Old Town Bluffton has maintained its reputation as a sleepy little village even as the maelstrom of annexation and development has raged around it in recent years. Recently though, a mini-boom in the restaurant and bar scene is keeping Old Town up at night. On May River Road stalwart favorites like Pepper’s Porch and the May River Grill remain popular, while The Promenade offers a growing set of options all within a few steps of one another.

 In the interest of full disclosure I have to admit that I’m not usually a big fan of sports bars. In my experience (particularly in major cities) they tend to be overblown in almost every conceivable way. They’re too big, too noisy, too chaotic and almost always way too expensive. During a trip to Atlanta last spring we met friends out at a sports bar roughly the size of Turner Field only with fewer bathrooms. We proceeded to spend a relaxing evening screaming trivia answers across the table at one another surrounded by giant banks of video monitors, attended by servers in the usual skimpy pseudo-referee uniforms. How original.

When Life Behind Bars first debuted we included a kind of sliding bar scale explained thusly: “Like the crew of comically dysfunctional regulars holding down the stools at Cheers, or the desperate gin-soaked refugees from a world gone mad at Rick’s in Casablanca, sometimes you want to go where everyone knows your name - or no one does. Or maybe some do and some don’t. Some places are more Cheers than Rick’s and visa versa while some are a bit of both.” I’m invoking this scale once again, although something tells me this time there may be changes.