It was the end, The Times posited, of Key West as the Gay Mecca the Southern bookend to Massachusetts’s Provincetown was being replaced by Fort Lauderdale, Costa Rica, Palm Springs, and even - gasp! - Orlando. One by one, the island’s longtime visitors and residents lamented the loss of historically gay hangouts drag shows were replaced with Margaritavilles, all-male guest houses were converted to condos, and the streets that had for so many years been rumored to be paved with, not gold, but rainbows, saw a new surge of foot traffic from frat bro’s on Spring Break escapades with their lithe sorority girlfriends.

According to the press, it was a combination of an increase in global gay vacation spots, coupled with the island’s meteoric real estate prices, that was to blame for Key West’s increasingly heterogeneous crowd - with a heavy emphasis on the hetero. IN 2005, THE NEW YORK TIMES PUBLISHED an article by Robert Andrew Powell with the sensationalist title “Is Key West Going Straight?” Apparently, the island once deemed Gay Paradise was slipping from its coveted spot at the top of the best gay vacation destinations in the country - and then, literally, when a 2012 issue of The Advocate dropped Key West from the magazine’s list of America’s Top 25 Gayest Cities.