Waiting for Las Olas to get hip, I got too old to boogie

I moved to Fort Lauderdale in 1976 and rented an old carriage house apartment right off Las Olas Boulevard. As a young guy interested in a lively, walkable neighborhood with bars, restaurants and other amenities associated with nightlife, I figured Las Olas was on the verge.

Still is.

I know. Utterly unfair. Nowadays, Las Olas hardly resembles that staid and fusty collection of stores and not-very-nouvelle-cuisine restaurants catering to moneyed snowbirds. If you were in the market for yacht wear, Las Olas was the place to go — provided you got there before 6 p.m. And before summer, when shops closed up tight and the town descended into a sultry languor.

Back then, the street was anchored by the Chemist Shop, an old-fashioned drug store with a lunch counter and soda fountain like a Norman Rockwell tableau, offering milk shakes and, for those of us with refined tastes, chili cheeseburgers. Journalists congregated at Poet’s. Lawyers preferred the back bar at Il Giardino’s. Blue-haired widows favored the French Quarter. And no one described Fort Lauderdale’s 1970s commercial district as hip.

In 1982, a Miami Herald reporter wrote, “Las Olas projects a frumpy, overpriced, old lady-ish image.” (I wonder if the writer, lately of an old lady-ish demographic herself, might regret the description.) “Several efforts to get the street to stay open one night a week failed. A few shop owners have tried staying open alone at night and quickly abandoned the idea.” Because, by 6 o’clock, the elderly gentlemen who frequented Maus & Hoffman’s were at the Lauderdale Yacht Club, knocking down their third martini.

The stasis endured until 1990 when the city allowed Kitty Ryan to place those first four tables on the sidewalk outside O’Hara’s Jazz Pub, a transformative moment for

Las Olas that lent the streetscape an urban vibe. Kitty saved the street from eternal turpitude.

Lately, the boulevard features bustling bars, restaurants, galleries, two cigar lounges and apparel shops that offer more than granny wear. Too many people on too narrow sidewalks become moveable mosh pits as they negotiate their way past outdoor diners.

Finally, Las Olas has a bit of the energy my

1976 self craved. Except my antiquated 2022 self is usually home in bed by midnight.

Yet a mystery endures about the place. How is it that a town like Delray Beach, with less than half Fort Lauderdale’s population, has such a livelier downtown? How can MiamiDade support so many zanier food and entertainment districts like Wynwood, South Beach, North Beach, Lincoln Road, Brickell, South Miami and Coconut Grove?

Maybe it’s because Las Olas remains beholden to the automobile.

Sure, builders are currently extending the roof over the Henry Kinney Tunnel to accommodate a plaza encompassing both sides of Las Olas with fountains, benches and landscaping in an effort to link the street with the eastern terminus of the Riverwalk and make us a truly walkable city. But the ambitious plan to redesign the shopping district with sidewalks roomy enough to end the turf war between passersby and al fresco diners and with bike lanes, new trees and slightly undulating auto lanes to slow traffic, have run up against a mayor and city commission worried that the plan eliminates 68 on-street parking spaces. (That’s statistically insignificant in an area with off-street parking for 7,000 cars.)

Seems like old times in Fort Lauderdale. While jammed-up cars creep along Las Olas so slowly it’s indiscernible to the naked eye, an array of other major cities are getting rid of the damn things. Miles of urban thoroughfares are reserved for pedestrians and bicyclists only. Cars are banned in city centers.

San Francisco has converted streets into

24 miles of car-free corridors for walkers and bicyclists. Across the bay, Oakland has restricted automobile access on 74 miles of city streets. Milan is creating 466 miles of bike paths. Rome has a 93-mile no-car project. Cars are banned from the city centers of London, Paris, Helsinki, Vilnius, Dublin, Bogota, Florence, Mexico City, Oslo, Brussels, Ghent, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Tel Aviv, Dubrovnik, Madrid and San Diego.

With the ignominious distinction as one of America’s most dangerous cities for pedestrians based on federal traffic statistics, Fort Lauderdale ought to emulate those great cities and stop prioritizing the automobile. The city could route east-west auto traffic onto Southeast 4th Street and leave the four blocks of Las Olas between the tunnel and the Himmarshee Canal a car-free, people-first, bicyclist-welcoming pedestrian mall with shade trees, outdoor cafes, bars, benches, art and street musicians.

Just hurry. After waiting to boogie on Las Olas since 1976, I’m running out of time.