up facing busy Pacific Coast Highway for the last month. Thank you Gregory for all of your help!!!
And finally, we have been receiving several testimonials and this one was particularly moving from and an anonymous supporter:
“Thank you, Fred!
The Boom has been my home away from home since January 1973. I had recently returned from Vietnam and was terrified at that time, all the time, inside. The home culture had changed and I was gay a Viet vet and there was no place for me anywhere. I remember well that cold and rainy night I wandered in. I immediately felt warm as if I was with an old friend. The jukebox was playing He’s So Vain, then Tangerine and Green Eyes from the ’40s, then a song by WAR. I realized that for the first time in my life I felt safe. A haven. There were pool tables in what is now the dance area and goldfish swimming under the glass on the bar. The guys all seem to know one another and with their flannel shirts and Levi’s were friendly, handsome, and sexy. The seventies, the eighties, the nineties, and beyond, and I have never found anything quite like the Boom.
The people I have met there were not only from Laguna but from big cities and small towns all over the world. I fell in love with the Boom in the ’70s and it changed my life. I fell in love again there in the ’80s during the time of AIDS and again it changed my life. I became an activist. We all did. I have never had as much fun, or learned as much, or had so many dreams come true, or my growth as a man as I have experienced in that sweet fine place.
Thanks again, Fred! I owe you one and big time! ”
If you would like to share a boom memory(s), click on comments here in the blog and have at it.
That’s it for now, except for a huge thank you to all who are helping in this campaign to protect our history and our future.
Fred