Respect's at 39: The Little Room on Clematis That Refuses to Grow Up

There is a c.1923 building on Clematis Street that once housed a Salvation Army hall, and if you believe in ghosts, they've had a very confusing few decades. Since June 1987, that address — 518 Clematis St — has been Respectable Street, the room everyone in West Palm just calls "Respect's," and the ghosts have had to make peace with My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult rattling the plaster.

Here's the origin story that ought to be on a plaque somewhere. When Rodney Mayo opened Respectable Street in June 1987, it was the very first room in what would become his Subculture Group — the outfit that went on to shape a huge slice of downtown's nightlife. Everything else came later. This was the seed. And nearly four decades on, it's still standing on the same block, still packing a little over 200 bodies into a space where the band is close enough to borrow your drink.

Capacity is the whole personality. At ~200-plus, Respect's has never pretended to be a shed, and that's precisely why its guest list reads like a fever dream. This is a room that has hosted the Red Hot Chili Peppers. They Might Be Giants. The aforementioned Thrill Kill Kult. Acts that would later fill amphitheaters — and did, one of them a short drive west on Sansbury's Way — passing through a former Salvation Army building on Clematis because that's where the interesting music went.

The milestone that frames this summer: on Nov 1, 2025, the club marked "38 Years of Oblivion," the kind of anniversary title only Respect's would choose. Do the arithmetic and it means all through summer 2026, the room is deep into its 39th year — closing in on four full decades of doing the one thing it has always done, which is refuse to play it safe.

PureHoney put it about as well as anyone has, describing the place as still "presenting music that's respectful… of people's desire to hear something different, challenging and new." Read that again, because it's a sneaky bit of wordplay doing real work. The name isn't about manners. It's about respect for the listener who wants the challenging thing, the new thing, the thing that isn't already on every festival poster in the state. In a downtown that has spent the last several years chasing bigger, glossier, more Instagrammable rooms, that mission statement is quietly radical.

And it matters more than ever in a summer this quiet. When a lot of the neighboring marquees go dark for the off-season, the value of a room with 39 years of institutional stubbornness gets clearer. Respect's isn't a trend that has to be maintained. It's infrastructure. It's the reason a certain kind of touring band has West Palm on the map at all.

So what does a 39th year look like for a room that started before half its likely crowd was born? Probably a lot like the 38 before it: a bar, a low stage, a couple hundred people, and something on that stage you couldn't have predicted. That's the whole trick. Respect's never grew up, never got respectable in the boring sense of the word, and thank the ghosts of the Salvation Army for that. Long may it stay stubborn.

Sources: Respectable Street; RSC: 38 Years of Oblivion