Rhym Guissé: A quick warning: some of the language and imagery used to describe this period of time may be upsetting. Please take care while listening. Dino Thompson has had a gun pointed at him six times, and he’s been in love 20 times. From these stats, he might seem like more of a lover than a fighter. But at Charlie’s Place, a club on Carver Street, the owner Sarah Fitzgerald only cared about Dino’s capacity to find trouble. She’d heard about his reputation on the boulevard. That’s how people referred to Ocean Boulevard, which was the street closest to the water running parallel to the beach. Back then, Ocean Boulevard was strictly a white part of town. Black people were literally only allowed on the boulevard if they worked there. They had to carry cards to prove it, or they could get arrested. But Sarah knew that if Dino fought at Charlie’s Place, it would have different consequences than on the Boulevard. And that’s what she told Dino when she saw him in her club.
Dino Thompson: She told me on several occasions, she said, I know you’re feisty. I heard you’re a boulevard fighter. I said, well, ma’am, I don’t start fights, we just get—it happens. But she laughed and she said, but you can never have a problem in here. Do you understand? She didn’t want a white boy getting his butt kicked in a Black nightclub, you know, in the ’50s.
Rhym: Ms. Sarah knew that a white boy getting beat up in a Black nightclub wouldn’t just affect Dino. It would be dangerous for every person in there. It could be deadly. Before Dino stepped foot into Charlie’s Place, he was just a Greek kid from the boulevard. The boulevard was his stomping ground. And when he wasn’t getting into fights, he was dancing…