Is Wildkat Records Bar & Grill Still Open? Bar Rescue Update

Wildkat Records Bar & Grill occupied 119 E. Bay St. in downtown Jacksonville, Florida, and was the subject of Bar Rescue's "Wildkats Wild Collapse" (aired 2024-03-03), according to barrescueupdates.com's recap of the episode. That recap describes owner Julian Garbaccio, who bought the building in 2015 when it was already named Bay Street Bar & Grill, later rebranding it Wildkat Records before declining sales and disorganized management brought in Bar Rescue's crew. During the rescue, the show renamed the business Bay Street Sports Grill — barrescueupdates.com calls this effectively a return to Garbaccio's original branding rather than a wholly new identity.

The bar's general manager told barrescueupdates.com the crew "got a free face lift so we endured," adding the business "weren't really struggling" before the show arrived, a characterization at odds with the declining-sales narrative the episode built around. Reviews gathered by barrescueupdates.com after the relaunch were mixed: customers praised the wings and dive-bar atmosphere, while others flagged ongoing staffing shortages. A Yelp business page for the address, shown updated January 2026, still carries the Wildkat Records name even though the location operates as Bay Street Sports Grill, a naming lag on Yelp's part rather than evidence of a second rebrand.

Checked directly on 2026-09-08, the bar's own site, baystreetsportsgrill.com, loaded with a live ordering widget and listed weekly specials — $2 Rocking Horse Light pints on Tuesdays, 75-cent wings on Wednesdays, and free pool from 7 p.m. on Thursdays — alongside the address and phone number (904) 993-1350, matching the Places record; the same page also listed a Monday-through-Friday happy hour from 4 to 7 p.m. with $1 off well drinks and domestic drafts, additional detail consistent with an actively maintained specials calendar rather than a static, abandoned page. Between the March 2024 recap, the live site, and the January 2026 Yelp listing at the same address, three independently dated sources spanning more than two years describe the same business at the same address, even if the general manager's comments about the show's premise leave the severity of the original problems unclear.