There is a spot on Perdido Key where you can stand with one foot in Alabama and the other in Florida, and for six decades the most famous building on that invisible line has been a beach bar that survived fires, hurricanes, and its own mythology. The Flora-Bama opened in 1964 as a small cinder block package store, and it has spent every year since earning its reputation as arguably the most iconic beach bar in America.
Late football coach Mike Leach, a man known as “The Pirate” who knew a thing or two about colorful places, put it plainly when asked for his favorite: “The best beach bar in America is a place on the Alabama-Florida state line called the Flora-Bama.”
From Cinder Block to Legend
The original Flora-Bama Package Store was built and named by the Tampry family, who owned the land when the Perdido Pass Bridge was constructed — a fact that explains the name straddling two states. In the early days, when the drinking age was 18, it served beach traffic from both sides of the line.
Its early history was nearly its end: the building was torched by a local competitor, a gambling boat owner in the Perdido area, in what became the first chapter of the bar’s defining trait — resilience. Through every hurricane that has torn at the coast since, the Flora-Bama has rebuilt bigger and better.
The stories pile up like dunes. One of the most retold involves the late Joe Gilchrist’s sense of humor: a billboard went up on site announcing a large high-rise condo “Coming Soon” on April 1st, and Gilchrist and partner Pat McClellan hired a fake Texas cowboy and called a press conference to announce they were building a 30-story condo and putting the Flora-Bama on top. Even Jimmy Buffett reportedly called a friend to ask if the rumor was true.
The Owners: Gilchrist, McClellan, McInnis and Price
Pat McClellan, a former Navy officer, joined Joe Gilchrist in 1984 to run the bar, and the two became the faces of the place for a generation. Around 2008-2009, contractors John McInnis and Cameron Price contracted with Gilchrist and McClellan to purchase a majority stake, with a mandate as much preservationist as commercial: keep the larger-than-life reputation intact and protect the institution’s future.
McInnis brings deep coastal Alabama roots. He grew up on Mon Louis Island on the western shore of Mobile Bay — no mailbox, just a P.O. box in Coden — in a bridge-building family whose company constructed bridges across the Southeast. The family built the Dauphin Island-to-Fort Morgan ferry (later sold to the State of Alabama) and the Foley Beach Express toll bridge, which the state bought for $60 million, ending the tolls.
His disaster-recovery resume is equally Gulf Coast: after Hurricane Ivan in September 2004, the company handled cleanup for the entire city of Orange Beach; after Katrina, from 2006 to 2009, it ran the largest FEMA-funded demolition project in U.S. history, with McInnis living in New Orleans for three years overseeing it. He later served as director of Kenny Chesney’s Love for Love City Foundation, managing hurricane response in the U.S. Virgin Islands after Maria and Irma.
Price, his partner, is a former Army Ranger with degrees from West Point and MIT. Since taking over, the group has grown beyond the state line into Coastal Orange Beach, The Orange Beach Store, and 30A-area ventures including Shunk Gully, Gallions and three liquor stores with partner Thomas Gallion.
McClellan remained part of the ownership until his death at 77, an event that prompted an outpouring across the coast — proof of how personal this bar is to the people who consider it home base.
What Happens There
Today the Flora-Bama employs more than 500 staff across the original package store, five stages running country, rock, dance and beach music seven days a week, and satellite venues including the Flora-Bama Yacht Club, the Marina, the Old River Grill and the Oyster Bar.
The event calendar alone is a civic calendar for the coast: the Interstate Mullet Toss & Greatest Beach Party (arguably the most famous event on the Gulf Coast), the Santa Claus Drop with Santa parachuting onto the beach, the Polar Bear Dip on New Year’s Day, the Super Chili Bowl Cook-off benefiting the American Cancer Society, the Beach Run/Walk for American Warriors, the Mullet Man Triathlon, the Flora-Bama Fishing Rodeo, Bulls on the Beach, and the internationally renowned Frank Brown Songwriters Festival each fall.
There are quieter traditions, too. Sunday mornings bring Flora-Bama Church, which draws a serious crowd to talk, as McInnis puts it, about God’s love, grace and forgiveness. And the bras hanging from the clothesline over the main stage are not decoration — they are collected and donated to local homeless shelters and thrift stores.
The Bushwacker and the Must-Sees
No visit is complete without sampling the Bushwacker, the boozy frozen drink the Gulf Coast claims as its own. And longtime weekend house band leader Jack Robinson — “Big Earl” to decades of regulars — remains a must-see; contrary to bar legend, he was never the head of HR, but he did build a distinguished healthcare career, served on City of Orange Beach councils, and has spent nearly 30 years helping the owners look after employees and patrons alike.
Sixty years in, the Flora-Bama remains what it has always been: equal parts bar, church, concert hall, charity engine and living room for everyone from Pensacola to Gulf Shores. As one owner put it, the goal is simply to keep the good times rolling — and for 60 years, nobody has done it better.