(By PRU SOWERS Key West Citizen Oct 6, 2020 / parts are published in November, 2015 on fla-keys.com,)
Without exaggeration, NEW ORLEANS GUESTHOUSE owner Joey Schroeder is one of the people who have greatly influenced Key West’s gay community over the past 25 years.
Two articles – one by Pru Sowers in Key West Citizen – the other in fla-news and the short video-interview with Joey illustrate this in an impressive way.
Joey Schroeder is a self-made man.
The owner of Bourbon Street Pub on Duval Street, the owner/operator of Schroeder Building Contractors, a charter boat operator “for fun” and the person responsible for the drag queen stiletto shoe drop on New Year’s Eve, arrived in Key West in 1984 along with his U.S. Navy boyfriend, who was deciding whether to transfer to Hawaii or Key West. The Southernmost Point won out.
It was a long road to get here, though. Born in Connecticut, Schroeder’s mother died young, leaving his father to raise four children. That proved to be too much for the man and Schroeder and his siblings were moved to unofficial foster homes. Schroeder moved next door into a neighbor’s home where he developed a particularly close bond with his foster mother.
“She bought me my first carpentry book. I would experiment in her basement, trying to remodel it. I got my start from her,” Schroeder remembered recently.
Schroeder started taking construction classes in high school, promising his foster mother that someday he would build her a home. But she developed throat cancer despite never having smoked a day in her life and died. The fact that Schroder was never able to build her that home still breaks him up.
From there, Schroeder met a friend in his trade school and eventually moved into the boy’s house. The parents encouraged him to go to a civil engineering school. He also was attracted to airplanes.
“I wasn’t a party-type of kid so I went to flight school. It turned out to be my very first business venture,” he said.
At the age of 18, Schroeder wanted to buy a small plane but couldn’t afford it. He figured out that pilots in training would lease small planes for their classes. He went to a bank with a business plan and was approved for a loan.
“I would use the plane on Monday and Tuesdays when nobody was flying and leased it out the rest of the week. That gave me enough money to buy a second plane,” Schroeder said about how the lease money essentially paid for his flight training.
He adapted that plan to his next job, construction. Using the money from the plane rentals, he began buying property around Connecticut and built homes that he then sold, each one funding the next. He also was renovating bars and that’s where he met his Navy boyfriend and found his path to Key West.
In his early days in Key West, Schroeder flew his plane to Miami every day to attend courses that would secure him the commercial contracting license he needed to open Schroeder Builders in Key West.
Once he had his Florida general contractors license, Schroeder began hiring out for construction jobs in Key West.
He quickly picked up the nickname “disco contractor.”
“Every job I had was a bar job, a restaurant, the Southernmost House,” he said. “I worked from 0 Duval to 1900 Duval.”
On one of those jobs, Schroeder was hired for a project at 724 Duval, the building that now houses Bourbon Street Pub. It was the mid-1990s, when a recession hit and many of the shops in the building were going under. The owner of one, the Duval Deli, handed over his keys to Schroeder one day, saying he was clearing out and Schroeder could take over the storefront. Schroeder the keys to the failing business. Schroeder didn’t know what to do — until he had a productive brainstorming session during a subsequent trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.
“I was in New Orleans, thinking about what I was going to do with that space. I had this brainstorm to convert the deli into a bar,” he said, adding, “Every contractor always says they want to own a bar.”
“The dot-com era was just beginning, so nobody had BourbonStPub.com. I checked it and trademarked it and built the sign. Bourbon St. Pub was just a very, very small bar at the time. I did draft beer and I made hamburgers.”
At the same time he was turning the deli into a bar, the Copa, a popular, wild disco in the 600 block of Duval, burned down. That left a group of night revelers looking for a new place. Schroeder, who had by then taken over ownership of 724 Duval, began buying out the leases of the other ground-floor shops, initially putting in a pizza place, an upstairs guest house and expanded Bourbon Street Pub to include a large outdoor area out back. The crowds came.
“I just wanted a little neighborhood bar; burgers, beer and fries. I never thought it would get to what it is today,” he said.
Soon after opening the property, however, Schroeder faced a dilemma.
“A mixed crowd upstairs and gay downstairs didn’t quite work,” he said. “I basically had to make this decision to make it a men-only guesthouse. I think it was a good decision because now we’ve got a lot of patrons.”
Today, Bourbon St. Pub welcomes a mixed crowd of men and women of all sexual orientations. The pub is packed most nights and has grown to feature three bars, dance music, large video screens and go-go boys strutting their stuff for cheering crowds.
The former Duval Suites, now renowned as New Orleans House, and the recreational area behind the pub are designated for men only. In addition to the pool and hot tub, the area features the Garden Bar — a favorite haunt for many gay locals — food service, an outdoor cabaret stage and a sandy faux beach where guests can sunbathe (bathing suits optional).
Back to the past when Sushi came. Schroeder remembers that one day a VW wagon pulled up in front of the pub and out popped Gary Marion and his boyfriend. They wanted a job, any job. As a result, Marion became the cleaning person at the Pub, mopping floors and convincing Schroeder to put curtains in the windows, which Marion sewed himself. Eventually, Marion showed Schroeder his drag queen geisha persona, Sushi.
“I didn’t even recognize her,” Schroeder said about the transformation from Marion to Sushi. “We started her behind the bar on Fridays. He [Sushi] brought something different to the bar that I couldn’t provide. It had been a male drinking kind of bar.
“He [Shushi] wasn’t a very good bartender. But that wasn’t important. He was so entertaining. He would jump up on the bar and sing, do a lip synch. It was an instant success.”
By then, Schroder had bought a bar across the street, 801 Bourbon Bar, that had a second-floor cabaret that he renovated for Sushi and other drag queens to begin doing shows. The two bars began to attract a Black gay crowd. And the block also began drawing drug dealers, quickly resulting in complaints from tourists who didn’t want to walk down the block at night. The police response was to make the crowd stand behind a metal arch marking the entrance to Bahama Village that had been built over Petronia Street. During all this, Schroeder continued to encouraged Black patrons.
“It was a great blend of gay and Black communities,” he said about his patrons. “We were both outcasts, minority communities. They welcomed us and we welcomed them.”
Fast forward to 1997, New Year’s Eve. Sushi and Schroder wanted to do their own midnight “drop,” mimicking other drops at downtown bars, where the city closed Duval Street to accommodate the crowds. They came up with the idea of a red, sparkling shoe drop based on “The Wizard of Oz” and the movie, “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” with, of course, Sushi sitting in the shoe.
“She only came down about five feet, to the Pub awning. She was in a harness and scared to death,” Schroeder said.
Word of mouth had filled Duval Street to see Sushi descend that night. The problem was, the city had not granted permission to close the street. As a result, police officers showed up, demanding that Schroeder force everyone to leave. Instead, he called all his drag queen performers out into the street to complain that the “straight” bars downtown were being given preference. The police, perhaps a little intimidated, chose to kick the enforcement can to then-City Commissioner Marili McCoy, who represented the district. They woke her up and drove her downtown in a police car, still in her bathrobe. After looking at the crowd and discussing the situation, McCoy gave police permission to close the street to traffic and kept the party going. The city has closed the 700 block of Duval on New Year’s Eve ever since.
“It was our Stonewall,” Schroeder laughs.
Bourbon Street Pub will turn 25 years old on Oct. 14. Schroeder can’t believe it has been that long. A celebration has been put on hold, thanks to the coronavirus. But the Key West Business Guild is planning on holding its first in-person mixer since March in the pub’s open back area that night.
“Old,” Schroder said when asked how the 25th anniversary makes him feel. “Actually, it feels great. We’ve accomplished so much. Hurricane after hurricane. Now, the pandemic. I’m still here.”