DiscoMusic.com

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.

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!