I Learned the Hard Way Not to Day-Drink with Strangers in the Florida Panhandle

Welcome to Florida Stories, a new column where staff writer Allie Conti will be telling us some of the tales she's accumulated in her decades of living in the Sunshine State.

I frequently tell people that I've lived in every single part of Florida—the south Georgia run-off bit near the top, the stucco Disneyfied wasteland in the middle, the extension of Cuba near the tip. But in reality, there's another geographically distinct portion I've only been to once, and will never go to again—the Panhandle.

Last year, I had to travel to Pensacola for a story. It was 12 hours from my place in Miami, so I took a tiny plane and ended up there without a car because I am extremely good at planning. After my interview, I took a $35 cab to see the Gulf of Mexico. I asked my driver in Pensacola to drop me off at a "cool" bar of his choosing, which is how I ended up stranded at a place called Crabs.

When I walked inside around 1 PM, the bartender greeted me by saying I "came to the right place," so I figured I'd stick it out until my 9 PM flight and see what magic happened. That gave me eight hours to make friends and memories.

Now, I like to think that I can talk to anyone. Building a rapport is part of journalism, after all. Getting people from different walks of life to open up is essential. And as I sat at the bar in a place I'd likely never visit again, I decided I wanted to meet and commune with "real Pensacola people."

I turned to my right and cold-opened a grizzled old man with the only comment that immediately popped into my head. "There are no black people who live here, huh?"

"You're very observant," he replied with a smile. I immediately started scanning for a more palatable and less scary conversation partner.

Just then, two human eight-balls with peach-fuzz beards and shaved heads approached the bar. It wasn't long until I sparked up a conversation. I'll call them Brian and Joseph—they were cousins who owned a roofing company and sold Oxy on the side. Just plain folks, in other words. We ordered drink after drink, with me all the while patting myself on the back for being able to chill with anyone, even drug dealers living in what they called LA (short for "lower Alabama.")

They told me that they loved in Pensacola and never wanted to leave. "Are you kidding me?" Brian asked, gesturing emphatically at the beach. "This is paradise."

Naturally, I asked what they did for fun.

"We go to Crabs, and we go to Babes," Jason replied, referring to a strip club with $5 lap dances. They asked me if I wanted to be shown around. "We're just real Pensacola people," Brian said, almost apologetically. "But we believe in Southern hospitality."

My brain practically short-circuited right there. Not only did I have the decency and ability to interact with the common man in a foreign land, they were parroting my "real Pensacola people" thought from earlier, which itself was a twisted line from the journalism-related movie Almost Famous. And these guys still wanted to hang out with me even though I look like I'm 12 years old.

In fact, I was so out of it with happiness at that moment, I only had one more rational decision in me. Soon after, they both went to the bathroom and left their wallets on the bar, and I checked their IDs to make sure they weren't lying about their names or where they were from. Everything checked out. I am the best journalist, I thought, My ability to read people is unparalleled.

After getting back from the men's room, Brian and Jason asked me if I wanted to have a true Pensacola experience, and like Henry Rollins, I immediately agreed to get in [their] van. First, we stopped at a 7-11, where they bought me a pack of Pall Malls and a Big Gulp, which they taught me to fill with some Crown Royal they kept in their glove compartment so that "nobody would know were were drinking."

As we were swerving down the bridge back to Pensacola proper, a bunch of my secret drink spilled on my shirt. This development was sobering. Just then, I asked them to turn down the rap music we were blasting in order to make me a promise. "I need you to swear that you'll get me to the airport by 8 PM tonight," I said. "I have to be at work tomorrow and cannot fuck this up."

Again, they declared their belief in Southern hospitality, which was good enough for me. We went to Babes, where I suffered through several $5 lap dances that were purchased for me. Finally, at 7:45 PM, I approached my dudes and reminded them about the ride to the airport they'd promised me. Much to my delight, rather than complain about needing to leave the strip club, Brian and Jason practically fought over who would get to do the honor of driving me in their van.

When I got dropped off at the airport, I gave a sincere thank you to Brian, and headed to check-in. My elation deflated almost immediately when an airline employee told me I wouldn't be allowed on the plane because I smelled like alcohol. I protested that I had a drink spilled on me, and that I only had one shirt, because I was there for work and needed to be back that same night. The best she would do was offer to drive and buy me McDonalds after her shift; it was going to be a long night, and the next flight was at 5 AM the next day.

Alternately fuming and trying to not cry, I sat in an uncomfortable chair, never falling asleep because it was freezing cold and because it's kind of terrifying to be the only human at an airport.

I made it back to Miami the next morning and collapsed into bed, just moments before my boss called to ask how it went. "Great," I lied. Then I decided to take a few minutes to find the guy who drove me to the airport and tell him what hell I'd just been through. Luckily, I had checked his ID at the bar, and I was hoping to google his first and last name to pull up his Facebook.

The only result that came up for my search was with the sex offender registry.

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