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Owner Rick Janke (right) takes a break against the bar as a worker sands the hardwood floor.
Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Thom Smith

    Life in sleepy Delray Beach was a lot slower in 1953, and a lot simpler. A lot of water has passed under the Intracoastal Bridge since then—and two blocks to the west it was beer and liquor as the Sail Inn became a popular “I’ll be home in a little while” waypoint after a hard day on the job.
    George “Busch” Boulevard — the Sail crowd’s  preferred spelling — was a barely traveled Northeast Eighth Street. No big church back then. Just a few shops, a gas station up at the corner. Elvis was just gyrating out of puberty. Two-piece bathing suits still drew questioning looks.   
    The Sail Inn wasn’t exactly Cheers. No granite bar, no ostentatious liquor stock. The bathrooms were a tight squeeze and the TV didn’t always work. It reeked of smoke. But it did have a spirit about it.
    Take the Sail Inn’s legendary “Santa Bunny” — the intentionally mistimed Christmas decoration — a giant, Harvey-sized stuffed rabbit in a red suit planted out front next to the street on a toilet. The bunny hopped away for good a few years ago. Code enforcement orders.
    Government regulations have become more stringent, mushrooming from a few pages to encyclopedic, and mandating clean facilities, safe electrical wiring, all-new plumbing, handicapped access, clean water and, especially, clean air.
    In June, owner Rick Janke shut it down. But it’s only temporary. Call it a rehabilitative hiatus. And he’s going all out.
    “We’ve ripped out everything, filled three dumpsters,” Janke said proudly as he rolled paint on the new walls. “The bar is brand new (glistening navy blue). The bathrooms are twice as big. We now have drinking fountains and they can be reached from a wheelchair. I told them I would give bottled water to anyone who wanted it, but we had to put in the fountains.”
    When the Sail Inn was built, “I like Ike” was a catchphrase. The nation was wrapping up the war in Korea, its first face-off against the “communist menace.” The world had entered the nuclear age and any moment Soviet bombers could be reshaping South Florida into a 20th-century Atlantis.
    “This place was built to be a bomb shelter,” Janke said. “All the walls and the roof are concrete. I only live a couple of blocks away, but anytime we have a storm, I come here.”
    Customers will now be able to see the original ceiling; the interior walls are brand new  —  and for the first time in decades, clean  — but bare. All the old photos are gone: too infused with smoke, but Janke expects the walls eventually to be covered by new photos. “We scraped a ton of nicotine off the walls,” Janke said. “Ugh. Now we’ve built a smoking area outside.”
    Keeping with tradition, the Sail Inn will not prepare food, but hungry customers are encouraged to order in.
    The Sail Inn has attracted its share of characters over the decades, including actor Danny Aiello, race driver Geoff Brabham, ex-mayors and ex-cons and Palm Beachers in their velvet Prince Albert slippers from Stubbs & Wootton. One, Bob DeMario, fell so hard for the Sail Inn in the late ’80s that he bought it. He later sold it to one of his bartenders, Janke.
    Janke will continue the Sail’s involvement with local charities; the music —  sometimes recorded, sometimes live — will be back;  and with space available, dancing will be encouraged, even if it occasionally turns a little racy.
    With a target date of mid-August, loyal “Sail-ers” are already asking about a grand reopening. “I tell ’em it’s gonna be a hundred [re-openings],” Janke said. “That’s what it cost to fix it up, a hundred grand. But it’ll still be the same old stinking place … just without the stink.”