The main selling point for a place like Kahuna Bar and Grill is its tremendous location. Across the street from beautiful Deerfield Beach, it's a great spot for both locals and visitors to catch the coastline. Still, Kahuna's doesn't merely rely on the outdoor setting for return customers. For one, the happy hour is ridiculous. Running from 12 to 8 p.m. every day, it features well drinks and domestic beers for $2.25. Fish tacos are an excellent way to sober up, as are the tacos filled with land animals. The Hawaiian-themed watering hole and restaurant is adorned with surfboards on the walls and ceiling, with plenty of tiki touches throughout. The policy welcomes no shirts and no shoes and invites us all to please have a seat and a specialty cocktail. Kahuna's also presents the opportunity to listen to live music (local bands like the Heavy Pets and Spred the Dub both play here) or just listen in on conversations between buzzed fishermen and beach bunnies. While you're carousing with the half-priced beers and the half-naked people, don't skip out on your tab, or else you'll end up on their chalkboard of infamous deadbeats.

Readers' choice: Bru's Room Sports Grill

Small, dim, and relaxing, PRL is a far cry from the monumental corporate draft houses awash with every beer from every regional producer. This place just celebrated its 11th year in business—a testament to the staying power of a good selection and a clientele that still blows off steam after work with a cold one. The draft selection can be limited at times, but there will always be something incredibly quaffable. The real gems, though, are the bottle selections, ranging from Polish imports to classic Belgian tripels to American greats from Colorado and California. A PRL light pilsner is brewed for the bar by Florida Beer Company and sold for a decent rate of two bottles for $6.

Readers' choice: GG's Waterfront Bar and Grill

Custom-built bicycles and bike racks line the front window, and antiques fill the shelves in the back room around a pool table. In between, there's a fireplace framed by stones. Seated around the bar, zany characters and bicycle nerds chat and mingle, sipping on craft beers and stiff cocktails. The owners, Elmo and Zoe Love, a quirky and endearing married couple, are quickly transforming the east end of Las Olas with their beloved spot called Two&, a playful name meant to be changed when apropos — Two&liquor, Two&boobs, Two&whatever. The patrons who frequent this friendly establishment are also a part of the fun. Pull up a chair, get talking, and you'll quickly meet a new pal who might invite you on a bike ride or a hot after-hours make-out session. Elmo, a longtime mechanic, operates a fully functioning bicycle repair service during the day, and Zoe organizes weekly social bicycle rides for the community. At night, bands perform, crazy karaoke goes down, and any other imaginable live entertainment might also occur: burlesque, fire dancing, you name it.

Readers' choice: Bull Market

This small but cozy craft cocktail bar serves drinks with fresh herbs, spices, bitters, shrubs, and infusions. Shelves are filled with unique ingredients (somewhat reminiscent of an old apothecary), and with these co-owner/bartender Sean Iglehart creates jaw-dropping drinks like a chemist in a lab. One of the biggest hits on the cocktail menu is the Rhum Agricole — a summer-style sip that marries peach puree and lemon — but if the bar gets too busy, order a cocktail on tap (did you know you could get those premade?). Sweetwater also has an eclectic menu and will satisfy the foodie as well as the bar rat. No, it's not the cheapest fare in town, but it certainly is some of the tastiest.

The neighborhood bar is endangered these days, but a few have stood the test of time. At the Sail Inn, a crowd of regulars still shows up day or night, and some bartenders have been there for as long as 20 years. Ask for a round of "the coldest" grape bombs — ice cold beer mugs filled with grape vodka and Red Bull — and the barkeep just might peg you for a local. For many years this was a smoking bar, but owner Rick Jankee gave the place a complete overhaul a few years back. Today everything is shipshape, and there's even a new brass polished bar (and no more smoking indoors). These days, Sail Inn feels more special than ever — a small slice of Old Delray, a spot the throngs of tourists on Atlantic Avenue have yet to discover, and perhaps never will.

Readers' choice: Deck 84

Bucking trends has worked well for Fort Lauderdale's funky new kid on the block, Rhythm & Vine. Bringing something other than the smoky dives and ear-blasting bass of established spots on Himmarshee Street or the beach, the neighborhood beer garden and cocktail bar on the corner of FATVillage is a more relaxed watering hole. Manager Bobby Velez, formerly of the infamous, high-volume Bleau Bar at the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, has helped develop R&V into more than just another place to get hammered, with yoga in the garden, movie screenings on the projector inside, weekly live music "buzz sessions," and a rotation of party-starting resident DJs. R&V's eclectic programming fills a void in Fort Lauderdale's one-note nightlife scene. With its edgy, laid-back space, killer cocktails, and visiting food trucks slinging grub, it's the perfect spot to party from day to night. "Broward County and Palm Beach were screaming for a place like this," says Velez.

The Sports Corner is a dive bar in every respect. It's dark, it's dingy, and it has an air of danger. The black walls lined with TVs and sports memorabilia shut out sunlight as well as the existence of any world separate from this black hole. Oftentimes the secondhand cigarette smoke is so thick, it's almost certain you're going home with a black spot on your lung. And yet... it's the perfect haven for the hardcore sports nut. While there are certainly nicer options around South Florida — the Ale Houses, the Duffy'ses, the Bru's Rooms — there is none with as much personality. The bar's website looks like it hasn't been updated since the place opened in 1997 (or at least since the death of MySpace) — and that's part of the charm. It's not fancy, and we love it that way. Here, you can drink like your dad and yell at the television screen, tell your favorite players what overpaid jackasses they are, and engage in drunken debates with other belligerent sports-dad types over a game of darts, pool, or tabletop shuffleboard.

It's among the most aggravating of first-world problems: you put hard-earned quarters in the side of the table and come back from the bar to find two dudes enjoying a game of pool on your dime. You want to tell them they owe you $1.50, but most likely you just stew silently and sip your Bud Lite — and vow that next time, you'll head to the Billiard Club tucked away upstairs in the Oasis at Sawgrass Mills, surrounded by preteen mall rats. Gone are the days of placing your quarters in the side of the pool table and waiting for the next game, since here you pay by the hour. With well over a dozen tables, there's almost always one open. They have a full liquor bar and charge no cover on UFC fight nights.

Readers' choice: Blondies Sports Bar

As far as dive bars go, alcoholics everywhere could do much, much worse than Elbo Room, where more often than not there isn't much, well, elbow room. Most dive bars are run-down shit-holes in crummy neighborhoods, but Elbo Room is a run-down institution on one of the most prized pieces of real estate in Broward County, where Las Olas Boulevard meets the beach. The first floor is often cramped and overflowing with sunburned drunks, and that's part of the appeal! Opened in 1938, this venerable bar owes much of its success to its sunny corner and to being featured in the movie Where the Boys Are (which launched the spring break phenomenon). Bathed in an Art Deco façade on the outside and lined with a rustic, woody Key West feel inside, Elbo Room hasn't changed too much in its almost 80-year history. Modern day shenanigans include drinking contests, spring break bashes, and live music. Save the uppity hustle and bustle for South Beach. Like a wicked hangover that won't quit, Elbo Room hangs on.

Readers' choice: Original Fat Cat's

A graybeard in the world of SoFla kava bars, the Purple Lotus, 11 years along, is where many a local first tried euphoria Polynesian style. Proprietor Jimmy Scianno, a serious student of kava and kava culture, has weathered (kratom-related) controversy and seen his enterprise expand to locations in South Beach and Delray Beach. But the original remains a favorite, and not just for the exotic beverages and chill South Seas décor. The whole block it occupies has a whimsical air and a storied past. The fortune teller next door has moved on, but the very cool Evernia Coffee House has moved in a few doors away — to a space that in the early '90s housed the Artsbar, a landmark of local alternative history. Dixie Highway is a sleepy two-lane street here; sit and sip in the Lotus' sidewalk chairs and watch the world flow by.