Southern Living THE SOUTH'S BEST 2024

HOW MANY TIMES have you been on a road trip and realized that you must have taken a left turn where you should have made a right and ended up in what felt like the middle of nowhere?

More often than not, whenever that happens, you've actually arrived somewhere that's pretty special to the folks who call it home. When we started planning the survey for our eighth annual South's Best awards, we wanted to include a way for you, our readers, to not only vote for your favorite places but to nominate them too.

BEST DIVE BAR -  Flora-Bama

YOU DON'T BECOME the Gulf Coast's most hallowed beach bar without a bit of divine intervention. "When you look at where God put the Flora-Bama, it's in the middle of where all kinds of demographics gather-that's what makes it special," says co-owner and lifelong Alabama native John McInnis III. 

"You'd have fishermen and locals mixed with tourists, bikers, and military personnel from the [Pensacola Navy] base. All of a sudden, they were hanging out together in this little shack by a liquor store. That's what it looked like in the late seventies and early eighties."

Now in its 60th year, the destination's siren call of live music, fresh oysters, and boozy milkshakes (known as Bushwackers) attracts the same ragtag band of revelers it beckoned in its early years. But the snowbirds, spring breakers, and all the groups in between have one thing in common, says co-owner Cameron Price, an Army Airborne Ranger veteran who first visited the area as a grad student fleeing the Massachusetts winter: "Every single person who walks into the Flora-Bama wants to have a good time."

And that's not hard to do there. You'll see white sand between the floorboards, love notes penned on the walls in permanent marker, and a clothesline of ladies' unmentionables strung above the dance floor (this is a dive bar, after all). Kids can enjoy the scenery till 6 p.m., and everybody else can hang around until they close at 2:30 a.m.