Many of the people walking into H.G. Roosters today weren’t even born when A.J. Wasson first stepped behind the bar.
That was 1984.
Forty-two years later, Wasson is now an owner of the West Palm Beach LGBTQ landmark. The building has changed. The customers have changed. Palm Beach County has changed.
But Wasson believes the reason people walk through the doors hasn't changed much at all.
“They find the same thing I found: a place where nobody asks you to be anyone but yourself,” Wasson said. “It’s a place where walls come down, masks come off and everyone can let their true self shine.”
This month, Roosters will celebrate its 42nd anniversary with a week of events Sept. 21–27.
“Many of our current patrons weren't born when I started bartending here in 1984,” Wasson said.
For Wasson and co-owner Randy Christensen, simply reaching another anniversary carries extra meaning after a fire nearly ended the Roosters story altogether.
A Reason to Rebuild
The May 2020 fire destroyed the longtime bar and began what would become a five-year, roughly $2.5 million rebuilding effort.
Without insurance coverage, the reconstruction relied on personal funds, a $1 million loan, city assistance and more than $75,000 raised by the community.
Those donations represented more than money, Wasson said. They became a reason to keep going.
“It set us on the path to rebuild and kept us going through difficult times during reconstruction when we would have rathered throw in the towel,” Wasson wrote in an email. “It became a mission of love to restore this establishment to the community.”
One donation in particular stuck with him.
Scott Fox, a former Compass leader who later worked as a bartender at Roosters, had moved to Orlando and was working in the restaurant industry when the fire happened.
It was the middle of the COVID pandemic. Fox was out of work and didn't know when he would return.
He donated $250 anyway.
Wasson called Fox to thank him — and tell him he was sending the money back.
Fox refused.
Years earlier, Fox told Wasson, he had been a young gay man trying to work up the courage to enter his first gay establishment.
That establishment was Roosters.
Fox spent months circling the block and parking across the street before finally finding the nerve to walk through the door.
When he did, Wasson recalled Fox telling him, his life changed.
“When another young impressionable, lost person is out there trying to find themselves, I want there to be a Roosters for them to come to,” Fox told Wasson. “It might save a life — it saved mine.”
Roosters finally reopened May 19, 2025, five years — to the day — after the fire.
Finding Roosters Again
And Fox's hope that another person would someday find the courage to walk through those doors didn't take long to come true.
Recently, Roosters shared an email on Instagram from a longtime Palm Beach County resident who described themselves as an older cross-dresser who rarely went out dressed publicly.
The patron had heard about the bar over the years — and then about the fire.
After the rebuilt bar opened, they finally decided to give it a try.
“After many years I finally got the nerve to go out in public and check out the new place,” the patron wrote after attending a Monday night bingo.
They found a mix of gay, lesbian, bisexual and straight patrons. But what seemed to matter most was what they didn't find: people judging them.
“Everyone was having fun not giving two shits about how I was dressed,” the patron wrote.
It was, more than four decades later, remarkably similar to the experience Wasson described finding at Roosters in 1984.
One Chapter in a Longer Story
Even the bar's 42 years represent only part of the LGBTQ history at 823 Belvedere Road.
The location has operated as an entertainment venue since the 1940s and has welcomed LGBTQ patrons in various forms for decades, according to the establishment.
In the 1960s, the space was home to My Apartment, a private lesbian key club. Turf West followed in the 1970s before H.G. Roosters opened in 1984.
“This location was a home for our commUNITY long before becoming HG Roosters,” Christensen said. “We're just one chapter in a much longer story, and we work hard to be a good one.”
In 2021, West Palm Beach added Roosters to its local register of historic places.
Perhaps the most fitting piece of the address's history came decades earlier.
In 1946, a phone directory dubbed the location “the gayest spot in town.”
Eighty years later, the description still works.
A New Generation
Today's Roosters looks quite different from the place Wasson started bartending at in 1984.
The rebuilt venue includes a full kitchen, monthly drag brunches and an expanded menu. Earlier this year, Wasson told OutPBC one of the biggest surprises since reopening was seeing Roosters become a destination for food as well as nightlife.
“I never thought that we would get more destination people,” he said.
The monthly brunches have also drawn a broader mix of LGBTQ patrons and straight allies.
“It spreads that message of unity and love throughout the community,” Wasson said.
For 42 years, generations of people have walked through the doors at 823 Belvedere Road.
Some walked right in.
Others, like Fox, circled the block for months first.
And decades later, others are still working up the courage to step through the door for the first time.
What they find inside is what Wasson says he found there in 1984: A place where they can be themselves.
Check out the full schedule of events below.
