Dive Bar Crawl

Main Street's first stop for riders since 1973, straight across from Pinewood Cemetery — hence the name and the long-standing tagline "You're better off here than across the street." Wild West motif inside, dollar bills and patches covering every square inch of wall and ceiling. During Bike Week (March) and Biketoberfest (October) the place turns into a multi-stage concert venue, rotating rock, country, Southern-rock and blues cover bands day into night, with national touring acts folded in. Open 365 days a year, so it stays a working biker bar the other 50 weeks too. Kitchen runs a full menu; parking overflow spills down Main.

Sopotnick's Cabbage Patch — the Samsula backwoods biker bar out on Tomoka Farms Road since 1926, generally credited as the oldest of the Daytona-area bike bars. Bike Week and Biketoberfest are the whole point: three stages of live music, bike shows, vendor midway, food trucks, on-site camping, and the World Famous Coleslaw Wrestling that made the place infamous in the '80s. Off-A1A by a solid haul west of New Smyrna, but any Bike Week route without it is incomplete. Off-season it settles back into a quiet dive with a pool table and a jukebox; the 3rd Sunday BBQ pulls a steady local crowd.

The Ormond Beach Bike Week anchor — World Famous open-air biker bar on US-1, opened 1980 just off Main Street in Daytona and moved out to the Ormond city limits in 1986 where the county gave them room to sprawl. Free concerts all week during Bike Week and Biketoberfest, big outdoor main stage, upper deck, burnout pit, and the T-shirt shop that outfits half the rally. Year-round it stays open every day 10a–2a — kitchen 10a–7p, running late till 9p Tuesday and Friday. Menu is roadhouse: steak tips, seafood baskets, sandwiches, fried pickles. Benches outside fill up on band nights, rally or not.

Open-air waterfront tiki bar on Lake Okeechobee, part of Roland Martin's Marina & Resort in Clewiston. Since 1997. Actually looks like a tiki bar — a forest of carved wooden tikis under a big pavilion right on the lake — with 15 draft taps (Lake O's biggest), full liquor, and a menu of burgers, tacos, sandwiches, and seafood. Live music and DJs on weekends.

A 1959 Sunoco station on the Intracoastal that closed during the early-'70s gas crunch and reopened in 1974 as a beach bar, with the current burger recipe dating to 1975. The place is a scavenged-object garden — clawfoot bathtubs, driftwood, painted toilets, and oddities the owner pulled off the beach — arranged around cypress-plank tables under the trees on the Sit-N-Cypress deck facing the waterway. GQ's Alan Richman crowned The Original — 13-oz chargrilled sirloin on a Kaiser roll with lettuce, tomato, onion — America's best burger in 2006; Oprah followed a year later.

Florida's oldest continuously operating bar — Louis G. Hirth turned the 1878 Prescott Building into a saloon in 1903, and it hasn't stopped pouring since. Beaux Arts facade, hand-carved English oak bar, Tiffany-style stained glass, and a 40-foot mahogany back bar that once served Rockefellers, Carnegies, Goodyears, and Fords wintering on Amelia Island. Last tavern in Florida to close on the eve of Prohibition; Hirth kept the lights on by peddling Texaco gasoline, ice cream, and 3% near-beer until the 21st Amendment brought the whiskey back in 1933. Low ceilings, dark wood, working ceiling fans — the room feels like it did a hundred years ago.

Hidden Big Pine landmark dating back to 1931, with signed dollar bills on every wall and a quieter local feel.

No-frills Stock Island marina bar with strong drinks, working-waterfront character, and fresh fish straight from the boats.

Open-air Historic Seaport bar that still feels like old Key West, with live music, dockside regulars, and a working-harbor backdrop.

Key West institution since 1890: no-cover music room, pool-table grit, and a sunny-place-for-shady-people reputation.