Fort Lauderdale's Cool 'Cause It's So... Flaming?

Photo: youbebetty

Ted Gibson

​So says our incoming celebrity stylist, Ted Gibson, who I told you about yesterday. Today we find him pimping Fort Lauderdale to W Magazine in an effort promote his salon at the W Hotel. Here's an excerpt from the Q&A:

And then you're also opening a salon in Fort Lauderdale? So spring break-y!
Not anymore. Here's my theory: Gay people move to an area, they make it really cool, hip, chic--that's what it was like in Miami. And then it gets gentrified, or too expensive, and they move to the next area. Just like in New York City, when it was first the Village, and then Chelsea, and now Hell's Kitchen.

So in your mind, Fort Lauderdale is--
I think a lot of the gay culture has moved north from Miami to Fort Lauderdale. So it's completely changed. They don't allow the spring-breakers any longer. We're partnering with the W Hotel, and we should open in October.

Ugh! Thanks, Ted, for helping to dispel the entrenched, 1980s-born myth that this is still a spring-break destination. But I'm not sure I buy his argument about the gays doing a Miami makeover on Fort Lauderdale. Naugle may be history, but there's plenty of people in power for whom Lauderdale's most precious virtue is its un-Miami-ness. So until gays get a majority of the commission and a lot more money to buy land, this city's future will look exactly like its present.