9 March 30 - april 5, 2023 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | Contents | Letters | news | night+Day | CuLture | Cafe | MusiC | Month XX–Month XX, 2008 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | CONTENTS | LETTERS | RIPTIDE | METRO | NIGHT+DAY | STAGE | ART | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | carousers. One of Ol’ Blue Eyes’ wingmen, Dean Martin, the boozy crooner from Steubenville, Ohio, opened a pub called Dino’s in the Village in the mid-’60s and christened it the Show Place of the South. An empty parking lot now marks the spot where Martin’s tavern once catered to Hollywood’s rich and famous. Right next to it is the last surviving vestige of an era when North Bay Village was the South Beach of the 1950s, and South Beach was better known as God’s waiting room for the blue-rinse set. That relic is Happy’s Stork Lounge and Liquor, a seedy, smoker-friendly dive bar that was licensed in 1952 to an un- derworld figure named Stefano Randazzo and lives on as a be- loved mecca for the economy-class tippling set of North Bay Village, the Normandy Isles neighborhood of Miami Beach, and Miami’s Upper Eastside. A perennial contender for the title of the region’s best dive bar, Happy’s proudly retains its throwback ambiance and emi- nently affordable beers and cocktails. (A double-rail vodka and tonic lightens a patron’s wallet by a mere $6.) But nothing is forever in this world, and sometime in April, Happy’s is slated to move out of the strip-mall premises it has occupied for more than 70 years and into a more spacious and far brighter retail space 1,600 feet to the west. Whereas Happy’s has always been a liquids-forward estab- lishment, standard-issue bar snacks and appetizers will be on offer at the new location (which not all that long ago housed an upmarket taco restaurant), and cigarette smokers will be banished to an outdoor patio. Nevertheless, 61-year-old Steven Inerfeld, who, in partner- ship with his kid brother Howard acquired Happy’s in 1993, promises that the relocated bar will be “newer, better, and cleaner” than its storied predecessor. Some longtime elbow benders are dubious of the so-called improvements. “I’m apprehensive,” says Kelly, a 64-year-old retired book- keeper from Brooklyn and avid smoker who began frequent- ing Happy’s in 2002 with her then-husband after they moved into an apartment nearby. “There’s going to be food. And it’s not just the food. It’s going to be very different — it’s just not going to be the same.” For the uninitiated, a true bar — or a “bar bar,” as Jim Atkinson, author of the authoritative 1987 travelogue The View From Nowhere: The Only Bar Guide You’ll Ever Want or Need, dubbed such establishments — views food as a distraction, particularly if it’s not prepackaged in a sealed container or pickled. A bar bar is for the hardcore imbiber who flocks to such an establishment for one overriding reason, and that reason has nothing to do with chicken tenders, Buffalo wings, or mozzarella sticks. Howard Inerfeld, 58, likes to think of Happy’s as a real-life version of the cozy Boston bar that starred in the 1980s hit TV sitcom Cheers. “We’re on a first-name basis with our customers,” notes Belarusian bartender, Alexi. “We know what they like.” When out-of-town visitors to Miami Beach feel like slum- ming it for a night during their stay, chances are they’ll wind up at Mac’s Club Deuce, the watering hole that began life as a speakeasy during the Prohibition era in the 1920s. But geogra- phy aside, what separates Happy’s from its South Beach coun- terpart is its cohort of regulars, coupled with the comforting knowledge that the bar bar’s staff will take care of its patrons, no matter how legless they may become as the evening spills into the wee hours. “Mac’s is way more touristy, whereas this is a 100 percent neighborly bar,” opines Patrick Harrington, a thirtysomething database programmer from Maryland who began frequenting Happy’s not long after he moved into a nearby condominium building in January 2009 and now serves as the bar’s opera- tions manager. “We drove two people home last night to make sure they got home safe because they are in the neighborhood. You don’t get that at Mac’s.” By their own admission, the Inerfeld brothers never would have budged from the bar’s current address had it been up to them. But in May 2021, a Miami residential development be- hemoth called the Shoma Group bought the corner property where Happy’s now stands for $7.4 million and ponied up an- other $8.4 million for the capacious adjacent parking lot. The company announced plans to raze the strip mall and, in its place, erect a 19-story condominium tower that will house 333 units and a Publix. The Shoma Group’s vision is one of several development projects that threaten to transform North Bay Village over the next decade into a blend of Brickell’s gridlocked avenues and teeming sidewalks and the corridor of high-rises that tower over Collins Avenue in Sunny Isles Beach. In that sense, Hap- py’s date with the wrecking ball can’t be shrugged off as the inevitable fate of an expired relic from a bygone era. The bar’s imminent uprooting is another cautionary tale highlighting the headlong plunge into hyper-development consuming great swaths of Miami Beach and Bay Harbor Islands, not to mention Miami’s mainland bayfront. “I’m honestly heartbroken because you get a taste of old Miami here where people who don’t make a lot of money can go and relax, and it doesn’t have to be a place that is all glitz and glamour,” says 39-year-old schoolteacher Deniece Wil- liams, gesturing from her barstool perch. “But I see North Bay Village turning into what many other neighborhoods like Brickell and downtown Miami are turning into.” The municipality’s vice mayor, Richard Chervony, has al- ready seen the village evolve into something quite different from the bland suburb he moved to 30 years ago. The Havana- born physician was drawn to North Bay Island — which, un- like the other two isles that also make up North Bay Village, was zoned exclusively for single-family dwellings. Back then, Chervony says, the neighborhood was mostly Jewish and English-speaking. The ethnic homogeneity of yesteryear has yielded to a pre- dominantly Latin population composed of U.S.-born Hispan- ics and Latin American immigrants with a splash of Brazilian nationals to complete the populace’s demographic cocktail. Now 72, Chervony openly acknowledges the pro-develop- ment stance he has habitually adopted during his years as an elected member of the village commission. But he doubts whether all the development projects he and his colleagues on the commission have okayed will bear fruit during his lifetime. “I’d love to see it happen, but I don’t see it happening. None of these properties has a shovel in the ground,” he tells New Times. “What I have seen is a lot of individuals purchasing these empty lots and selling us on the idea of developing them. But they keep flipping them instead.” The man who gave the bar its name was a natty, pistol- packing curmudgeon from the same town in Ohio that produced Dean Martin. Bernard Goldlust — his real name! — became a North Bay Village fixture in 1955 when he and a partner bought the establishment’s bar and package-store license from one Dominic Civetta, a man described in a 1969 letter written by the commander of the Dade County Public Safety Department’s vice and intelligence section as a “prominent Organized Crime figure.” “He was a grumpy old man,” recalls Howard Inerfeld, who, along with his sibling Steven, met Goldlust in As it got closer to the reality of it closing, I realized how badly I didn’t want to lose the place. “ >> p10 Happy’s proprietors, brothers Howard (left) and Steven Inerfeld, promise to keep the bar’s vibe alive
