“How it felt that night,” he said, clutching a plastic cup of Hennessy, “I’m not going to let something like that mess up my routine.” It reminds him to appreciate life, and on his first time at a club since the shooting, he took in the light, playful atmosphere - people drinking, dancing, having fun. Arroyo unfolded a receipt from his jean shorts: a $26.75 tab from Pulse, timestamped only about 30 minutes before the shooting began about 2 a.m. “Eerie,” Jonathan Arroyo said Friday night as neon lights bounced off his face next to the white banquettes at Southern Nights, a popular gay club. Where are the emergency exits? Who is that coming through the door? What is in that backpack? The mass shooting rocked the gay and Latino communities here, and has left the entire city grappling with the odd emotion of doing the exact thing that the victims were doing before the carnage began in the early hours of last Sunday.īut they did not come in their usual numbers, and many of those who did turned out with a newfound wariness. This city of fun and fantasy is gingerly plodding back into its night life scene this weekend, the first since 49 people were killed on Latin night at Pulse a week ago. Some arrived with a sense of purpose and defiance, to show that everything is going to be all right, to remember the loved ones they lost.
They came for the flashing neon lights, hip-swiveling tunes, cocktails and glitzy drag queens.
