Well, way down yonder on the Chattahoochee—or more like Downtown—Roadkill Long Beach is a hidden country bar inside Rosemallows. And with it, sheds its former tiki bar skin for a back bayou-meets-trailer park vibe that harkens to our need to keep things, as of late, simple’n’cheap. Or at least cheaper. Altogether, raunchy backroad fun.
Roadkill Long Beach is pure back bayou vibes, from Pamela Anderson’s assets to taxidermy love to antler chandeliers.
As standards would provide in such a classy place, there’s a stuffed boar head named Boris. Aptly, Pamela Anderson’s perfectly 90s-Playboy-style-soft-porn derrière framed on the wall. License plates from various parts of the South: Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas… An old TV playing equally old Budweiser and Skoal ads (before the latter were banned from airing on television).
Appropriately, Dolly Parton vinyl album covers. Accordingly, Alan Jackson, George Strait, and Merle Haggard are just a handful of the voices you’ll hear singing from the speakers. And Rosemallows’s much loved pink flamingo logo? Well, it’s now a dead pink flamingo, complete with tire tracks across its body.
In other words, undeniably country. This is Roadkill Long Beach—and it comes from two Long Beach bar veterans.
Roadkill at Rosemallows was birthed by two Long Beach bar veterans you likely already know—and they’ve long had a grip on what people are searching for.
The duo behind Roadkill? James Squire and Sherwood Souzankari, the very team that created TikiTiki inside Rosemallows back in 2018 (and the very space that Roadkill was converted for). Back then, tiki was basically non-existent. TikiTiki opened a year before Bamboo Club would open its doors. And it was multiple years before Shannon’s opted to create their underground tiki bar. And it was years before the Tropical Shakedown…
James and Sherwood were ahead of the curve—and created a space that Long Beach clearly wanted, as nights would find the tiny, decked-out speakeasy packed to the walls. Roadkill is no different—and outside of Cowboy Country in North Long Beach, represents one of the very few spaces that can be called a country bar.
“We want to keep it light-hearted and accessible,” Sherwood said. “It’s a place to escape in a way that no other place does.”
What to get at Roadkill in Long Beach? Dranks, Slim Jims, and Corn Nuts.
Light and accessible is true: The drink menu is designed to be fun, with prices ranging from $5 to $14. (With the exception of the 32-ounce, made-for-a-group-or-a-single-alcoholic “Big Dolly Energy” drink that combines rum, gin, blue curaçao, passion fruit, and lemon. That badgirl is $54.)
There’s a “Mexican Pharmacy” cocktail that combines tequila, coconut, pineapple, and orange, giving it tropical vibes. There’s a “Girth Brooks” with whiskey, passionfruit, hibiscus, Aperol, some bitters. (We are not entirely sure if this is related to the gay porn star of the same name, but we’ll take it.) There’s a “Merle’s Mai Tai” that keeps it pretty straightforward but adds some mango for a nice uptick in citrus.
It’s genuinely fun. Feels like an escape. Perfectly trashy. And a welcomed return of James and Sherwood. Bring it.
Rosemallows, located at 255 Long Beach Blvd., operates Wednesday through Sunday, while Roadkill Long Beach will be officially open Thursday through Saturday, beginning Sept. 5, with plans to extend hours soon after that.
