NEWS RELEASE
Contact: Fred Karger, Founder 310/666-9119
Robert Gentry, Co-chair 808/923-4060
August 16, 2006
BOOM BOOM ROOM GETS 11th HOUR REPRIEVE
OWNERS SIGN 1 YEAR LEASE RENEWAL -- BOOM IS SAVED!!!
LAGUNA BEACH, CA -- The SAVE THE BOOM!!! organizers received word today that the landmark Boom Boom Room and Coast Inn will remain open for atleast another year.
Patrick O'Laughlin and James Marchese, co-owners of the Boom Boom Room and Coast Inn have come to terms with the building owner Steven Udvar-Hazy.
"It's like Christmas in August," stated SAVE the BOOM!!! founder, Fred Karger. " This is the best possible news and we are so grateful to Mr. Hazy for giving the oldest gay bar in the Western United States new life.
"We look forward to keeping our SAVE the BOOM!!! campaign alive, and hope during the next 12 months we can convince him that these landmark businesses should remain a vital part of Laguna Beach.
"We have gathered close to 5,000 signatures from Laguna Beach residents and visitors alike in the last 2 1/2 months to SAVE the BOOM!!!, and we think our message has been heard. We will turn these signatures into the City Council sometime after Labor Day and hope that the City leaders will help us in our crusade to SAVE the BOOM!!! forever. This fight is essential to the gay community that live in and visit Laguna Beach. The historic Coast Inn and Boom Boom Room represent out past and our future.
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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 rainey night I wandered in. I immediately felt warm as if I was with an old friend. The juke box was playing He's So Vain, then Tangerine and Green Eyes from the 40's, 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 gold fish 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 in the Boom in the 70's and it changed my life. I fell in love again there in the 80's 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!
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