Shooters, Ft Lauderdale in trouble?
 

Fort Lauderdale restaurant owner John Wile is attempting to resolve a foreclosure dispute over a loan for his Shooters Waterfront Café by filing a personal bankruptcy in addition to two business bankruptcies filed in March.

An attorney for Wile said he is attempting to resolve the foreclosure filed in December by FirstBank Puerto Rico.

Shooters goes bankrupt.....If you’ve ever been to Ft. Lauderdale and seen the huge Shooters/Bootleggers complex on the Intracoastal at Oakland Park Blvd you know this is a goldmine. The scene there still resembles the Miami Vice days of sleek cigarette boats, free spending mysterious types and girls, girls, girls. During the 80’s this place was doing $200,000 on Sundays alone. 10 years ago a new owner named John Wile bought it and the complaints started rolling in. Staff complained about him, customers complained about him and when a local newspaper did a story on his poor ownership he threatened to sue the paper. Wile fought with everyone in town and seemed to enjoy it. Now he’s run the place into the ground and filed bankruptcy. As the sole owner of Shooters he has liabilities of $50 million including owing $61,000 to Sysco Foods in Riviera Beach & $41,413 to Independent Seafood of WPB. He owes $1.9 million to Lydian Private Bank in Palm Beach - another one of their bad loans that led them to go under. He even owes $125,000 to his Citi Bank Credit card. That’s on top of a $10.5 million mortgage he took out on Shooters that is in default. It took massive stupidity to destroy Shooters, one of the busiest bar/restaurants in the nation.

Does that same guy own bootleggers and flip flops?

I've been to Shooters......real nice place to eat and great view of all the boats passing by!

wow!!! unbelievable. I have fond memories of that place from the 80s.

I remember a SunSentinel article back in the late 80's or early 90's about Shooters. They interviewed a dock hand as part of the story and he was telling stories about how the boats would be 10 deep into the ICW on the weekends. One thing stood out in the article, "We don't let sailboats tie up........Sailors are cheap and don't spend money like the go fast guys do!"

I still can't believe you could lose a place that made 200K a day on Sundays! Even if 50% of that money made it to the register it was still millions of dollars!

Man, that sucks. What a great piece of property someone will buy to put condos on......

dude thats crazy...ive always been a powerboat guy and can remember the first time i went to shooters and boats of all types were tied up everyone having a good time then a yacht came passing by with a helicopter on top...i will never forget that....

That's too bad... Hopefully someone more qualified can take over here and keep this Shooters legend going! I try to stop in @ Shooter's/Bootleggers for food, beverage & the scenery everytime I'm in the Lauderdale/Miami area.

My girlfriend STILL thinks that we "Just Happened" to get there right before the Hot-Bod contest started after we left the Miami Boat Show last February. :evilb:

I remember in the '80s we used to laugh at the Geezers that would come down from NYC wearing the whole Mr. T's starter set...go by Ralph Martin's place and pick out a new Top Gun...throw an 8 Ball on a line over the transom and go run up and down the ICW in front of Shooters trolling for whores!!!:evilb::evilb:

Those were the days!!!

I was there too in the 80's and remember all the beautiful boats and girls, 3 and 4 deep at the dock. You can thank all the condo's around there for messing up a good thing. Noise complaints from the condo commandos killed the party in Fort Lauderdale. Can't speak for the owner, never met him but I do remember the harassment from the water authorities. Equipment check by 3 different officers in one night after leaving there. Word soon spread if you have a go fast boat don't go to Lauderdale, go to Miami where they are more tolerant.