Open-Late Spots in Charlotte For Night Owls Not Looking to Party

More happens in Charlotte’s early-morning hours than the “unh tiss unh tiss unh tiss” of dance clubs. If you know where to look, you can find places to play arcade games, work, and work out—and maybe reminisce about downing salted caramel brownies at 4 a.m. with Edith Piaf serenading you over the speakers.

24-hour gyms: Partners in Grind

As the 9-to-5 standard fades and others sleep, some young professionals lift in the little hours

It’s not unusual for Luca Jezzeny and Connor Day to hit the gym at 1 a.m. after a long day at their uptown office. They’re investment banking analysts at BlackArch Partners and regularly put in 14- or 16-hour days—sometimes more if they’re really busy with deals. But they like to work out four or five days a week, too, so odd hours are often their only options.

“If you’re finishing work late, you’re still kind of amped up,” says Jezzeny, 24. “When you haven’t done anything active all day, it’s a good way to let off some steam. So I’ll do a quick 30- or 40-minute lift.”

Day, 25, used to work out at The Fitness Factory of Charlotte, a 24-hour gym in NoDa where he might lift weights alongside a server who’s just clocked out or a nurse who’s just finished a shift at the hospital. Now, he and Jezzeny use the gym at their office, which is available to employees around the clock. “It’s like the people who get up at 5 a.m, but it’s the inverse,” Day says. “It’s peaceful because there’s usually nobody else there, it’s oddly relaxing, and you can collect your thoughts.” 

Workout trends come and go (RIP, Tae Bo), but the 24/7 gym template has held steady since the first 24 Hour Fitness opened in 1983. National chains like Planet Fitness, Gold’s Gym, and Anytime Fitness rode that wave into the ’90s and 2000s. They were hit hard by pandemic restrictions, but most have rebounded. By 2022, Planet Fitness exceeded its pre-pandemic membership by nearly 2 million members and credits Gen Z for much of its continued growth.

In Charlotte, Fitness Time Gym has thrived on the 24/7 model, too. (A second location is in Inman, South Carolina, near Spartanburg.) Regional Director Jeff West says usage from midnight to 5 a.m. accounts for less than 10% of their membership, but when people know a gym offers that flexibility, they’re more inclined to join. Fitness Time isn’t staffed during those hours, so members have a key card they scan at the front door for entry and again at the front desk. The facility also has red panic buttons that members can push to notify the police if they feel unsafe.

For shift workers or young analysts like Day and Jezzeny, that safety and flexibility are essential—because a 2 a.m. workout is better than none. “In a perfect world, I wouldn’t be doing it at that time,” Jezzeny says. “But if I don’t have time another time of day, I like having that option.” 

AMELIE’S: Charlotte’s original all-night hang

The Wi-Fi was free, the coffee was hot, and the company was always diverse

When Amelie’s French Bakery opened its flagship location in NoDa in 2008, it quickly became the city’s most diverse late-night hang. The WiFi was free, the salted caramel brownies slapped (still do), and its quirky, cluttered decor made it feel like a French patisserie. At any hour of the day—or night—you might find a group knitting, playing dominoes, or doing an impromptu poetry slam. “We didn’t have any place like that in Charlotte,” says Crystal Dempsey, a manager from 2009 to 2010. “The only after-midnight places where you could go for good food and conversation were diners—or the parking lots of diners. It was a magical confluence of things that made Amelie’s what it was.”

The original, 24-hour Amelie’s at North Davidson and East 28th streets was a great spot for reading, working, and noshing on pastries. Photo by Logan Cyrus

In those days, the Epicentre was in its infancy, and South End was transitioning from a warehouse district to a “live, work, play” hub. Remote work was becoming more common, but co-working spaces weren’t yet commonplace. “There were attempts to create space and opportunities, but there wasn’t support,” Dempsey says. “Amelie’s wasn’t manufactured by the Chamber of Commerce or Center City Partners. It was entrepreneurial in spirit. It supported a lot of diversity.” 

The lack of alcohol set Amelie’s apart, too. “It was friendly for those in recovery,” Dempsey says. “People who worked in the service industry would come in after shifts to unwind. Young people were there, but I don’t remember a lot of havoc-wreakers. College students would come to study during the day, go out clubbing, then come back afterward.” She remembers one night when an exhausted new mother came in with her baby around 10:30. “She was like, ‘I couldn’t take her to a bar,’” Dempsey says with a laugh.  

Amelie’s expanded with four more bakeries in the 2010s, but none were open 24 hours. Suburban areas like Rock Hill, Carmel Commons, and Park Road didn’t have the same late-night demand. The pandemic forced all five locations to adjust their hours; today, only the NoDa location, which relocated to East 36th Street near North Tryon Street in 2022, stays open until midnight on weekends. 

Twenty-four-hour co-working spaces like Switchyards, The Mill, and Alchemy have filled some of that gap. Midnight Diner and Waffle House have reliable late-night eats, and neighborhood coffee houses still host the occasional poetry slam. But no one has it all under one roof like the original Amelie’s did. “It was a unicorn in Charlotte,” Dempsey says. “It wasn’t following anyone else’s lead.” 

Switchyards: The Midnight Oil Derrick

If you’re in need of night-owl co-working, this renovated grocery store is a real hoot

Members of Switchyards, an Atlanta-based company that operates co-working spaces in historic neighborhoods, enjoy 24/7 access to them. This, of course, made us wonder who might be working there in the wee hours. Switchyards opened two Charlotte locations last spring—one in the Belmont neighborhood, the other off Monroe Road in Oakhurst. After the bars closed one Friday night in May, I swung by the Belmont location, scanned myself in (trial membership), and had a look around.

Courtesy, Switchyards

The light indoors was warm and inviting. The speakers emitted lovely slices of dream pop—it had been a while since I heard a Cocteau Twins tune in a common space. I helped myself to some water, had a look around both floors, and discovered …

No one. Not a damn soul.

Not that I was surprised. It was 2 a.m. on a Saturday. Who’d be editing video or tending to accounts payable in a place more than a century old? When it opened in 1902, this building, at Belmont Avenue and Pegram Street, housed a Red Front Department Store. It offered “(e)verything from a Postage Stamp to a House and Lot,” its advertising claimed. The two-story, 6,000-square-foot brick structure was a grocery store for decades—until the closure of a textile mill in 1957 sent residents of the Belmont neighborhood off to the suburbs. By the 1990s, Belmont was among Charlotte’s poorest and most crime-ridden neighborhoods, and the building was vacant.

In 2010, its owner decided to renovate rather than tear it down. In 2024, Switchyards moved in with a whatever-you-need ethos that, in an indirect way, echoes its original use. The company stocked the old grocery with third-place amenities: fast WiFi, electric outlets, complementary water and tea, plenty of plants, scratch paper with sharpened pencils, and yummy Dutch cookies called “stroopwafels.”

Depending on when you go, you might have the place to yourself. Round-the-clock access means exactly that, and if you’re willing to code with the crickets, it’s a splendid choice. You won’t have to wrestle anyone for the last stroopwafel.

Super Abari Game Bar: Donkey Kong at Closing Time

‘You never know what you’re going to get’

As it creeps toward closing time, the crowd at this bar on Seigle Avenue in the Belmont neighborhood settles into its mixed bag. About 30 patrons of varying ethnicities hang around the bar and among the lower-level game room’s 54 vintage arcade games and 36 pinball tables. Everyone here is young—as far as I can tell, nobody over 50 but me—but not uniformly young: At the Bally tables, early-20s rubs elbows with mid-30s. Couples laugh tipsily as they play games downstairs. But at this hour, the folks at the bar are all men. They have a Kevin Smith View Askewniverse look, with lots of loose-fitting beanies, uneven facial hair, and dazed expressions. I swear I glimpse Jay and Silent Bob in the distance, down by the Donkey Kong.

Super Abari Game Bar, Photo by Herman Nicholson

It’s 1:25 a.m. on a Saturday in May. I order a PBR and walk down the short staircase to the gaming room, bypassing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles decals on a purple wall. Dylan U. (he asked us not to use his last name), 34, has come down from University City and happened across two friends of his: Cheeks McGee, 32, and his girlfriend, 30-year-old Kat Sanchez. They weren’t planning to meet up at Super Abari, but they’re regulars, so they’re used to seeing each other here. The three nurse their drinks at a standing table amid the racket of bells and bleeps.

“I used to have, like, a 90-day streak when I was here every day,” says Dylan, a hardware engineer. He’d beeline for the Jubeat, a music video game, where he’d take turns along with 10 or 15 other people. They got to know each other in a peculiar, “Yeah, I know that dude” way: Regulars here recognize other regulars, even if they don’t know their names.

As if to demonstrate, a scrawny gentleman dressed in Lemmy-from-Motörhead gear approaches uninvited and announces, without prompting, that the pages of his journal are stuck together. “I’m a prostitute,” he says, then walks away.

“Yeah, he’s here all the time,” Dylan explains. “He just comes up and says stuff like that.”

Charlotte’s a city increasingly given to taprooms that sell craft beers for $8 a pint and close no later than 10 p.m. Super Abari opened here in 2022 after its original location on North Davidson Street shut down during COVID, and it caters to a more eccentric crowd with thinner wallets. “You never know what you’re going to get,” Dylan says.

“For me, it’s the $5 rum-and-Cokes,” Cheeks offers. “It’s affordable.” Not for much longer on this night. At 1:44, the lights go up, and the cry goes out from behind the bar: “Last call!”