Torpedo (90's Miami South Beach Gay Nightclub)

Torpedo — South Beach Gay Club Tee

Before South Beach became the glossy international playground of the 1990s, Torpedo was already helping make it very, very gay.

Opened in 1987, Torpedo was founded by Lee Brian Schrager and became one of the clubs associated with the transformation of Miami Beach into a major LGBTQ+ nightlife destination. By the early 1990s it was operating at 634 Collins Avenue, right in the middle of the rapidly changing South Beach scene. 

Torpedo was part gay neighborhood bar, part dance club, and part South Beach spectacle. DJs, theme nights, drag, fashion people, locals and visiting beautiful people all mixed together. Contemporary accounts mention everything from Boys of Brazil nights and barbecues to ballroom events and underground after-hours parties passing through the club. 

And this was Miami at exactly the right moment. The old, slightly run-down South Beach was becoming a magnet for gay men, artists, models, designers, drag queens and nightlife people, helping revive the Art Deco district before luxury hotels and bottle service took over. Torpedo became one of the names associated with that transition.

By the 1990s, the crowd could include the fashion world that had descended on Miami Beach—Gianni Versace, Jean Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler have all been remembered among Torpedo’s visitors, along with models and the increasingly international South Beach party crowd.