South Carolina Dive Bar Guide

For now, our recommendations related to South Carolina must come with a bit of caution as we’re overly-indexed on Charleston. While Charleston is no doubt a quintessential South Carolina experience home to a great set of dive bars, the rest of the state doesn’t exactly follow the same exact template, nodding to a variety of dive bar type that may not be immediately apparent in the list below.

But we talk about what we know and our trips to Charleston have been filled with great food, excellent beer and some of the state’s best dive bars. An alley is always a fun way to enter a dive bar and Burns Alley Tavern is the city’s resident example that proves the rule, a deceptively cavernous bar that may not be city’s most grimy but is still worth the short walk down a friendly-looking alley.

Gene’s Haufbrau is a very different Charleston dive bar, covered completely in wood paneling (always welcome) and serving up better-than-dive-bar-standard food (we’ll take it). Recovery Room, Cutty’s, Charleston is filled with excellent options. Beyond the state’s jewel city, this is The South in all of its laid back, unassuming dive bar glory and the balance of South Carolina is filled with bars that very much live up to that standard.

As we do a better job of branching out beyond Charleston, our recommendations for the best dive bars in South Carolina can be found below.