Better Off Here Than Across The Street!
THE LEGEND OF THE BOOTHILL SALOON
The legend of the Boot Hill Saloon reaches around the world…anywhere bikers get together or travel to…no matter where: Holister…Sturgis…Laconia…Myrtle Beach….Germany….Paris…etc…(there are Boothill stickers in the Eiffel Tower), China (you guessed it – a Boothill sticker has been found on the Great Wall!) ..and even in the Australian Outback a person was seen wearing a Boothill tee-shirt! There are also unconfirmed rumors that an American Astronaut wore a Boothill tee-shirt into orbit !! The Boothill Saloon is the traditional “first stop” and “meeting place” in Daytona. It is a long standing tradition , almost a quest by many, to buy a Boothill tee before they leave Daytona. Just what is the “history” behind this legendary saloon, this icon to the Biker Community???….read on…
The official deeds and abstracts go back to the late 18oo’s. When the property was owned by a church…there is not much written documentation about what the church did with the property while they owned it, however there were some oldtimers , back in the seventies , who seemed to remember that there used to be a small church and funeral parlor at the location the Boothill now occupies, and it was not unusual to have a service and viewing prior to being laid to rest in the cemetary across the street.If you get a chance take a look at some of the headstones , some really do date quite a ways back in time.
The building , as it stands today, was built sometime in the 1920’s. During that incarnation there was no longer church. Then it had a barber shop at one end , a small bar in the middle and a fuseball parlor at the other end. At some point the fuseball and barbershop left and the bar took over the entire building.The name of the joint became the “Kit Kat Club” (exactly when this happened is unknown) .The Kit Kat Club was known to be one of the hot spots in Daytona Beach, especially if you were looking for some companionship of the opposite sex….
Now you might be wondering when and how the “Boothill Saloon” became the “Boothill” and how and when it became a biker saloon…The story goes that the owners of the “Kit Kat Club” were not especially thrilled with the motorcycle racing on the beach and around town…there are photos of racers dragging up and down Main Street back in the 40’s,50’s and 60’s. Remember that in the early years of bike week it was actually a racing oriented event…and then disaster hit…Hollywood got the bright idea “Motorcycle Riders” all outlaws , misfits and were not the kind of people that normal citizens should be around…You know , “hide your women and children” type of image!..so as the story goes the owners of the “Kit Kat” started closing the bar during Bike Week! Can you imagine that? This continued for a couple years …then…sometime in the early 70’s a young guy named Dennis MaGuire was working for the “Kit Kat” as a bartender. Around this same time Bike Week started to become a real happening with thousands of bikers converging on Daytona beach. And naturally Main Street became the center of all activities. Dennis was more biker -friendly than the owners he was working for and in 1973 convinced his boss to sell him the bar…The first thing Dennis did was change the name..the name “Boot Hill Saloon “ was a natural, hell there was a cemetary across the street!!
Dennis changed the Boothill into a place for the biker crowd both during bike week and for the rest of the year as well…The Saloon has a reputation of being a tough place , lots of fights, lots of big bad bikers, nothing could be further from the truth…the “Boot” is a really friendly place and a place to go to to have a really good time !!!
Yes it is true that the “Boot” remains a blue collar local biker bar, and if you sit at the bar and order a drink the person next to you just might be a “biker type of person” but at the “Boot” everyone is welcome. The Saloons famous trademark says it all “Order a drink and have a seat, you’re better off here than across the street “!!
And when you go inside you will step inside a time capsule of of memorabilia left behind by Bikers from all over the world over the past 45 years. One thing you will find is hundreds of personal and weird things hung by Boothill customers on the ceiling and walls . The tradition continues! You will also find hundreds of photos and business cards on the walls…and floor to ceiling covered with graffitti. A walk around the Saloon is a real window into the Biker lifestyle. The Legend of the “Boothill Saloon” really started to emerge in the late seventies and early eighties. At that time , as far as the bikers went, the “Boot “ was the really only true example in town. During that time the media did a series of stories about Bike Week and Bikers. They were looking for a tie-in with the Hollywood version of the Biker and so the Boothill was featured in many articles in EasyRider Magazine, even in the Smithsonian Magazine. Harley Davidson used the front of the Boot in some of their print advertising , especially when they introduced new models. The “Boot” soon became the place for celebrities to mingle and be seen during bikeweek. To this day th “Boothill Saloon” remains the conerstone of Bike Week events on main Street.
