Business & Tech
The Pub Crawler: Beach Bar
The Clearwater Beach staple has been entertaining visitors and locals for more than 30 years.
Nestled between the tee shirt shops and high rise buildings along Mandalay Avenue and lurking beneath the glitzy chain restaurants and trendy bars of Clearwater Beach sits the Beach Bar.
With more than 30 years of entertaining tourists and residents, this unassuming nighttime hot spot has certainly stood the test of time while many other contenders have fallen by the wayside.
It doesn’t serve food. It doesn’t make frou-frou drinks. And it doesn’t have a dress code.
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So what is the secret to the Beach Bar’s success?
One reason is the location.
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It’s smack dab in the center of the main North Mandalay Avenue thoroughfare. It is within walking distance of both Pier 60 to the south and the residential neighborhood to the north. So if you’ve walked this stretch of beach, you’ve passed right by the place.
But the main reason the Beach Bar succeeds is because its premise is simple: provide a multitude of inexpensive drinks to the patrons, and mix in some live music to get the place hopping. This has helped it become a favorite place for service industry employees to blow off steam after a hard day working at the beach.
And the Beach Bar really comes alive at night, with bands performing four to five nights a week. The changing lineup features a wide variety of music including blues, rock and hip hop.
Local favorites like the Black Honkeys, Circle Sky and DJ Blizz each bring their own sound to the bar, while the popular ‘Sing or Swim’ karaoke with Ben Jackson on Tuesdays puts a new twist on an old bar standard: sing a “bomb” of a song, drink a free “bomb” of a shot.
Owner Billy Hillman added a large micro brew menu when he took over in 2009; the bar now serves more than 70 bottled beers and there are 20 on tap, including such favorites as Blithering Idiot, Brown Shugga and Seadog Blueberry Wheat Ale.
Throw in daily drink specials, NTN trivia, sports packages, pool tables and a Tiki bar right inside the door, and you’ve got a place people love to come and hang out.
And if you want, you can bring your own food.
454 Mandalay Ave, Clearwater
Hours: From noon to 3 p.m. daily.
Call: (727) 447-4100
