Shows, cheap eats, beach days, and what's actually happening this weekend.
A coastal flood warning runs to 5 a.m. Wednesday with breaking waves of 8 to 10 feet and a high rip current risk through late Tuesday night, so the water is out for two days. Tonight is Micah Gilliam at Prohibition Kitchen from 6 to 9 and a free author talk at the Waterworks at 5:30. The Castillo is free on Tuesday. Everything with a costume on it is Thursday or later.
Forty-nine restaurants in this county are tagged for happy hour. Twenty publish a window on their own page. Five of those windows run on a Sunday, and the pick is a sports grill on US 1 that says all day. Four of the five pages opened tonight and not one of them has a dollar figure on it. A wind advisory runs until 8 p.m. and a coastal flood warning covers the ocean side of the county from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Monday, so the inland pick is the pick.
A high surf advisory for breaking waves of 7 to 11 feet runs from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 p.m. Monday, the high rip current risk runs through Monday evening, and a coastal flood warning starts at 5 p.m. The St. Benedict the Moor Blues Fest in Lincolnville is 4 to 10 p.m. for $10, with Gitlo, the Duffy Bishop Band and Rosy Blue and the Dreamers. It is outdoors and a wind advisory for gusts to 40 mph starts at noon. Cars and Coffee is free 8 to 10 a.m. Four rooms have local music with no cover printed.
Spinster Abbott's Taproom, 61 San Marco Avenue, has ten names on one bill at seven o'clock for the STA Songwriters Competition. No cover is published for it. The taproom shuts at ten Sunday through Thursday by its own hours, and the competition slot runs seven to ten, so that is the whole night. A count off the visitor bureau's music calendar puts thirty-one listings in eighteen rooms tonight, eleven of them at this one. Sam Pacetti is on two of them.
The county music calendar has eleven acts playing tonight, ten of them in rooms you walk into. CAKE is the ticketed one, 8 p.m. at the Amphitheatre, billed as An Evening with, which means no opener and eight means eight. Latin night at the winery is a twelfth the calendar does not carry. Clear, 64 degrees, north wind gusting to 21, so take a layer to anything outdoors.
Barley Republic's own page puts Tenders and Tully Tuesday at 8 to 12:30, with half-price chicken tenders, $3 shots of Tullamore D.E.W. and $4 cocktails. Its weekday happy hour is 4 to 6 and everything in it is $5. The Conch House lounge runs 4 to 7 Monday to Friday at $2 off. The Chophouse at Nocatee publishes a happy hour menu with six plates on it, all $13, and no hour at all.
The county's live music calendar has six Monday listings, starting at 2 in the afternoon at Bin 39 and ending at 1 a.m. at Tradewinds. The only full band bill is at Sarbez on Anastasia Boulevard, two acts at 7 and 8, and it is not on that calendar at all. CAKE is at the Amphitheatre Wednesday at 8.
Three National Weather Service advisories cover the St. Johns coast today. Breaking waves of 7 to 11 feet, gusts to 45 mph, and a high rip current risk that runs through late Monday night. The free things left are inland: the Greek festival's last day from 11 to 5, free parking and a shuttle at R J Murray Middle School, and the farmers market at the car museum until 1. The Sunshine Bus does not run today.
Saturday in St. Johns County. Monroeville plays Colonial Oak free from 7 to 10. Alabama is at the Amp at 7:30 and Molly Hatchet is in Ponte Vedra at 8. The market runs under the oaks from 8:30 to 12:30, and a county shredding truck at the Ponte Vedra Beach library will take your old bank statements and your dead phone batteries for nothing, same hours. The forecast has showers between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. and northwest gusts to 32 mph.
Soul & Dagger play Colonial Oak for free tonight. The Greek Festival runs Saturday and Sunday at Holy Trinity with free admission and free parking, and the food is a la carte. Here is the price list.
Colonial Oak is running a free country night on St. George Street tonight. Cafe Eleven has doors at 7 and a show at 8 out at the beach, and half price happy hour stops at 7. The Milltop finishes at 8:30 with no late set, and Tradewinds is the only room downtown with a band at 9.
Tradewinds runs three different acts on a Wednesday, at 1, at 5 and at 9, and Jack Hammer has the late one. The Milltop runs two and is done at 8:30. The only ticketed show in the old town is a Dave Matthews tribute at Colonial Oak at 6, whose own page gives the room two different street numbers and no price.
Tuesday in St. Augustine costs nothing if you stay downtown and leave before the STAR Circulator stops at 9. River of Grass screens free at Flagler at 6, with an RSVP you need first. Live music at Prohibition Kitchen and the Milltop is free to walk into. The Sunshine Bus is done at 7.40, every trivia night in the county is north of the city, and the one real ticketed show tonight is on A1A Beach Boulevard at 8.
Barley Republic prints five dollars on burgers, wings, drafts, well drinks, house wine and sangria, Monday to Friday, 4 to 6. The Conch House prints two dollars off and not what it is off. A1A Asian Kitchen runs four hours and publishes no number at all, and still says four different things about Tuesday. Three sets at Tradewinds, starting at one in the afternoon, with no cover printed anywhere on the page.
High tide downtown is 8:58 Saturday morning and 9:40 Sunday, the king tides run through Tuesday, and the weather service has a rip current statement up through late Saturday night. Everything below has a date and a time off the venue's own calendar. The free one is at Colonial Oak and the catch is parking.
The National Weather Service has showers and thunderstorms in every one of the next fourteen forecast periods, and Tuesday is at 99 percent. The Amphitheatre has four nights on and it is open air. Milltop is playing twice a day indoors. Prohibition Kitchen has six sets between Tuesday and Saturday night, and Colonial Oak has two. Here is what is on, and what it costs wherever anybody published a price.
Five acts on the city's music board tonight and not one of them prints a price. Tradewinds has three more that the board does not carry. Barley Republic's happy hour is four to six with five dollar burgers, and Sarbez has thirty-five arcade games running on quarters until midnight.
Three rooms within a few blocks of each other are charging nothing today, and one of them has three bands on it. The county bus does not run on a Sunday at any hour. The city's free circulator does, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and its eighteen stops are the whole list of places you can reach today without a car.
The Amp has Gov't Mule and Ziggy Marley tonight, doors at 5, tickets from $61.30, and the satellite lots and the shuttle to them cost nothing. Before that the Saturday market under the oaks is free from 8:30 to 12:30 and this is a first Saturday, which is the one with the donation yoga and the free bike repair. Four more things cost nothing, and a guided hike at Guana costs three dollars. The forecast says a 50 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms, so every outdoor plan here has a wet version.
Galleries open their doors downtown from 5 to 9 tonight at no charge, a cathedral concert at 6 asks for nothing at the door, and an AC/DC tribute plays the Colonial Oak free from 7. The happy hour windows all shut by 7, and of the two kitchens that publish a closing time, one stops at 9 and the other at 9:30.
The Grass Is Dead is at Cafe Eleven at 8, all ages, with a $5 fee at the door if you are under 21. The Expendables are at Colonial Oak at 6 and that one is ticketed. Smokin Joe plays Meehan's at 1 in the afternoon. Prohibition Kitchen's own calendar has tonight marked Closed for Cleaning, and the weekend starts there Friday at 6.
Music and Art by the Sea closes its 2026 run with Jim Stafford and The Eclipse ALL STARS, 7 to 9, no ticket. No Sunshine Bus stop is on A1A Beach Boulevard and the last run east of the bridge leaves at 7:17. From Thursday the STAR Circulator adds fifteen stops out there and runs to 11 on a Saturday, and the city has not published where any of them are. Downtown tonight, a Flagler ID gets into The Children's Hour free and any other student pays $5.
Tickets run $36.49 to $99.28 and the on-site lot is the expensive way in. Three galleries are free all day. Two bars have live music from noon, and one of them has three acts on the board.
Four kitchens, one full price list. DJ's on Hypolita publishes every item and closes Monday. A1A Asian Kitchen is open to 9 tonight with a four-hour happy hour and no price on it, and its own page says four different things about Tuesday.
The record fair at the Amphitheatre runs 11 to 5 and costs nothing, with Toxic Cats at noon and Bears & Lions at 1:30. The third and last after-party at Ponce De Le Rollin' has doors at 7:30 and the first set at 8, and it ends at 10 instead of 2. Pili Pili is at Prohibition Kitchen at 6, and that room is closed Monday.
Flagler charges nothing at the gate for everything but basketball, and it has a noon, a 1 o'clock and a 3 o'clock at home. The volleyball team is 12-2 and has not lost in its own gym. The songwriters festival plays four rooms for nothing. The one free thing today that can hurt you is the water.
Flipturn starts at 7:30 tonight and the after-party door at the rink is at 11, and the Amp does not publish a time for the bit in between. Three free all-ages nights at Ponce De Le Rollin, a free Jejune show at Sarbez on Saturday, a free record fair Sunday, and a high rip current risk through late Saturday night.
The songwriters festival starts at 4:30 tonight at Colonial Oak on St. George Street and there is no cover anywhere in it, which means the only money is the tab. DJ's Clam Shack and Prohibition Kitchen print their prices. Tradewinds, Boat Drinks and the Oak do not.
Sing Out Loud's third weekend ends today at Jimmy Hula's, Colonial Oak and Spinster Abbott's, and every one of those sets is free. Six more rooms have music with no festival attached. The Sunshine Bus does not operate on a Sunday, so all of it is a drive or a walk.
Sing Out Loud's last Saturday costs nothing at the door and runs to 12:45 a.m. Flagler hosts the second ranked team in the country, free at the gate. Every one of the Sunshine Bus timetables is finished for the day before the 9 o'clock sets start.
Friday, Sept. 18. The free thing starts at 6 and runs to Sunday. Kickoff is 7 almost everywhere. Low tide at the beach is 8:55 p.m.
Sarbez has booked after-shows to three Amphitheatre headliners. Two of them are five dollars at the door. Eight parking spaces on site, and the room goes 18 and over at eight and 21 and over at ten.
The last weekend of Sing Out Loud runs Sept. 18 to 20 and every showcase on it is free. The festival lists eleven rooms. Nine have a lineup you can read, one publishes its own, and one is a dead link.
Four weeknights in St. Johns County add up to about as much live music as one Friday. Meehan's runs an Irish whiskey week with the same band six nights running, Tradewinds has a standing grid, and nobody prints a cover.
Five dollar smash burgers until six on Spanish Street. Half price on every draft until seven at the beach. Two dollars off everything on the water. What the venues' own pages say, and the one whose page has not been touched since February.
Meehan's prints 11 p.m. on a Friday. Prohibition Kitchen runs a late menu to 1 a.m. Everywhere else you are reading bar hours and guessing. What I could fetch Friday morning, and what is under twelve dollars.
Under the Sing Out Loud showcases there is a second weekend running: the regular rooms, the regular locals, three sets a day at Mill Top and a three-hour set at ten on a Friday. Nobody publishes a cover. Here is who is where.
A Grammy winner plays a San Marco Avenue taproom Friday at 9 with no ticket, and 55 other free sets follow her. Here is what the rest of it costs, starting with the garage, which is $20 until 5 p.m. and $5 from 5 to 9.
Sixteen things that cost nothing in St. Johns County between now and Oct. 2, and the condition attached to each one: in person, that day, with a library card, or gone before eleven in the morning.
Beach tolls run March 1 through Sept. 30. On Oct. 1 the booths stop collecting and stay stopped until March. Also: the pier is closed until the end of November, and the gates still shut at 7:30.
Sing Out Loud puts local bands in seven St. Augustine bars and brewhouses this weekend, and every showcase costs exactly zero dollars.
The Castillo charges $15 a head and takes no cash. Fort Matanzas takes no money at all, ferry included, but the free pass runs out before 11 in the morning. Sept. 17 is a national fee-free day.
Cafe Eleven has dated shows on its calendar from Sept. 18 through late February. Most of them are all ages. Almost all of them charge you five dollars at the door for being under 21, and neither the venue nor the promoter publishes a ticket price anywhere you can find one.
Four or five real escape rooms sit within a short drive of the plaza, and they are the best rainy-afternoon group plan in the county that doesn't cost ninety dollars a ticket.
Free admission at the Saturday farmers market, the Fall Night Market on Sept. 15, and an all ages record fair on Sept. 27. The market matches your SNAP dollars, the yoga takes donations, and the parking advice is to not park at the Amp.
Sing Out Loud is running three late-night after-parties at Ponce De Le Rollin' on Anastasia Boulevard, Sept. 25 to 27. All three are free and all ages, two of them run until 2 a.m., and nobody is skating.