The Fire at Gina’s

Lily Winters turned to the internet for companionship and found herself in a web of trouble. She met the older Kevin Fisher on-line, who she believed to be her age. Through messaging, he convinced her to meet face to face. Her best friend Colleen didn’t like it one bit when she got a look at Kevin, seeing he was older, and she was instantly suspicious. With J.T. on her side, they did their best to keep Kevin and Lily apart, but their efforts proved futile. Kevin seduced Lily, ultimately giving her an STD. When Lily first confessed to Dru that she had sex, Neil promptly pursued a restraining order. An infuriated Kevin soon sought revenge on Colleen. Coercing a waiter from Gina’s to leave a message on her cell phone, Colleen believed she was meeting her grandfather at the restaurant. When she arrived, not a soul was in sight as it was after hours. From the dark lurked a shadowy Kevin who forced Colleen into a walk-in refrigerator and poured gasoline all over the restaurant, then lighting a match. As he made his exit, the place went up in smoke and the fire department arrived. Knowing Gina’s had been closed, they assumed no one was inside. Leave it to J.T. to find something amiss and head into Gina’s himself, first finding the locket he had given Colleen and then realizing she must be in the refrigerator. Low and behold he saved her (and finally gained Brad’s acceptance), but Gina’s was officially history and Kevin was never proven guilty of the crime.

Head writer Kay Alden shared the significance of the longstanding Gina’s, saying, ""It was originally Pierre’s, where Robert Clary crooned to the early Y& R audiences, entertaining Chris, Snapper, and Sally McGuire, as well as both the Brooks and Foster families. Then Leslie Brooks bought the place and it became the Allegro, with Leslie herself, in the person of Janice Lynde, as resident chanteuse. It was then bought by Jonas and it became Jonas’s which was a club not totally unlike the current Gina’s but without the musical part of the equation. Jonas was played by an actor name Jerry Lacy who had rather a Humphrey Bogart quality and his club tended to reflect that. In 1982, Gina Roma, an ex-con, came to Genoa City where she met up with her brother Danny Romalotti who arranged for her to have a singing gig at Jonas’s. Ultimately Gina bought the place from Jonas when he left town and the current generation of Gina’s Place began."

And with the revenge seeking Kevin Fisher, it went out on fire in 2003.