The metro gay club jacksonville florida

The Metro nightclub had closed several weeks earlier, but co-owner Jerry Rosenberg kept finding himself going back to the old place, dealing with all the things that go into leaving a 17,square-foot club, including trying to find homes for the furnishings and artwork and odd items left behind.

He didn't want to walk away and just leave it all there. Surely, he said, somebody could find a home for them. So on a recent Friday — which he said would absolutely be the last day he'd be there — he watched as a couple of workers from Habitat for Humanity loaded some chairs into their truck, salvaging some of what was left of the Metro Entertainment Complex.

6 stories from Jacksonville’s LGBTQ history

Then I'm out of here. This is it. He'd had the power turned off already, so he used the flashlight on his cellphone to navigate around the sprawling building that's right against the railroad tracks that divide Riverside and Murray Hill. Long a gathering spot for the gay community in Jacksonville and beyond, it grew to have a piano bar, a disco dance floor, rooms for pool and drag shows.

Rosenberg was a little disappointed nobody wanted the club's bar that came from the old Robert Meyer Hotel downtown. It was one of seven different bars at the Metro. It's tough to let go. There's just so much on my mind. Rosenberg admitted to some melancholy about leaving the place. It was too big, really, especially as times changed.

He's not ready to call it quits quite yet though. He'd like to be part of a group that would open another, smaller Metro somewhere else — after the pandemic is over. But he said he and his brother A. Michaels, who owned and ran it with him, no longer want to be involved in the day-to-day grind of running a club.

That's a lot of work, day after day after day. And it took them a little time to get used to the freedom of not having to work while others were playing. We went out to dinner, which is so weird. We never went out to dinner on a Saturday night because he had to be at work. It was Oct. I came with my friend James Brown, who ended up being the second owner.

It was packed. There were thousands of people. Times and attitudes, however, have changed. Though welcome, that has made it harder for gay clubs to stay in business.