8 August 27 - september 2, 2026 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Month XX–Month XX, 2008 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | ART | STAGE | NIGHT+DAY | METRO | RIPTIDE | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Still crazy after all these years Mac’s Club Deuce turns 100. BY OLEE FOWLER S outh Beach has rebuilt itself for soldiers, retirees, Cuban exiles, television cameras, and condo buyers. Mac’s Club Deuce has survived every version. On Satur- day, 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 Ave- nue. 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.” 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 publica- tions date the bar’s true open- ing. As for the name, it’s a nod 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. 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, it was swapped 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 in- terview, he added, “At 100, you don’t give a goddamn about anybody.” 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 con- vinced 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. Anthony Bourdain brought the next gen- eration 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 look- ing for shirts of their own. “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. The cast of characters at the bar has al- ways 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 sales- man, a carpenter, a nuclear physicist, a jani- tor, 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 her- self, still cooks for holiday parties served buf- fet-style on the covered pool table for regulars without family tables of their own. On birth- days, 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. 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, ▼ Café Photos by David Suarez “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.” >> p9 Anthony Bourdain had been drinking at the Deuce long before he ever filmed there, and he featured it in his shows three times.
