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Miami Beach's oldest dive bar is turning the big 1-0-0, and it's celebrating the only way a bar that has survived a century of hurricanes possibly could: by throwing a giant party in the street.
Mac's Club Deuce will mark its centennial with a massive block party on Saturday, September 5. Organized by the Washington Avenue Business Improvement District, the open-air celebration will run from 4pm to 11:30pm, promising more than seven hours of music, drinks and old-school Miami Beach energy.
The Deuce dates back to 1926, though it officially opened as a bar in 1933 following the repeal of Prohibition. Mac Klein purchased the establishment in 1964 and put his name on the front, helping cement its status as one of South Beach's most recognizable watering holes. Today, the bar still leans into its dive-bar roots, with a jukebox, pool table and famously unpretentious atmosphere.
The bar's history is tangled up with Miami pop culture, too. Mac's Club Deuce appeared several times in the 1980s series Miami Vice, and its famous neon signs were reportedly left behind by the production after filming. The late Anthony Bourdain was also a famously devoted fan, calling the Deuce one of his favorite places on Earth.
A century is an especially impressive run in a city where entire neighborhoods can transform between one happy hour and the next. While much of South Beach has cycled through waves of Art Deco revival, celebrity nightlife and increasingly elaborate cocktail bars, Mac's Club Deuce has remained defiantly itself: dark, cheap, casual and open late.
Now, the neighborhood is giving the old bar its flowers—or, more appropriately, buying it a drink.
The 100th anniversary block party will be held on Saturday, September 5 at 14th Street and Washington Avenue in Miami Beach. If you've ever wanted to experience one of South Beach's most storied bars with a few hundred of your closest strangers, this is your moment.