Bar Hopping in Boca: The Warehouse Pub

​Night Watch is a regularly-occurring feature by nightlife columnist Tara Nieuwesteeg.

Last weekend, it took a minute for me to muster up the courage to enter The Warehouse Pub (1599 NW 1st Court, Boca Raton; 561-392-3798).

Sure, this was Boca, but still -- the pub was located in a dark part of town, and pick-up trucks (blaring country music) packed the parking lot. Good ol' boys stood smoking and laughing raucously out front.

I darted inside and was relieved--I discovered a narrow, well-lit room that smelled overwhelmingly like buttered popcorn. The place sported disco balls, lots of mirrors, paper Halloween decorations, and homey, wooden walls. The black-marble bar was narrow, but ran into a bigger room, with a few pool tables and several framed collages filled with drinking, smiling faces--many sporting big mustaches and outdated haircuts. The place was slammed, too--with the sort of familiar-faced, knee-slapping, hard-drinking crowd you find in the local watering holes of tiny country towns.

"We've been around for over 20 years," said Jackie, the white-haired, tie-dye-print shirt-wearing pub owner.

"We've been around longer than any other bar around here," joked her husband, George, "and still no one knows about us!"

"Seems an older crowd here," I observed, counting the grey heads. 

"We're a mature crowd," she said. "but we're no old fogies!"

Just then, a young woman in a black G-string and ruffled, see-through top strolled by. "Our girl of the evening," George commented casually.

"Huh?" I did a double-take. Next-to-naked chick didn't seem to quite mesh with the low-key, country atmosphere. I watched as she leaned against the bar and struck up a conversation with a woman sporting a rooster shoulder-tattoo.

"She's in here every weekend," Jackie explained. "She just sells raffle tickets and stuff. Sometimes she's in a bikini."

Jackie told me a little bit about the bowling leagues, food, and other great things the bar offered, but I was preoccupied by the g-string. On my way out, Jackie told me the bar's slogan: The best little Warehouse.

-- Tara Nieuwesteeg