Flo’s Poke-A-Dot Lounge

(Waldo, Kansas City, MO)

Scooter’s 52nd bar, first visited in 2006.

At the extreme southern end of Waldo, or arguably at the extreme northern end of South KC, sits a tiny run-down strip mall. In the center of this strip mall you will find Flo’s Poke-A-Dot Lounge.

We found our seats on the south side of the box-shaped bar, the only people in the place under the age of sixty. (Granted, it was 10:30am on a Saturday.) On the wall across from us, a velvet painting of a nude woman graced our presence.

We both ordered Bud Light draws and began talking with the bartender and other customers. Based upon the name of this bar we had assumed the owner was a woman named Florence. Instead we learned that “Flo” is a man named Floyd.

About midway through our beers, napkins were suddenly slid in front of us by one of the other customers. With a look of worry on his face, my drinking buddy leaned over to me.

“How quickly can you chug your beer?” he whispered.

“I don’t know, pretty fast,” I whispered back.

“Do it!” he whispered forcefully.

Unaware of what he had somehow realized was about to happen, I began drinking as quickly as I could. As I took the last gulp, out of the corner of my eye I spotted the need for this urgency.

A gentleman a few bar stools down had pulled a plastic bag full of shrimp out of the pocket of his jacket and had begun dumping fistfuls of it onto the napkins he had just placed in front of the other patrons.

Now I love shrimp, but I’m not going to eat fisted shrimp from a plastic bag pulled out of the pocket of some random guy at an unfamiliar bar. I set my empty beer glass down and my friend and I stood up to leave.

“Wait, don’t you want some shrimp?” the shrimp-fister asked us.

“Ah, no, we just had a huge breakfast,” we fibbed. “Thanks anyway!”

We left the bar and got into the car. As my friend put the car in reverse, there was a knock at the driver’s side window. We saw one of the other customers standing outside the window, cupping some shrimp in his hands. We lowered down the window just enough that he could speak without passing us any shrimp.

“What the hell am I supposed to do with this???” he asked rhetorically, laughing about his failure to escape the shrimping in time.

“No clue, guess you better bolt faster next time!” we chuckled back.

8934 Wornall Rd
Kansas City, MO 64114
US
[launch map]
(816) 363-9571