Baja Beach Club

@Penny, Calloways was one of my favorite venues. Somewhat of a pain to load in, but a great place. I remember some local news station anchor (she) won the final and treated everyone at Flannigans (Big Daddy's).

Is Baja's in Ft Laud still at the NE corner of Federal and Oakland, inside the shopping center? I know that when I have passed by there, even a year ago, it was a Home Depot or something else for over 10 yrs....

@neondesert _ btw, Baja ft. Lauderdale us still going strong I understand....

@dan, of course I remember! We had a BLAST but moreso at the place next to senor frogs....on their patio...Calloway's? Too much fun for one human jelly bean!

@ Penny; do you remember the crab races? it would get pretty crazy with beer flying around and people throwing things at the crabs. I once had a girl stand up on the race table with her winning crab and flash the crowd yelling, "race on these, pal"!
Too much fun!

I was the hermit crab announcer there way back in the early 90's. What a packed scene that was! Great place. Met many good people, but always saw too many guys doing coke in the bathrooms. Shame the place is no longer there!

Bajas in the Grove was ok. Seemed very mainstream for the most part. We would go there here and there to break up the same ol same ol. The good thing about Baja's was that if you were bored, you could walk to Fat Tuesdays and hang outside and people watch there. Anyone ever try Baja's in Ft Lauderdale, on Oakland/Federal Hwy? That was fun, I dont think it lasted very long though.

My name is Penny and I managed there the first year. Marino's was totally separate. Baja had the two floors above and eventually closed the bottom level. Would love to connect with others from then.......

One of the Djs I would go visit quite frequently at the club is now in Houston. I found a youtube posting he had mad when I was searching for Numark's NS7. He goes by DJ Esco. I also found one of the waitresses named Amy durring a Ski Trip in Colorado. She stated she knew where 2 others including the DJ were because she saw him on a mix show on stickam.com and contacted them on skype.

Baja was a corporate owned concept club, same owners who owned Heart Throbs inside of the Miracle Center mall on Coral Way,same concept at both locations,women in bikinis everywhere offering customers body shots.

Crazy lip syncing out of the blue shows where the bartenders and waitresses became part of the act took place nightly, you never knew what they would do or perform,could be Boy George one second and then RUN DMC the next!

Not only was it a 22 of age minimum for the first two years, it was ( and many dont know this ) a members only club to a certain extent.

The attendance was so big that if you did not have the Baja card you might as well get out of the line and go elsewhere as card holders were first to get in,the problem was Baja had tons of card holders!

Michael Jordan, Jon Secada, Andrew Dice Clay and a host of other celebs were card carrying members and regulars.

Baja also had an amazing happy hour buffet twice a week and by 8 PM, the place was to capacity!

The interior was beach like,surf boards adorned the place,tiki decorations etc.

It was a very top 40 oriented spot that even if it catered to a more adult crowd at first, it was very college like in decor and atmosphere.

I have an old friend who's Mom worked at a bank counting & checking the funds of local merchants and Baja happened to be her account.

She told me, there were nights that Baja would make over $150,000 in sales in one night and it happened often!

And that was the cash part of it,not including credit card sales!

They made a mint to say the least.

Another friend of mine who owns Casolas Pizza on 17th and US-1 occupied Marino's space after Marino vacated it and opened a pizza shop inside of Baja's,once Baja closed off the bottom where he had the pizza parlor, he would deliver boxes of pizzas every hour from his place which was near by and hot babes in bikini's would sell the pizza by the slice.

He'd sell an average of $5000 worth of slices on the weekends and on Wed. nights which also got packed years later after the college crowd took over the place.

That's a lot of dough from selling dough at $3 a slice!

Another thing Baja's offered were these huge buckets of drinks, you had a choice from 3-4 drinks that they'd fill the bucket up with and it only cost $18.

Needless to say, if you could drink more after downing a bucket, you should of gone to rehab!

A couple of things to add:

-When Baja first opened in 1992 its admission policy was "22 and over" as opposed to the traditional 21 and up.

- Baja's did co-exist with Marino's, Marino's was on the same level where the entrance was. Later, I believe it did take over its space, in the later 90s.