Recalling Grove’s ‘Glory Days,’ One Post at a Time

Give us those nice bright colors
Give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah

Paul Simon’s 1973 hit song “Kodachrome” perfectly conveys – for many folks at least – what it was like growing up in Coconut Grove in the 1960s, 1970s and even a bit later.

To those who lived it, there were times in the Grove when all the world seemed like a sunny day.

In honor of those halcyon days, there’s a popular Facebook page – “You Grew Up In ‘Old’ Coconut Grove” – that is lovingly moderated by lifelong Grove resident Tony Scornavacca, 66.

The page, which started six years ago, now has more than 9,000 members who post old photos, old memories, and a broad assortment of interests invoking the Coconut Grove of another era.

“Does anyone remember the ‘fruitman’ who used to come around to the neighborhoods back in the 60’s?” asks one recent post, which includes a photo of a young girl perched atop an open truck bed, her back to a large bunch of bananas.

“Yes!!!! Jimmy the vegetable man, as we called him,” reads one of 33 comments.

An “In Memoriam” photo of Stanley Cohen – murdered by his wife in 1986 while asleep in his historic Coconut Grove home – elicited memories from people who knew him, worked with or for him, and short pronouncements of the crime’s lingering impact.

“It was the shot heard round the village,” writes a viewer. “So sad.”

And a street scene along Grand Avenue, by the Winn Dixie grocery store that gave way in the ‘70s to the multi-block Mayfair complex, inspired this nostalgic paean: “I can still smell the pleasant mixture of night-blooming jasmine, reefer and leaded gas.”

One of the many frequent posters on the page is Bryn Ingram, a sales rep who won’t divulge her exact age… but let’s just say she’s old enough to remember growing up in the Grove in those days.

According to Ingram, Scornavacca’s Facebook page “keeps the memory alive” of the Grove’s glory days.

“For those of us fortunate enough to experience the old Grove, it was a magical time,” Ingram said. “It was super free – very much a community where everyone looked out for each other. It was an eclectic village full of musicians, free thinkers, sculptors, painters, poets … It was a renaissance time.”

Ingram’s father, Bobby Ingram, was a popular folk singer who passed away in 2019. Her mother, Gay, was one of the first activists who helped free captive dolphins. Bryn still lives in the South Grove bungalow where she was raised. Music was everywhere, she said.

“My dad ran a club called The Gaslight South,” recalled Ingram. “My dad introduced Joni Mitchell to David Crosby. My father was in a band with Crosby, and they did a tour of Japan together. Richie Havens was on that tour, too.

“A lot of rock ‘n’ roll history happened in Coconut Grove.”

Joe Donato is also a lover of music. At 82, he is still active as a jazz saxophonist. A New Jersey native, Donato came to Miami in 1970. Looking for a place to live, Donato was told that the one place he wanted to avoid was Coconut Grove.

“They said this place was full of hippies and people getting high,” Donato said with a laugh. “So, that’s the first place I went.” (The hippie influence of the late 60s and early ‘70s – both real and perceived – is a common topic on the page.)

“Coconut Grove was cool. It was an artsy place. I’ve been all over Europe, Asia and the Americas, but Miami — including the Grove — is still my favorite place.”

You’ll get no argument there from Kate Shaw Patterson, a 59-year-old artist and designer who remembers growing up in the Grove in the mid- to late-1970s.

“We were free-range kids on bikes and barefoot,” Patterson said. “There wasn’t a lot of parental supervision – but not in a bad way.

“In my family, we had writers and artists. We had all sorts of characters in and out of our house. It was colorful and eclectic.”

Patterson doesn’t post a ton on the Facebook page. “I’m more of a stalker,” she joked. “But the page is super nostalgic and interesting. I love all the old photos.”

Scornavacca can certainly relate to the freedom and also the creativity he witnessed in the Grove.

Musicians such as John Sebastian from the band The Lovin’ Spoonful are part of the Grove lore, Scornavacca said. So is Jimmy Buffett, whose photo – playing guitar at the Key Motel in 1972 – was posted on the page in memory of his passing in 2023.

In addition, Scornavacca explained, Bill Szymczyk produced the Eagles’ “The Long Run” album while living at the Waverly Inn in Coconut Grove. “He rented an apartment on the third floor, and he put in sound proofing. He called it ‘Bayshore Recording Studio.’”

That album featured the Grammy Award-winning No. 1 hit “Heartbreak Tonight” and it was the last original-era studio album created by the Eagles.

Scornavacca’s father, Tony Sr., was a highly successful artist. Scornavacca’s mother, Angela, was a nurse at Mercy Hospital, and they met in the Grove. They married in 1955, and they bought their first house, in the Grove of course, in 1963.

“At that time, rent was cheap in the Grove, and a lot of artists and musicians gravitated here,” Scornavacca said. “Everybody hung out and had parties.”

Scornavacca compared Coconut Grove’s Peacock Park of the mid-‘60s and ‘70s to the famed Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, which is recognized as the heart of the “hippie” counterculture movement. One of its central themes was protesting American involvement in the Vietnam War.

“College-age kids, barefoot and with long hair, would hang out at Peacock Park every day and especially on weekends,” Scornavacca said.

“My dad had an art studio in the Grove. I would visit him, and then I would walk to Peacock Park and see people throwing frisbees, playing the guitar, smoking marijuana …”

Peacock Park features prominently on the site, with fading snapshots of young people congregating at the Grove’s waterfront greenspace, inspiring comments such as: “A magical time living in Miami in a magical era in history and music.”

Coconut Grove in those days had a small-town feel. “It was not quite Mayberry, but it was not far off,” Scornavacca said. “There were no condos on Bayshore Drive at that time.”

The Grove of that era was so chill, Ingram said, that police officers who worked that beat grew bored.

Another part of the old Grove charm was the nicknames bestowed upon residents.

Ingram said she can recall monikers such as “Barbara Bananas”; “Surfer John”; and “Not so Clean Gene.”

“Everyone had crazy nicknames,” Ingram said. “I put up a post about some of the nicknames, and thousands of people jumped in on the topic.”

One of the amazing things about the Grove is the way it has evolved over the decades.

The Grove’s first high-rise building was the Mutiny, which was completed in June of 1968 and converted into a hotel in 1976.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, the hotel’s clientele included Hollywood celebrities, famous athletes and musicians such as Led Zeppelin and Fleetwood Mac. Crosby & Nash wrote a song called “Mutiny” as a tribute to the hotel.

By the mid-‘80s the Mutiny became known as a drug den and the preferred hotel of the so-called “cocaine cowboys.” The hotel, according to lore, became the world’s leading seller of Dom Pérignon vintage champagne.

In 2017, Roben Farzad wrote a book about The Mutiny’s heyday called: “Hotel Scarface: Where Cocaine Cowboys Partied and Plotted to Control Miami.”

Scornavacca said he was “not in the income bracket” to visit the Mutiny, but plenty of other viewers of the Facebook page recall hanging out there, perhaps only adding to the legend: “All the waitresses there were 10’s,” Scornavacca insisted. “They had a scale, and if you weighed more than 120 pounds, you couldn’t waitress there.”

Aside from The Mutiny, the 1970s in the Grove ushered in the Disco Era, and the Mayfair was built right around that time.

“The Grove transitioned to a nightclub area,” Scornavacca said. “Faces was the hottest disco in the Grove. There was no place hotter.

“Differentiated from the 1960s, people liked to dress up to go to bars and discos during that era. The nightclubs in the Grove were packed, places like the Taurus, Biscayne Baby, The Village Inn and Honey For The Bears.”

The Ginger Man, an upscale jazz club, was the place to be on Mondays, and it drew a clean-cut crowd, Scornavacca said.

All of this is fodder for the Facebook page, which was originated in 2019 by the late John Hall, who left it to Scornavacca. 

“When people request to join our group, I have just a few rules,” Scornavacca said. “Be respectful, no advertising, no politics, and don’t use the phrase ‘The Grove is over.’”

The Grove is still a magical place, Scornavacca said, because of things such as the bay, the trees and the people. 

“On other Facebook pages, you get politics or pictures of what people had for dinner that night,” Scornavacca said. “I think our page resonates because people like nostalgia.”

Scornavacca, a real estate agent, has a son and a daughter, and they are his pride and joy. After them, he considers this Facebook page to be his legacy.

“I read it every day,” he said. “I approve all the posts.

“I hope to live for 30 more years, and I want to still moderate this page all that time.”

Give us those nice bright colors;
Give us the greens of summer;
Make you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah.