Orlando is welcoming yet another ghost to the graveyard of shuttered downtown nightlife hotspots.
Popular horror-themed bar Cocktails & Screams announced Wednesday it will close permanently later this month.
“Downtown Orlando has changed. Nightlife traffic has faded, and the increasing fees and regulatory costs imposed by the city of Orlando have become impossible for small, independent venues like ours to survive,” a farewell post on the bar’s social media reads.
“Places like ours gave downtown its soul. The strange corners, the creative chaos, the spaces where people could escape reality for a night. And one by one, those places are vanishing into the dark.”
The bar’s last day is March 20, but the team says it won’t go out quietly. Cocktails & Screams will be open 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. most nights Wednesday, March 11, through Friday, March 20. It will be closed March 15 and 16.
Cocktails & Screams opened at 39 W. Pine St. in 2019 as the area’s only completely Halloween-themed nightspot. It houses a speakeasy-style bar within the bar called The Craft.
The closure announcement comes amid a long string of hardships faced by downtown Orlando businesses. Starting Feb. 1, downtown Orlando venues holding After Midnight Alcohol Sales permits have been required to pay their policing fees in a lump sum, in advance, for the month ahead.
“They are doing anything and everything they can to squeeze people out,” Eric Fuller, owner of the nightclub Celine on Magnolia Avenue, previously told Orlando Weekly. “If this was rooted in common sense, every bar or establishment would be paying into this, not just some. But even that is illegal. We already have a mechanism for this. It’s called taxes.”
Since early 2023, these bars and more have closed: Arena Art Bar, Shots, Dapper Duck, 1-Up, HighT, Ember, Chillers, Irish Shannon’s, Cahoots, High Tide and Tanqueray’s. The owners of some have said the city’s nightlife program is to blame.
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