Drinking beers at a serial killer's final hangout
Belly up to the Last Resort, but be careful who you strike up a conversation with
Hey friends! I’ve got a TV show and (soon) a new book out in the world, and I’d love for you to check ‘em out. Watch “Home Turn,” my show with NASCAR Studios, right here. And prepare for the arrival of IRON IN THE BLOOD, the story of the Alabama-Auburn rivalry, dropping Aug. 26. More details here, pre-order below.
Late last year, I spent a fair amount of time driving up and down the Florida coast, looking for stories for what would become “Home Turn,” our NASCAR TV show. Now, when you’re in search of roadside gems, it helps to have people who either know the area or know the routine. The cats I rode with didn’t have a whole lot of experience in Daytona Beach, but they damn sure knew how to find stories, given that they make the (newly-Emmy-nominated!) TrueSouth for ESPN. So when they hone in on a place, you pay attention.
We were driving south on U.S. 1 out of Daytona, toward Port Orange, when we spotted The Last Resort, a biker bar whose garishly-painted bricks had faded in the unrelenting Florida sunlight. Come on, doesn’t this look inviting…?
So we pulled in for an early-afternoon — hell, it might have been late-morning, I can’t remember — beer. And what we beheld when we walked in the doors of the Last Resort was …. something. Put it this way: If a Spirit Halloween and a rest stop bathroom hooked up and had a baby and that baby came out already drunk on cheap beer, well, you’d name it the Last Resort.
There are probably more bars than people in Florida, and most of them are expensive, pastel-colored kitsch. (I’m talking about the bars, but that applies to a whole lot of the people, too.) The Last Resort is most definitely, and defiantly, not any of those; beers are five bucks cash, there are scrawlings over literally every square inch of space, and you can bet that a majority of the Ten Commandments are broken here on a nightly basis. Here, check out the patio:
Wander around the Last Resort, though, and you start to notice something. This place has a real obsession with death. Like, there’s a full hearse in the back yard, and there’s a disturbingly large display of what appears to be former patrons who have since passed on to their Great Barstools in the Sky:
Of course, as long as you read the next few lines, you will not go to the Last Resort the way we did, utterly unfamiliar with the joint’s extremely disturbing history. Which is really not the best way to approach anything in Florida, a state where “What’s the worst that could happen?” is always a question with multiple answers.
See, more than 30 years ago, one of the bar’s regulars was a woman by the name of Aileen Wuornos. Now, when she frequented the Last Resort, Ms. Wuornos was a bit down on her luck; she occasionally slept over at the bar, and she had her mail delivered there, which is not a thing you tend to do if you’re on stable ground in life. But as it turned out, Wuornos was also a serial killer, one of the most notorious in American history.
Wuornos murdered at least seven men from 1989 to 1990, posing as a hitchhiker and then dispatching them. She was arrested on Jan. 9, 1991 while at the Last Resort; she pleaded self-defense, but was nonetheless sentenced to die and executed in 2002. A movie made of her life, Monster, won Charlize Theron an Academy Award soon afterward.
The Last Resort has made the most of its association with Wuornos, starting with a disturbing little shrine just outside a side door:
Look around and you’ll see plenty of evidence of Wuornos’ presence, from the newspaper articles documenting her arrest to the bricks painted with her name to, well, the t-shirts for sale commemorating the joint’s macabre history. (Interesting Hollywood fact: Monster was filmed partly at the Last Resort, but they had to cover up the bricks with Aileen’s name on them, since they wouldn’t have been there while she was still, you know, prowling.)
Even now, 35 years on, the Last Resort draws in the curious; the bartender, Big Al, who was slinging drinks the night of Wuornos’ arrest, happily told us the same stories he’s surely told thousands of times by now. Wuornos apparently still receives junk mail at the bar, too. (That’s not the only peculiar mail the Last Resort receives; while we were there, FedEx delivered a tire addressed to a patron. You can see it in the foreground of the top picture, right below me. Dive bars are special places, man.)
There’s a gleeful revelry in murder here that you see in so many Netflix documentaries and true-crime podcasts. (The great Rachel Monroe digs into this obsession in her book Savage Appetites.) You can decide for yourself whether this is the kind of place you’d like to hang out, but there’s no other state in the union more perfect for this than Florida, where everything — even murder — is a tourist attraction.
Ultimately, we decided that a grimy bar dedicated to glorifying the life of a serial killer was not really a proper tonal fit for a documentary celebrating the history of Daytona Beach. But hey, if you’re game, it’s still out there waiting for you on U.S. 1 in Port Orange. Just make sure you let someone else know your whereabouts before you go. Just in case.
Song of the Week: “Making Good Time,” Old Dominion
I am an absolute mark for any “looking back on the good ol’ days with a girl I once knew” songs, from “Summer of ‘69” to “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” to Eric Church’s “Springsteen” to Springsteen’s “Bobby Jean” to … damn, there are a lot of those kinds of songs. And here’s another one, Old Dominion’s “Making Good Time.” This one’s just a wee bit too slickly produced, but the heart is sound and the sound is strong, good ol’ rock with just enough country to make it safe for 2020s audiences. Put it on and think about the days when you were 17 and the world was a lot simpler.
“Making Good Time” and all the tunes we recommend here are available on the official Flashlight & A Biscuit Spotify playlist, always free:
Stunt Food of the Week: The Banana Dog
A couple weeks back, I wrote up a monstrous 3,000-word article on the Savannah Bananas, asking why this cavalcade of dancing goofballs is now selling out NFL stadiums. (Short answer: they treat fans with respect, unlike most petty, short-sighted, money-obsessed teams and leagues.) Anyway, one of the cool elements of the Bananas is that at their Savannah stadium, they offer free food. Free! Really! Hot dogs, burgers, chicken sandwiches, Cokes, cookies … all free.
The Banana Dog is not included in that free package, but it might be worth paying for. A banana on a “caramelized New England roll,” it’s topped with whipped cream, strawberries and chocolate sauce … all told, maybe the tamest thing we’ve ever run in this space. If you can get past the idea of a banana in a hot dog bun, that is. As always, we must ask:
That’ll do it for this week, friends. Thanks for hanging, and we’ll see you right back here soon!
—Jay
Land Cat, Georgia
Also: Congrats to Michael Banks, winner of the signed copy of Michael Farris Smith’s tremendous new novel Lay Your Armor Down. Check out my Q&A with Michael here and make sure to buy a copy of the book for yourself. It rules.
This is issue #166 of Flashlight & A Biscuit. Check out all the past issues right here. Feel free to email me with your thoughts, tips and advice. If you’re new around here, jump right to our most-read stories, or check out some of our recent hits:
Home Turn, our new show for NASCAR Studios, is right here for you to watch:
My uncle knocked out Joe DiMaggio
Talking with Michael Farris Smith about Mississippi, the darkness and his new novel
Talking with Will Leitch on the occasion of his new novel
Win the lottery, kick a deputy: The American Dream!
Our first documentary, on the famous Rama Jama’s diner in Tuscaloosa, Alabama
What does “Flashlight & A Biscuit” mean, anyway?
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