Daytona Beach’s Bike Week is known as a time for all sorts of nigh-lawless shenanigans, but one tradition stands apart from all the usual rumble and tussle: the art of coleslaw wrestling.
Every March, Sopotnick’s Cabbage Patch Bar offers cash prizes to people willing to grapple in a pool of the barbecue side. It’s a testament to the free-spirited and raucous nature of those who ride the iron horse.
Sopotnick’s has long been a bar that caters to the biker community, going back to at least 1967, when it was run by avid rider Olga Sophotnick Weber. The establishment was first built by Weber’s parents in the mid-1920s.
The Slovenian National Benefit Society would cook at the location for visiting bikers in order to collect donations. Legendarily, Weber began a tradition of drag races at the bar — and, at times, more than 1,000 motorcycle enthusiasts visited daily.
When people aren’t throwing each other around in shredded cabbage, Sopotnick’s features live music, pool tables, barbecue, package liquor and a sense of history and camaraderie shared by lovers of local history.
If you go: 549 Tomoka Farms Road in Samsula; 386-427-8969; cabbagepatchbar.com
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