Meet Rack (Miami Gay Bar/70's and 80's)

The Meet Rack — Miami Vintage Gay Bar Tee

With a name like The Meet Rack, you pretty much knew what you were walking into.

The Meet Rack was part of Miami’s gay nightlife during the 1970s and ’80s, when South Florida had become a destination for gay men looking for sun, nightlife, cruising, and a considerably more interesting vacation than the brochures were advertising.

The name is also wonderfully of its era—a play on “meat rack,” but with meet turning the whole thing into a fairly direct description of the evening’s objective. Gay bars of the period were very good at this kind of branding. Nobody needed a paragraph explaining the concept.

Places like The Meet Rack were part of a much larger network of gay bars, discos, bathhouses, adult bookstores, and cruise spots that made up queer Miami before the internet. These were the places where you met friends, found dates, heard what was happening that weekend, and figured out where everyone was going next.