By Breaking Belize News Staff (HP): Ask anyone who came of age in San Ignacio about the Stork Club and watch their face change. As San Ignacio Resort Hotel celebrates 50 years, it is honoring the bar where half the town’s best stories happened.
It started in 1954, when Escandar Bedran opened a little bar on what is now Hudson Street and borrowed a glamorous name from New York City. He and his wife Paulita sold sandwiches, cupcakes and bread pudding. He even made the rum himself at his Cool Shade Farms distillery, a house pour called Tiger Nail. The club held the town’s dances and weddings, ran an ice cream parlor, lent rooms to Sacred Heart College classes, and when Hurricane Hattie roared through in 1961, it sheltered San Ignacio families under its roof.
Fire took the building in 1968, and another fire in 1972 destroyed over 28 homes. Bedran refused to stop dreaming. In 1976 he built the San Ignacio Hotel, opening with Bedran Hall, a twin of his lost Stork Club, where dances famously lasted until your feet couldn’t handle it.
And in 1996, when the family gathered to name the resort’s new bar, the old man settled it in one line: there is only one name, The Stork Club. The neon went up, opening night came on December 13, 1996, and a second generation made their memories there until the doors closed in 2010, passing the glass to the hotel’s Lobby Bar.
So Cayo, this one is for you. Were you at the Stork Club back in the day? Drop your favorite memory in the comments, and tag the friend who was right there beside you on that dance floor.
The post Who remembers the Stork Club? San Ignacio’s most legendary bar turns up in the hotel’s 50th birthday album appeared first on Belize News and Opinion on www.breakingbelizenews.com.
By Breaking Belize News Staff (HP): Ask anyone who came of age in San Ignacio about the Stork Club and watch their face change. As San Ignacio Resort Hotel celebrates 50 years, it is honoring the bar where half the town’s best stories happened. It started in 1954, when Escandar Bedran opened a little bar
The post Who remembers the Stork Club? San Ignacio’s most legendary bar turns up in the hotel’s 50th birthday album appeared first on Belize News and Opinion on www.breakingbelizenews.com.
