While The Pink Pony was destroyed by the great 1962 storm, several miles south along the shore, the Nomad Village had opened. Back then, liquor laws forbade customers from walking around with drinks-so people could speak only with the customers on either side of them at the bar-not exactly like today's Rehoboth bar scene.īack in the 60s The Pleasant Inn, and several other guest houses, had a word of mouth reputation of being gay-friendly. In the 1950s, the Pink Pony Bar opened on the boardwalk, with some gay men gathering at happy hour. In the 1940s, Tallulah Bankhead and Hollywood cronies frolicked at the DuPont mansion and the local art league nurtured a cadre of women painters famous both for their canvases and their close camaraderie. Lore has it that the DuPont property along the ocean was where Rehoboth's gay nightlife began. Then, just as now, both the legislators and their support staff included quite a few gay people. Shortly thereafter, Rehoboth Beach earned the designation it still has today: the Nation's Summer Capital, with Washington, DC lawmakers and their staff members coming here for weekend and summer getaways. When the religious camp was abandoned, the area attracted visitors from within Delaware, assisted by a new boardwalk and a railroad that ran directly into downtown. For a beach town founded in the 1870s as a Methodist Meeting Camp, Rehoboth Beach developed a gay sensibility surprisingly early.
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