When Jimmy Buffett Died, I Went Straight to Margaritaville. The Crowd Wasn’t How I Expected It to Be.

For fans waking up on Saturday morning to the news that Jimmy Buffett had died, there was really only one place to go. For New Yorkers who wanted to celebrate the life of the 76-year-old trop rocker, this sent us deep into an area that locals generally try to avoid, and especially on weekends: Times Square, in the heart of Midtown Manhattan. But that was the location of the Margaritaville Resort, and an event on this scale called for a pilgrimage.

It’s surprising, entering the 32-story tower and making your way up to the 5 o’Clock Somewhere rooftop bar, how quickly you feel transported, seemingly miles away from Broadway’s Nederlander Theatre and Red Lobster, even though they’re right next door. The effect is not precisely that of visiting a tropical location, but you do feel as though you’ve stepped into some unnamable slice of vacationland.

That morning, I’d been asking myself a question that was probably playing through the minds of millions of people touched to hear of Buffett’s passing: What did this man’s music mean to me? Growing up as an anxious inland millennial, I had no connection to the things Buffett’s music stands for in the strictest sense. But I spent a few childhood summers vacationing with friends of friends at a lake house where we’d spend the mornings on a motorboat listening to Jimmy Buffett and eating Pop-Tarts for breakfast, followed by long days lazing on hammocks and docks. And so for me, as for many others, Jimmy Buffett soon became a stand-in for this type of escapism.

It turns out my experience was not atypical among the fans I spoke to at Margaritaville. Most were white millennials, like me, whose parents had loved Jimmy Buffett, and they had carried on the tradition. To them, it seemed to represent a kind of sun-drenched nostalgia, though there was also the self-awareness that necessarily comes along with listening to your parents’ music.

Looking around the rooftop, it was initially difficult to distinguish those who might be here to mourn Buffett’s death from tourists who were just there for the view. I approached a young man in a Hawaiian shirt who turned out to be a fellow New Yorker who’d come after seeing the news on social media that morning. He explained that his dad had been a big fan, and that he himself had a career working as an engineer on container ships. “Jimmy Buffett caters to sailing drunks, which is what I am,” he said. Parrot Head culture had first blossomed for him at the Merchant Marine Academy where they’d all listened together. When I asked whether his enjoyment was at all ironic, he rejected the notion, saying that the people who listened ironically were missing the best Buffett music—that beyond the camp are great albums like Son of a Son of a Sailor.

I spotted another bouquet of floral button-downs and started a conversation with three millennials, all originally from Florida, who also had parents who were fans. One guy had seen Jimmy Buffett live many times, and when I asked him what the scene was like, he said, “Every Jimmy Buffett show is like tailgating at the greatest university you’ve ever seen, but it’s just all old white men.”

A woman he was seated with said that she used to live in downtown Orlando, right near the Amway Center. One day, a faint cloud seemed to settle around the venue. “Just the smell of weed smoke was so pervasive,” she said. “I remember walking by, and there’s cops everywhere, just kind of keeping an eye on things, and one of my friends goes up to the cops, and says, ‘You’re gonna let all these old white people smoke weed and not say anything about it?’ And he was like, ‘I’m just here to direct traffic, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ ”

But as much as the people I spoke to poked fun at the flocks of sunburned boomers who seemed to follow Buffett, it was evident how deep their fandom ran. I asked one of them if he ever listened to the Margaritaville station on Sirius XM. He remembered right away where to find it—it’s Channel 24—saying that he turned to it every time he rented a car. He added that when he got the news that morning, there was no question where he was going. “Literally no matter where I was in the country, I would have found a Margaritaville.” He was texting with his sister who had headed to the Air Margaritaville restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, Forida.

I took the elevator down to the LandShark Bar & Grill to order some fried shrimp and look out on the pool-goers, blissed out on the recliners with their margaritas beside them, dozing six stories above the urban throngs. A young man sat down at the bar next to me wearing a custom-designed Jimmy Buffett shirt. He explained it was made by a friend who sells ’70s-era band tees on Instagram. Despite his age, my barmate, too, was a big fan of ’70s music, and had Jimmy Buffett records as part of his vinyl collection. He’d grown up in Massapequa, an area of Long Island that’s close to the Jones Beach Theater, a waterfront amphitheater that holds 15,000 people, where Buffett had played many times. He explained the scene to me, the parking lot filled with people selling shirts and making cocktails for each other. Now, he especially likes to listen to the music in the summer to evoke a certain mood. “It’s total zen if I’m having a terrible day at work,” he explained. “It’s like, ‘Relax, it’s not that big a deal.’ Is it marketed to me to get me to have that feeling? Yeah, but it’s still relaxing.”

This new generation of Buffett fans embraces more the spirit of the music than the literal lifestyle that full-blown Parrot Heads have made famous in Key West or the Latitude Margaritaville communities. And in that way, the Times Square Margaritaville makes perfect sense. It’s the ideal outpost for transplants to congregate, a convenient way to get away, a reminder of loved ones—and a space that, however corporate, is branded with a message of optimism that seems to endure.