Tobacco Road: a bar with personality. Photos by Jacqueline Carini/jacquelinecariniphotography.com

Tobacco Road, Miami's oldest bar, will celebrate its 95th anniversary on Friday with a 10-hour party featuring complimentary food, drink specials and live music.
Since it first opened in 1912, The Road, as it’s often called, has been many things to many people.

During the Roaring ’20s, it served as a speakeasy and gambling hall for bookmakers and racketeers, and during Prohibition became a secret hideaway where bootleggers stored and sold their booze. In fact, gangster Al Capone was said to be one of its regular patrons.

The Road remained a bookie gathering place and neighborhood bar through the 1930s and, in the 1940s, was a gay bar where some of the country's top female impersonators were said to have performed. After operating as a regular bar during the 1950s and ’60s, The Road was transformed into a strip joint in the 1970s. It was known as a shot-and-beer dive from 1980 to ’82, when Joe Portela and Patrick Gleber bought it from then-owner Neil Katzman and fixed it up.

Until 1990, Portela said, Tobacco Road was one of only a few bars open on the south side of the Miami River.

“Before ’82, this place was the best neighborhood bar without a neighborhood and was a hard-core biker bar; it wasn't big on food and music and basically was a hole in the wall,” Portela recalled. “During the 1940s and 1950s, ships used to stop at port and some Navy sailors who hung out here would get rowdy.”
Nowadays, however, Tobacco Road attributes its success to its live music, inexpensive drinks and homemade food served in large quantities.

The Grilled Road Burger ($6.75) and the Turkey Club Sandwich ($7.50) are among its most popular menu items. To wash it all down, the bar is stocked with 200 types of liquor, an assortment of bottled beers and eight kinds of domestic ($3.50) and imported draft beers ($4) served by the pint.

The 95-year-old watering hole is also known for its atmosphere.

“Tobacco Road is a dark, narrow bar, which gives people a cozy, comfortable feel that reminds them of a place they regularly went to in Chicago or New York,” Portela said. “And every night we feature a jazz, blues or rock band; a lot of places just don't offer that anymore.”
Joel Rivera, the bar's general manager, put it this way: “Tobacco Road is like Cheers, the neighborhood bar featured on TV — everyone who comes here knows your name.”

To celebrate its anniversary, Tobacco Road will serve free finger foods and feature a 95-cents-for-95-minutes special that allows patrons to pay only 95 cents for any drinks they order from 5 to 6:35 p.m. Beginning at 8 p.m. eight bands will perform, including Dave Barry's Rock Bottom Remainders (featuring fellow authors, Big 105.9 FM's Paul Castronovo from the Paul and Young Ron Show and guitar legend Monte Montgomery), the Spam All-Stars, Inside Eye and Monkey Village.
Tobacco Road is located at 626 S. Miami Ave. in Miami. More information, call 305-374-1198 or visit www.tobacco-road.com.