Florence Life
Florence Has a Hobby Culture. Most People Just Haven't Found It Yet.
Hidden gems and community gathering spots around the Pee Dee
Florence, SC & the Pee Dee Region
Your Community Guide
29501 · The Community Hub
Hidden gems and community gathering spots around the Pee Dee
If you're new to Florence, or if you've lived here for years and feel like you've run out of things to explore, this one's for you.
Florence doesn't advertise its hobby culture. It doesn't put it on billboards or run Instagram campaigns about it. It just exists, quietly and consistently, in parks and storefronts and backyards and studio spaces around the city. Once you find your corner of it, you tend to stay.
Here's what's actually out there.
The Florence Disc Golf Association grew from a small group of regulars into nearly 250 online members. They started at Mars Bluff Community Park, a free, 9-hole course rated beginner-friendly, with cart-friendly paths, pet-friendly areas, and a typical round that takes about an hour and covers half a mile.
They outgrew it. So they went to work on something bigger.
The group lobbied Florence County for a new course, made it into the county's 2023-2024 budget, and now a new 18-hole course is going in at Lynches River County Park. That's a community that didn't wait around.
Beginners are genuinely welcome here. Members often bring extra discs for newcomers. The Facebook group is active and low-pressure. Start at Mars Bluff, pick up a driver and a putter, and see what happens.
Where to start: Mars Bluff Community Park, 515 Francis Marion Rd, Florence, SC 29506. Free to play.
Florence has a real tabletop scene. It runs deeper than most people expect, and it's spread across a few different spots depending on what you're into.
Heroes Hideout calls itself home to the biggest trading card game player community in Florence and Sumter. Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon, and more. Tournaments happen regularly, and the community runs from casual collectors to serious competitors.
Galactic Comics has been a Florence fixture with over 23,000 Facebook followers and a reputation for being the kind of shop where you walk in for one thing and end up staying. Comics, games, collectibles, and the kind of staff that actually knows the inventory.
Jem Mint rounds out the local trio for collectors and card players. Between these three, you can find your people whether you're into Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, retro strategy games, or just looking for somewhere to shuffle a deck with other humans on a weeknight.
These aren't fringe communities. They're consistent and they've been here a while.
Tthomasarts is worth knowing about. Tiffany Thomas is a ceramic artist whose practice blends pottery, zines, and community-based projects. She is a Francis Marion University graduate whose work has taken her to residencies and shows from Asheville to Brooklyn to San Francisco, and she's based right here in Florence.
The studio at 167 North Dargan Street also hosts The Artisan Shop, a collection of artisan goods from Pee Dee region makers, and offers pottery classes for adults and children.
Ceramics is one of those hobbies people stumble into later in life and never leave. There's something about working with your hands, making something physical from nothing, that pulls people in. Florence has a small but genuine maker community around this, and Tthomasarts is the anchor of it.
Where to find them: tthomasarts.com | Instagram: @tthomasarts
This one moved fast.
In November 2024, the City of Florence held a ribbon-cutting for eight new pickleball courts at Timrod Park, the result of a collaboration between the City, the Drs. Bruce and Lee Foundation, and the Florence Pickleball Association, with a combined investment of $139,000.
Timrod Park now has 14 pickleball courts total, along with 8 lighted tennis courts, a fitness area, an amphitheater, and nature trails, all on 18 acres at 400 Timrod Park Drive.
The Florence Pickleball Club also plays indoors at the Pearl Moore Basketball Center on Barnes Street, Monday through Thursday mornings from 9 AM to 1 PM. Courts are free. The community is open. A lot of adults get pulled in just to try it once and end up rearranging their schedule around it within a month.
The local groups to look up: Florence Pickleball Club and Pee Dee Picklers, both active on Facebook.
Where to play: Timrod Park, 400 Timrod Park Drive, Florence, SC 29501. Free.
This one surprises people. The Pee Dee region is genuinely excellent birding territory, and most Florence residents have no idea.
Lynches River County Park sits on 676 acres in the Pee Dee region and features river swamp with towering cypress trees, sand hills, and a wide variety of vegetation, with wildlife that includes alligators, turtles, deer, and a variety of bird species. More than 175 bird species have been recorded there, including the Prothonotary Warbler and Swainson's Warbler.
The park offers canoe and kayak rentals, a handicap-accessible boat launch, hiking along historic trails, geocaching, fishing, archery, a climbing wall, and the Environmental Discovery Center, a LEED certified nature center with live animals and hands-on exhibits.
This is a full day, not just a walk. Bring binoculars if you have them. The Environmental Discovery Center is worth the stop even if you're not there for birding.
Where to go: Lynches River County Park, 5094 County Park Road, Coward, SC 29530. About 20 minutes from Florence.
Florence Little Theatre has been part of this city longer than most people realize. What surprises newcomers is how accessible it is. You don't have to be a performer. The backstage side of theater, set design, lighting, audio, costume work, production coordination, needs people just as much as the stage does, and it's one of the more social communities in Florence.
A lot of adults find theater later in life as a creative outlet. The Florence Little Theatre is a good place to find out if it's yours.
Ed's Hobby Shop has been serving the Florence area for years. The customer base spans RC cars, model trains, drones, and small-scale engineering builds, a quieter corner of hobby culture that tends to attract people who like working with their hands, enjoy the mechanics of how things move, and find real satisfaction in building something that actually runs.
There's a consistent crossover community between Florence, Conway, and the Myrtle Beach area in this space. Nostalgia plays a part. So does the fact that these hobbies are genuinely stress-relieving in a way that's hard to explain until you've tried it.
Plant people are everywhere in Florence once you start noticing them. The range goes well beyond basic gardening: succulents, bonsai, native pollinator gardens, carnivorous plants, greenhouse setups, rare houseplants. Florence's climate makes year-round growing possible in ways that aren't available further north, and that matters to serious plant people.
The Garden Center of Florence and Growing Hobby are both local resources worth knowing. Growing Hobby in particular caters to the collector side of plant culture, the people hunting for something specific and unusual, not just picking up tomato starts in the spring.
Specialty gardening workshops and plant swaps happen around Florence throughout the year, mostly through community groups and social media rather than formal advertising. This is one of those hobbies where knowing one person gets you into a whole network.
Some of the best Florence-area hobbies don't have a name. They're just a way of moving through the world slowly enough to notice things.
on Graham Street is free, genuinely good, and visited far less than it deserves. The permanent collection spans prehistoric artifacts through the Civil War era and into the 20th century. The rotating exhibits bring in work that wouldn't look out of place in a much larger city.
on East Day Street has its own quiet energy. Florence's station has been here since 1910 and serves the Palmetto and Silver Meteor routes, with nearly 40,000 passengers passing through in fiscal year 2024. Sitting near the tracks and watching a long-distance train come through is a small, free, oddly satisfying experience. Florence was literally built around a railroad junction. That history runs under everything.
Antique hunting along the Pee Dee corridor. Photography walks through downtown at golden hour. Small-town road trips through Lake City, Pamplico, and Johnsonville. Cemetery history walks. Coffee shop journaling at Crave or any of the downtown spots that have carved out space for people who want to sit and think.
Florence is well-suited for people who prefer slower, more reflective hobbies. The pace of the city allows for it in a way that larger metros don't.
None of these hobbies are loud about themselves. The disc golfers show up every week regardless. The ceramics classes fill up quietly. The pickleball courts are busy before most people are out of bed. The tabletop gaming shops have regulars who've been coming for years.
Florence doesn't need to make a big deal about the life happening inside it. It just keeps going.
If you're new here and looking for your people, or if you've been here for years and feel like you've been missing something, start with one thing on this list. The rest tends to follow.
Know a Florence hobby community or local shop we missed?
Tell us about it