Miami Beach's Oldest Bar Just Turned 100. Its Newest Neighbors Are Just Getting Started.

On the night of September 5, the city closed 14th Street to cars from Washington Avenue to Collins. Not for a marathon, not for a film shoot, but for a bar. Mac's Club Deuce, the cash-only room that has poured drinks on that corner since 1926, threw itself a block party for its 100th birthday, and the Washington Avenue Business Improvement District built a stage, brought in DJs, and closed the street until 11:30 at night to make room for it.

A few blocks and a few weeks away, a very different kind of opening was happening. Casa Rassi finally got a permanent address on Park Avenue after months as a pop-up. Sultarosa, a coffee and dessert shop backed by "Dancing with the Stars" pros Daniella Karagach and Pasha Pashkov, opened on Lincoln Road. Stormy Monday turned what was supposed to be a five-month experiment on Alton Road into a permanent bar. None of that reads like a neighborhood in decline, and none of it reads like a neighborhood that just got discovered either. It reads like two clocks running on the same island at the same time, and that's the part worth understanding if you live here: Miami Beach isn't trading its old anchors for new ones this fall. It's running both calendars at once, and you can walk between them in under twenty minutes.

A Bar That Never Needed to Change

Mac's Club Deuce doesn't do centennial celebrations quietly, but it also didn't ask for one. According to the bar's own account, the block party was originally going to be something small and internal, until Troy Wright, executive director of the Washington Avenue BID, talked manager Christie Ashenoff into taking the whole thing outside. What resulted was a full afternoon and evening: an outdoor bar, a stage for live music and DJs, more than 50 raffle prizes donated by local businesses, and former bartenders returning to work the crowd alongside current staff.

The bar's mythology is not exaggerated for the occasion. When "Miami Vice" wrapped production in 1989, the cast held its official wrap party at the Deuce, and stars Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas reportedly got behind the bar and bartended until 2 in the morning. The show's producers installed the bar's pink and green neon on the condition they could keep it, and it's still there. Anthony Bourdain was a regular for decades and featured the bar across three television shows. In one story often retold about him, he visited the bar's owner, Mac Klein, right after Klein turned 100.

"You know what the amazing thing about being 100 is?"

That was Klein's line to Bourdain, and it's the kind of detail that explains why a dive bar gets a street closure instead of a quiet toast.

The anniversary also carries real weight this year. Longtime manager Angel Diaz, who ran daily operations at the bar for years, died earlier in 2026 at age 60, and the City of Miami Beach Commission held a formal moment of silence for him in February. The celebration doubles as a tribute.

There's a regulatory footnote worth knowing if you've ever wondered why the Deuce can stay open later than most bars around it. In November 2021, 56 percent of Miami Beach voters backed a nonbinding referendum to roll back last call from 5 a.m. to 2 a.m. Grandfathered licenses and legal exemptions let historic venues like the Deuce keep pouring until 5 a.m. anyway. The same neighborhood that voted to tighten its own nightlife hours carved out room for the one bar that predates almost everything else on the block.

Three New Rooms Within Walking Distance

While the Deuce was getting ready for its party, a cluster of new food and drink spots opened close enough together that you could hit all of them on foot in an afternoon.

Stormy Monday's reopening is a small case study in how a pop-up earns permanence. The bar turned its trial run into a fixture with a refreshed menu, lower cocktail prices, and a standing offer of $5 Dark and Stormys whenever it rains, which in a Miami September is not an occasional promotion so much as a recurring one.

Two of the new arrivals, CHŌ and Vilebrequin La Plage, are also running dinner every night on Miami Spice, the city's prix-fixe program that offers three courses for $50 to $65 at dinner and $40 at lunch or brunch. The program runs through September 30, which means residents have a little under three weeks left to try either kitchen at a fixed price before the menus revert to full price.

The Fifth Is Still a Few Months Out

Not everything landing on Miami Beach this year has already opened. Sant Ambroeus, the Milanese café and restaurant that's been building anticipation since it first signed its lease, is targeting a November debut inside The Fifth, a new office building at 950 Fifth Street in South of Fifth. The building itself is worth knowing about independent of the restaurant. Designed by Alberto Campo Baeza, winner of Spain's National Prize for Architecture, The Fifth is the first new commercial office building constructed in South of Fifth in 22 years. Sant Ambroeus will occupy more than 7,000 square feet at its base, which is a meaningfully different scale than the coffee shops and pop-ups turning permanent a mile north.

The point isn't that South of Fifth is somehow ahead of the rest of the island. It's that the same September that gave a century-old dive bar its loudest night in decades is also laying groundwork for a Milanese restaurant that won't open its doors for another two months. Both are real, and neither is waiting on the other.

North Beach Wasn't Sitting This One Out

The same Saturday the Deuce closed off 14th Street, North Beach was running its own program at the Miami Beach Bandshell. Over the past week the venue already hosted Hulvey's faith-based hip-hop set on September 4, an outdoor Brazilian film screening paired with a concert from singer-songwriter Maurício Baia on September 5, Tayc's first Miami performance on September 7, and an all-request piano bar night at La Poubelle on September 10. Two more dates are still ahead before the month closes out: Mari Froes brings her contemporary take on Brazilian Popular Music on September 12, and a showcase built around short-form music videos runs September 17.

That's six distinct nights of programming in North Beach inside two weeks, running in parallel with everything happening in South Beach and South of Fifth. None of these venues are competing for the same crowd on the same night. They're proof that the entire barrier island, not just its most photographed strip, has a full calendar this month.

One Island, Two Clocks

None of this is a story about gentrification pushing out the old to make room for the new. The Deuce isn't fading while Sultarosa rises. It's the opposite: the same business improvement district that presides over Washington Avenue's evolving restaurant row spent its September closing the street for a bar that has refused to change since 1926, while three new rooms quietly opened within walking distance and a fourth is preparing to open inside the first new commercial building South of Fifth has seen in 22 years. If you live here, that means your options this month aren't shrinking or shifting, they're stacking. You can start a Saturday with a $5 Dark and Stormy at Stormy Monday, walk to Lincoln Road for dessert at Sultarosa, and still make it home in time to catch a set at the Bandshell, all without crossing a bridge.

That kind of density, old and new operating on the same blocks at the same time, is worth paying attention to if you're thinking about where on the island you want to be for the next chapter of it. Urdapilleta Real Estate tracks these shifts across Miami Beach and the surrounding corridors as part of daily practice, not just headline season. If you want to talk through what a particular stretch of Alton Road, Lincoln Road or South of Fifth actually looks like right now, schedule a private consultation and we'll walk through it together.