Saturday, March 13, 2010

Rehoboth Beach Weekend - Update

We arrived here safely and after checking into our room have walked around visiting shops and the boardwalk, had lunch, and then cocktails at the Blue Moon - a top restaurant with a gay bar attached to it which has Friday night drag shows. At the moment, the boyfriend is taking a "disco nap" as he calls them before we rally and go out for dinner and the evening. What I enjoy about Rehoboth - and the same applies to Key West - is that it is pedestrian friendly and one need not drive a car to get around in the main resort area. That and the fact that, unlike Virginia Beach and Ocean City Maryland where high rise hotels shade the beach in the afternoon, there is a height limit on buildings and nothing is higher than 34 to 5 stories other than perhaps some church steeples.
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The other major plus that Rehoboth has going for it is the simple fact that it is gay friendly (something that is definitely NOT the case with Virginia Beach) with openly gay stores and venues in the midst of the resort area. While eating lunch we saw numerous same sex couples and one lesbian couple walking down the street holding hands. No one seemed to bat an eye at the phenomenon. In my view, Virginia Beach forfeits a huge amount of revenue by catering almost sxclusively to blue collar heterosexual families who spend less money than LGBT tourists and typically stay for shorter periods. Even if Virginia Beach had a limited area of the resort strip that was gay friendly, the city could take in more money - even if Pat Robertson went off the deep end. Meanwhile, places like Key West and Rehoboth laugh all the way to the bank and receive gay dollars that might otherwise have been spent in Virginia. As I have said many times, bigotry does carry a price with it.

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