When I moved to Plaza Midwood in 2004, the happening place in the neighborhood was The Penguin. You could get a good but greasy black bean burger with a side of fried pickles at the funky diner, and meet interesting people in the parking lot beneath the eatery’s iconic sign depicting a flightless arctic bird. Otherwise, there wasn’t much going on.
Three years later, that changed with the opening of two bars that also served as music venues: Snug Harbor on Gordon Street and a cozy piano bar on Commonwealth Avenue called Petra’s.
When I asked about the place in those early years, practically everyone told me it was a lesbian bar. Curtis Tutt, who first visited the establishment soon after it opened, heard the same.
Tutt, who became co-owner of Petra’s in 2011, says the bar’s original owners intended it to be an all-inclusive space that welcomed everyone. He thinks there are several reasons why the establishment was considered an exclusively gay joint by everyone but the people who owned it.
Petra’s initial owners — Connie Huddleston, her partner Petra Fugger and local educator Jerry Brown — were all openly gay. Then, in 2009, a gay club called Liaisons in Dilworth shut down, and its customary clientele migrated to Petra’s.
“By the virtue of that crowd moving over, I think a lot of people interpreted that Petras was a gay bar,” Tutt says. “[Plus] a piano bar is … somewhat considered to be a gay format.”
When Perry Fowler first stepped inside Petra’s around 2010, he too thought it was a gay space. He was accompanying his roommate, a queer man who normally avoided gay bars. The roommate had been processing a breakup with a longtime boyfriend and was hoping to meet someone.
Petra’s, however, wasn’t a pick-up spot. Instead, the bar was presenting the kind of quirky, inclusive entertainment that defines it to this day; in this case, a drag queen playing cat videos on the bar’s big screen TV.
The biggest contributor to Petra’s perceived gayness is that owners like Fowler, who is straight, and Tutt, who is gay, have always openly welcomed Charlotte’s queer community, scheduling gay-centric events like drag shows, the TutuTonight variety showcase, Ultraviolet Sapphic Dance Party and, on Wednesday nights, karaoke and sing-along hosted by openly gay comic Ryan Stamey, who’s also a staple of the local drag scene.
“Wednesday is one of our queerest nights,” Tutt notes. “It’s one of the reasons I like being here on Wednesdays. The kaleidoscope of people that you see is always fun to watch.”
The disconnect between how bar owners view their businesses vs. the public’s perception is perhaps understandable given the state of Charlotte’s LGBTQ+ bar scene, which is constantly in flux.
Writing for Q Notes in 2019, Camilla K. Cannon counted more than 20 exclusively gay or lesbian bars, some dating like Scorpio back to the 1960s. Of that tally, only five — Chasers, Side Lines, Bar Argon, The Woodshed and Scorpio, which relocated to Fairwood Avenue in South End in 2024 — appear to still be in business.
The city’s handful of lesbian bars once included L4, Hartigan’s and Garbo’s, launched by Doubting Thomas members Gina Stewart and Brenda Gambill. Now lesbian clubs seem to have vanished entirely.
In a comprehensive look at Charlotte’s vanished lesbian bars in 2023, Queen City Nerve’s Annie Keough notes that even when lesbian bars thrived in other cities, they never really caught on in Charlotte. That’s due in part to the fact that lesbians are a niche clientele, and unless the same members of that small clientele patronize a business night after night, that business’s model is economically unsustainable.
Read more: The Causes and Effects of Losing Lesbian Bars (2023)
Exacerbating that economic pinch is the fact that women in general continue to earn less than men and have less disposable income for frequenting exclusive safe spaces.
After gay marriage became legal in North Carolina in October 2024, acceptance and inclusion of queer people in straight places gradually increased. Younger members of the LGBTQ+ community, many of whom never experienced the necessity of needing and finding the safety and representation that exclusively gay spaces have provided since the 1960s, preferred being in places that cater to diverse crowds offering a blend of orientations and genders.
“Owners of … queer-friendly bars in Charlotte, found a balance to sustain [their businesses] while also compensating for the void left to the LGBTQ+ community. Holding themed nights aimed at certain parts of the community allows businesses to remain lucrative without relying on everyday business from such a small portion of the population,” Keough writes.
Read More: Grassroots Groups Steer Resurgence of Charlotte’s Sapphic Scene (2024)
In Charlotte, two bars that follow the course that Keough charts are Petra’s and Hattie’s Tap & Tavern.
Although Hattie’s owner Jackie DeLoach is a gay woman who bartended briefly at Hartigan’s before it closed, she never considered launching her establishment as a lesbian bar.
“A lot of people thought of Hattie’s as being a gay bar but I wanted it to be a safe space for anyone,” DeLoach tells Queen City Nerve. “As long as you are respecting other people, you’re good to be here.”
The inclusive policy at Hattie’s means the bar schedules queer events like The Drag Kings of Charlotte on the second Wednesday of each month, but that show sits comfortably beside live music, karaoke every Thursday and bingo on the second Tuesday of each month.
“When you come in, you can sit next to a person that works at Bank of America or next to a person that works at Wendy’s and you can have a conversation,” DeLoach notes. “It’s an atmosphere where everybody can feel themselves and be comfortable.”
DeLoach is friends with Fowler and frequents Petra’s because she feels that establishment is much like hers.
“[Petra’s] is an everybody bar, but it’s a safe everybody bar,” she says.
That overriding dedication to patrons’ safety has been much on Tutt’s mind lately.
Speaking to Queen City News in June 2022, Tutt noted that the culture’s shift to LGBTQ+ inclusion was bittersweet because it signaled the end of the exclusively gay bar’s role as the sole safe and comfortable space for queer Americans.
Nowadays, however, Tutt is concerned about another cultural shift, the movement toward bigotry, xenophobia and division fostered by an increasingly fascistic federal government.
Read more: Visiting Charlotte’s Longest-Running LGBTQ+ Sports Bar
“For several years, the LGBTQ+ community felt like they didn’t really need their own spaces because … they were welcome anywhere they wanted to go, but I feel … that may be changing in a bad way,” he says.
For Tutt, that makes it all the more important that places like Petra’s and Hattie’s continue to be who they are in the community, welcoming and safe spaces for people who want to be who they are without worries or fear.
