The Weekly Reekie Guide to the Dive Bars of Sick Week
Every year when Sick Week hits Florida and Georgia that means it’s time to hit some dive bars!
It’s become customary for a few dive bars to be chosen as checkpoints along the route as we move between what are now the established four racing venues – Orlando, Gainesville, Bradenton and South Georgia, although not necessarily in that order.
I relish those dive bar visits for the fascinating slices of life they offer up, little windows into the American psyche, and also because I like drinking — an opportunity most of the drivers unfortunately have to pass up, but not so for passenger seat riders like myself!
Here I’ve compiled a list of six memorable Sick Week dives, in no particular order. Stay Sick, bottoms up!
Did you know this article appears in Sick The Magazine’s Spring issue? It’s one of the quirker ones for sure, but we also have a whole bunch of cool car features, event coverage and editorials. Subscribe now!
Billy Bon’s Lounge & Package, White Springs, FL
I’m not sure what passes for nightlife in White Springs, Florida, but I doubt there’s anything else in the region that can match Billy Bon’s Lounge & Package for sketchy good times. Even in daylight hours, it’s a vibe.
We visited on day three of Sick Week 2023 and I was excited because it was my first time going to a “lounge and package” and I didn’t know what to expect because I’d never even heard of a “lounge and package” before and it sounded kinda fancy. But as I cruelly came to discover, it’s just some outdated Floridian wordplay that means a bar where you can also buy takeout liquor, i.e. literal packages of liquor.
There’s nothing even a little bit fancy about Billy Bon’s Lounge & Package. It’s a dive bar with some pool tables housed in a modest fleshtone-colored structure across from some railroad tracks on US Highway 41 South.
Not that I was disappointed. It turned out to be an exceptionally dive-y scene with a cast of kooky characters. I had such an enjoyable time there that I decided to buy a souvenir T-shirt with the bar’s bucking bronco logo on it. I asked the bartender if she had one in my size and she said she’d have to go into the back room and see what stock they had available. Before she went, she pulled aside one of the female regulars and asked her to stand guard at the bar and make sure nobody walked back there and started pouring their own drinks. Yeah, it’s that kind of place. I still think of those cheeky barflies whenever I wear the T-shirt.
Saints & Sinners Pub, Ormond Beach, FL
Saints & Sinners Pub is part of a massive complex at Destination Daytona, mostly built for the influx of Bike Week patrons. We stopped in there for a burnout party on day four of Sick Week Presented by Gear Vendors Overdrive this year. Saints & Sinners is a fake Irish pub with stereotypical fake Irish pub decor. It has no regular crowd to speak of but exists purely to service a biker crowd at yearly intervals. It’s tacky and soulless but it suited our purposes, which was drinking beer while watching trailer burnouts.
While there was some initial confusion, the manager gave us permission to lay down rubber in the parking lot right outside Saints & Sinners Pub. Not only did the manager give us permission but he also: A) Did a burnout in his own SUV. B) Offered to pay a parking fine on behalf of a Sick Week entrant who was given a citation while on the premises. C) Asked the police to leave when about a dozen Daytona Beach PD cars showed up, lights a-flashin’ like some scene out of The Blues Brothers. That mofo is the real deal, even if the pub’s totally fake.
Beach Front Grille, Flagler Beach, FL
The aptly named Beach Front Grille sits on Ocean Shore Boulevard on the Florida coastline and provides a nice elevated view looking out over the Atlantic. I have fond memories of visiting there on day four of Sick Week 2023 Presented by Gear Vendors. This was where my traveling companion Luke Nieuwhof captured the epic photo of Chris Hein’s ’33 hot rod doing a burnout for the cover of Sick The Mag, issue #15.
As far as drag-and-drive checkpoints go, it was a bit of a fail because the parking lot was too small to handle the onslaught of cars and trailers that our event threw at it. But as a place to stop and unwind, it was just about perfect.
Beach Front Grille isn’t a dive per se. It’s a restaurant with indoor and outdoor seating that also has a cozy cocktail bar in the front. I didn’t try the food so I can’t report on that, but I did spend some time in the bar and I would heartily recommend it to any designated drinker who’s passing by that way. It feels a bit like an airport bar, maybe one from the 80s, thanks in part to the giant windows that run uninterrupted around the front of the building and offer a wide-angle view of the boulevard and skyline right from your barstool.
We whiled away a couple of hours while we downed a couple of beverages and watched a couple of dozen trailer burnouts being laid down on the street outside. If the police hadn’t shown up to calm everything down we would have stuck around even longer.
Rascals, Lake Park, GA
Rascals is a big beer barn painted red that stands alone on a stretch of US 41 in Lake Park, Georgia. It’s owned by a smiling round-faced man in a cowboy hat who calls himself Captain T. Although the room is much larger than your average dive bar, it still checks all the important boxes, like being cheap, shabby, dimly-lit and dated. Plus, the presence of the Captain and his drinking buddies perched down one end of the bar helps to give it the authentic feel of a real proper shithole.
Rascals was a checkpoint on day three of Sick Week this year. I arrived after dark and the kitchen had sold out of alligator so I ordered the ribeye with veggies instead. Tom Bailey was unhappy with how long the food was taking. He got tired of waiting for his and Aydan’s chicken wings to come. The bartender gave him a refund and an apology and those guys hit the road to find faster food.
I stayed on and was subjected to further annoyance by the formulaic modern country playlist. Every song had lyrics designed to make somebody feel good about being a humble small-town boy or girl who works hard to make ends meet but likes to get a little loose on weekends, who’s loyal in love, stands up for what’s right, has a pickup truck, etc. It seems Captain T and the boys just love that stuff. And only that stuff. Thin Lizzy? Never heard of her.
My dinner arrived. The steak was perfectly edible. The music never improved. As I was leaving, Captain T called over to me to apologize about Tom’s wings, which proves he’s a real nice guy because he assumed I cared. Salute!
Sopotnick’s Cabbage Patch Bar,
Samsula, FL
Located in Samsula, Florida near New Smyrna Beach, the Cabbage Patch is a wickedly grimy biker bar that’s known around those parts for hosting the annual ‘World Famous Coleslaw Wrestling’ tournament during Daytona Bike Week.
A hand-painted sign above the front door as you enter states: “No colors, drugs, dogs, weapons, attitudes allowed!” That’s a lot of rules for your average intoxicated outlaw to abide by, but the sign must be working because we didn’t see any hint of trouble when we dropped in during Sick Week 2023. We did, however, hear a lot of boring talk about coleslaw.
I spent the bulk of my time at the Cabbage Patch marveling at the utter trashiness of it all. The main bar area is about as luxurious as most dive bar’s toilets.
Ever come across the term “latrinalia”? I hadn’t until Google threw it at me. Apparently it’s a word some scholar made up to describe the inscriptions or markings found on latrine walls. If you asked me to use it in a sentence I might say something like: “The Cabbage Patch is a cornucopia of latrinalia.” The scribbles from the bathroom walls have overflowed out onto every surface of the joint, including the exterior walls and all over the ceilings.
There’s one entire wall full of old 4x6 photographs showing the kind of debauchery that has gone down there over the years. Seems as though it was a real hot spot for ladies taking their tops off in the 80s and 90s.
They just don’t make bars like the Cabbage Patch anymore and some would say they never should have but it sure is something to see. I’d like to go back someday, study that photo wall some more.
The Santa Fe Bar, High Springs, FL
Celebrating its 65th anniversary this year, The Santa Fe Bar is some kind of institution out there in the no man’s land just north of Gainesville on US 41.
Timber-clad outside and wood-paneled inside, it’s a homely dive with a couple of pool tables, a pole-dancing pole and a stage that hosts everything from midget wrestling to all-male strip revues. The only modern thing in there is the BullShooter electronic dart board.
We stopped by on a Wednesday night during Sick Week 2024. The locals told us we’d come a night early because their big night is karaoke every Thursday, but I don’t think I would’ve enjoyed listening to these folks sing as much as I did chatting with them and spending quality time in their hangout.
Outside the bar in the dirt parking lot was a small crowd of guys and girls drinking beer out of plastic cups, sucking on vapes, and chirping the tires of a Honda three-wheeler. They would greet the Sick Week cars as they drove into the checkpoint, and encourage them to do a burnout as they drove out. At least three of these revelers told me they’d run out of memory on their phones from videoing burnouts all afternoon. They were stoked.
Inside the bar there was a serious pool game going on between two ladies who are old enough to be your granny yet sharp enough to be packing their own maplewood pool cues. A handful of regulars stood around engrossed in that action while everybody else was perched on stools around the bar.
The atmosphere was relaxed, and it wasn’t hard for a stranger to strike up a conversation. One man gave me some insights into swamp boats and gators and prosthetic limbs, among other things. Another pulled me aside to tell me about his butchery business. One woman confided that she was in a relationship with a man 30 years older than her. Another woman bragged that she’d been a regular in The Santa Fe since 1988.
There’s a large sign hanging on the wall of the bar that says: “Welcome Family”. It’s not just some bullshit, either. I sensed a certain warmth among the members of that small drinking community, and I couldn’t help being a little envious of them for having The Santa Fe as their local. Really feels like somewhere you can acquire a sense of belonging in addition to a mighty hangover. ■
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