Islands Business - Pub Crawl: BAD BILLY’S --IF IT’S BAD, IT MUST BE GOOD

Bad Billy’s, located on Apia’s waterfront bar strip, is unpretentious. A punter described it as having a cowboy saloon feel about it.

Bad Billy's Bar on Apia's waterfront. Picture: Dev Nadkarni

Aha! Clad in a white-ish t-shirt and a towel around his waist, shoulders bundled up and head down, he headed to the back of the pub disappearing into another room. I don’t know who that ‘he’ was, but Bad Billy’s is that quaintly good. Dress code? What’s that?

I jokingly slipped it by accommodating owner Billy Peters. Billy shrugs it off: “It is everything we get. We get some wearing their lavalava.”

Bad Billy’s, located on Apia’s waterfront bar strip, is unpretentious. A punter described it as having a cowboy saloon feel about it.

But Samoan rhythm and blues and Samoan covers of American ‘80s and UK reggae classics fumble that impression into oblivion.

Happy hour starts early here (Monday-Thursday from 4pm-8pm; Friday-Saturday from 2pm-8pm) and a handful of pub crawlers, who looked like they’d just clocked off from work, were punctual for a couple of the Fiji Gold-strength of Vailima rounds. The attraction on that balmy Thursday afternoon at Bad Billy’s Bar was the First Pacific Rim Oceania Weightlifting Championship live on SBC TV.

The bare concrete floor is lined with immovable steal stools and high round tables. You can tell 32-year-old Billy’s environmentally aware from a banner at the back of the bar which reads: “Keep Samoa beautiful, clean and safe. Leave it inside.”

Beside the “it” is a picture of an empty bottle.

Five years old in 2007, Bad Billy’s “is very casual and started out as just a café/ restaurant/bar, but I got the impression that people wanted a bar/club theme so it has changed,” says the seasoned bar owner with a chop suey of ethnicity (Rotuman, Fijian and Wallisian).

Dress Code

Monday and Tuesday
Casual wear (but clean)
Wednesday - Saturday
No rugby jerseys
No dirty shorts
No torn clothes
No scruffy looking
No rugby shorts
No dirty sandals
(Seevae toso toso palapala)
Too drunk not allowed
Too cheeky not allowed

“I got the name from Bad Dog Café in Fiji, which I briefly managed in 1997.” Mind you, there’s a slogan: “Bad Billy’s Bar. If it’s bad, it must be good.”

Before you enter, there’s a wooden staircase on the left heading up to another Billy Peters establishment—Blue Lagoon. It’s an upscale, airy-designed bar and grill where you can get a T$2 generous serving of asiasi or yellowfin tuna steeped in coconut milk (oka or kokoda) to consume with your drink.

If Bad Billy’s and Blue Lagoon are bad, they must be good.