A Very Late Night Out in Charlotte

Charlotte isn’t known for who she is in the wee hours. 

A night out past midnight in the Queen City is an intriguing step outside the familiar—a closed Harris Teeter, strangers willing to spew secrets, a few late-night food carts serving up drunchies. At times, it instills a little fear, too—probably because Mom always said, “Nothing good happens after midnight,” a saying locked and looping in the pathways of my brain.

Is that true, though? I stepped out into the shadows on a Friday night-turned-Saturday morning to test the theory on an admittedly small sample size: Plaza Midwood and NoDa, a pair of neighborhoods that stay up past their bedtimes. Here’s what I saw—and heard. 

Friday, May 9, 11:24 p.m.

I drive into Plaza Midwood and blast “After Midnight” by Chappell Roan. She sings, “My mama said, nothing good happens when it’s late and you’re dancing alone,” but then, in defiance, flips the sentiment: “Everything good happens after midnight.” I pull over, park, and get in line for The Workman’s Friend, a pub that’ll help me get a better idea if Mom is right, Chappell Roan is right, or reveal some hazy truth somewhere between nothing and everything good. 

Inside and outside greet each other at The Workman’s Friend in Plaza Midwood. Photos by Logan Cyrus

11:45 p.m.

Workman’s is at peak intensity. This Irish pub and weeknight industry spot morphs into a packed social scene on the weekends. 

From Central Avenue, passersby get a cinematic glimpse into Workman’s on a Friday night through its giant open window. Arms are slung over the rail, cigarette smoke curls from the solo smoker outside, Some Guy™ breathily word-vomits to a girl with a gin and tonic. Eyes dart around with a hungry glint, as if they want more—more drinks, more strangers, more time. 

Inside Workman’s Friend

11:58 pm 

“You know your time is running out,” says Lauren Boyd, a Workman’s regular. “If the night is going to be good, it’s now or never.”

“But,” I ask, “can anything good really happen after midnight?”

She and her two friends, all in their early 30s, giggle and eye-roll. “No, definitely not,” she says, half-laughing, half-defeated. It’s the answer I’ll get from nearly a dozen people—a quick, reflexive “no.” But then her face softens into a smile. She thinks of the women’s bathroom. 

“Well, I might go through an entire workweek of no one hyping me up, and then I come out to Workman’s, and someone hypes me up in the bathroom line,” she says. “They might be a little buzzed, and it might not be that significant, but it makes me feel good going into the next week.” 

The familiar experience of girlhood in the bathroom line: It’s a fleeting jolt of dopamine. Boyd and her two friends know this. They’re at peace with the impermanence. In fact, they prefer it to something more lasting. They don’t expect midnight to supply permanent attachments. They’re looking for an exhale—an ephemeral compliment—after a long week. 

“It’s okay to have some moments where you talk to someone you wouldn’t have otherwise talked to. You stay Instagram friends, but you never have another real conversation,” she says. “She’s your silent supporter. From afar.”

Across the bar and an age gap of a decade, a group of about eight UNC Charlotte students associate midnight with making friends. They say they’re hungry for connection—although, at the moment, they’re connecting only with each other, crammed in the back booth away from the crowd. One, Elizabeth Taylor, says going out at midnight is “imperative in your 20s,” a rite of passage. 

Connie Puckett, 65, burns a cig on the bench outside Workman’s.

Saturday, May 10, 12:19 a.m.

Even at 65, the midnight imperative can call. Connie Puckett rips a cigarette as she sits on the bench outside. She’s out this late “once in a blue moon,” she says. This particular blue moon shines on a wedding party. For the next, she plans to take her recently divorced friend to her favorite dive. After midnight, she says, “people actually spew the words out that’ve been on their mind. I believe that,” she says. “The truth comes out. You’re uninhibited.”

Sometimes, midnight is a portal—into release, connection, truth. Other times, it’s the cue to go home. Katryna Smith just got married at The VanLandingham Estate, and she now has an entire gleaming wedding party in tow at Workman’s.

“As bride and groom, we didn’t want to stay out past midnight,” she says, anticipating that festivities would take a turn toward regret. “Twelve is a good cut-off—well, 12:30. Maybe.” But that mark passes, and Smith and her groom, Ruben Santiago, stay at Workman’s. The night does what it does: keep people awake and, as Puckett says, soften inhibition. The couple melt into each other on the same side of the booth.

Newlyweds Katryna Smith and Ruben Santiago launch their wedding night at Workman’s.

The newlyweds have a fondness for after-midnight happenings anyway. Smith’s third date with Santiago lasted until 3 a.m. and ended with homemade strawberry chocolate muffins and a “Bohemian Rhapsody” duet. “We don’t have to be out with everybody,” she says. “We’re happy to just have a late night, hanging out with each other, watching our favorite movie, just us.” That’s the best thing that happens after midnight, her new husband says: love.  

1:27 a.m. 

I swing over to a different neighborhood, where The Honeymoon has turned into The Ugly. At around 1:30, Matt Hudgins nurses a beer at the bar at The Ugly in NoDa and asks what anyone can even do after midnight in Charlotte besides drink. His friend Eli Ortiz says the last time he was sober after midnight was “in high school, ripping Halo with the boys.” 

Despite the complaints, Hudgins and Ortiz are huge fans of The Ugly and point to their bartender, Alex, to share the “actually cool stuff” he does at midnight: He collects frogs and brings them to bars. “I find a big-ass frog and take it to Vinyl,” Alex says. “It’s so funny.” 

Scenes from a dive: The Ugly in NoDa.

As the night inches along, the scene at The Ugly signals a clear shift. It’s less about connection or romance. It’s a window into a Great Unraveling—frog transport, karaoke benders, waking up next to a Clydesdale horse in a barn (which happened to another bartender, Jason Thepavong).

As Thepavong laughs about that escapade, I wonder if these night owls ever experience an ache of shame the next morning. Thepavong does get a fair share of patrons who return the next day to apologize. He’s quick to forgive. “That’s the nature of the beast,” he says. He doesn’t even work mornings anymore. “People are so grumpy,” he says with a laugh. “At midnight, they’re talking, relating, taking shots.” He’ll take loose and social at midnight over grumpy in the morning any day.

Karaoke at NoDa 101

2:34 a.m. 

Suddenly, NoDa quiets, save for NoDa 101, a karaoke bar where “Before He Cheats” screeches into the street. Straggling street vendors sell art and incense. Looser wallets mean better sales at this hour. A guy begs the closed ice cream shop to open. What else remains? A sloppy make-out session, a screaming match, a stumbler, and a straggler. When Boyd said midnight fun was “now or never,” she was alluding to this: The crash that transpires once the bars close, when sparkling fun slips into a clumsy vortex. 

Nothing soaks up drunk karaoke at NoDa 101 like a UFO-sized, late-night Zämbies pizza from across the street.

Economists might call this phenomenon “diminishing marginal utility.” Basically, the pleasure or usefulness of a good or service decreases with each “unit” consumed. Midnight may mark the threshold where what was once pleasure and fun starts its nosedive. 

NoDa’s signature street vendors pack up for the night.

9:30 a.m.

Maybe we’ve been asking the wrong question: “Does anything good happen after midnight?” 

Because it clearly does. It feels good, at least. Each short-lived happening—the bathroom friends, the chocolate strawberry muffin, the bar frog—won’t happen again. Midnight has a way of cracking people open to reveal looser, more open versions of themselves with less regard for tomorrow. Weird, chaotic parts of humanity rise to the surface that can’t be replicated in the light of day—sometimes for the best. 

A better question: When’s your midnight? When is it time to head home and suspend the feel-good snapshots of midnight affairs in a sweet, glowing high? Because it’s the kiss too long, the compliment too eager, the tequila shot too many that leads Mom to proclaim that “nothing good happens.”

The economist’s approach might be to leave right at the peak, before the returns diminish. That probably would’ve been at 11:45 p.m., when I first arrived at Workman’s. 

But sometimes, leaving too soon means missing the much-needed hype girl, the midnight kiss, or the Clydesdale horse that’s collective story fodder forever. What can fix these happenings in the inky goodness of midnight is actually keeping them there. You don’t have—or want—to see them in the flesh the next morning.