Fittingly, our interview with Mary McGinn and Matt Duke of the Nook on Robinson starts with a toilet flooding. Quite a way for the duo to start their last weekend running this redoubtable Milk District gathering place. “This toilet has been the bane of our existence,” Duke tells us after the two hop off the call to tend to the emergency. This is the same toilet immortalized on a recent piece of Nook merch, a button, that dropped ahead of their closing party on Saturday, Oct. 31. It’ll be a funeral-themed Halloween party starting when they open at 5 p.m.
Orlando Weekly talked with McGinn and Duke late Thursday afternoon, just before they opened their doors for their last weekend. We talked about community, the challenges of running a small business, saying goodbye to a space they’ve run since 2018, using play as a business model and plans for their goodbye party.
SPOILER: “We don’t know what we’re going to do next, but we know that there won’t be toilets involved,” Duke promises us.
Orlando Weekly: Tell us why you decided to close the doors of the Nook.
Matt Duke: I think … We’ve done this tote bag that we just came out with, and one side says “Nothing lasts forever,” and the other side says “It’s going to be OK,” and I think all good things have to end eventually. We felt like we did a good job for a long time, and that it’s time to take a moment.
Mary McGinn: I think every time, when you’re a small business, every time your lease comes up, it’s always a question and a conversation of, OK, are we renewing? How long are we renewing? And this time, when it came up, we were like, “It feels like the right time to to start something different.”
You were talking about the merch. The last few things you’ve dropped have this like hopeful, almost optimistic tone rather than bittersweet.
Duke: I think we both could get lost in sadness or this loss of a communal space that a lot of people felt comfortable in, including us. And that’s not truly the case. Like we are losing this space, but as individuals or as a community, as groups, we’re still going to have one another. A lot of the camaraderie or community that was built or established through the Nook will continue in our city. We didn’t want it to be sad necessarily. It’s just part of life and part of understanding, and we’re all going to go on together.
What was the brainstorming like between the two of you to end on Halloween night with a funeral-themed party?
McGinn: It just seemed like it made the most sense. Our lease is up at the end of November, and doing a big grand finale at the end of October and taking some time to say goodbye to the space … We didn’t want to rush out, but Halloween felt symbolic. It’s the holiday of death and getting to be something different. It just felt iconic.
Duke: I think Mary, like we hadn’t really discussed it, then she said something. We had decided on Halloween, and then she said a funeral for the Nook, and it was like I don’t know if she had thought of that prior, or if that was on the fly, but it was like, yeah, that’s amazing, that’s perfect.
What do you all have planned for the night? And will you be wearing like funeral attire?
McGinn: I’ll be wearing some funeral attire. We were able to get use of the back lot, so we’ll have the Pass Kitchen food truck coming out. We’re also dropping some specialty merch just for that day only, and then we have Orange Mouse out with a photobooth.
Duke: So Mary, the other day, she was building a gravestone for the Nook that we can take photos with. And today, before the toilet flooded us, we were working on kind of like a photo wall of like a bunch of memories similar to how you would at a wake. We’re not going too over-the-top with like a procession or anything. I think it’s just the idea when I think of a funeral … a lot of times it turns into the people that are left just spending time and loving one another, and I think that’s the goal for Saturday.
One thing that is a common thread with many of your events, you add a little bit of conceptual oomph. I remember the “screaming at the sky” event. I remember you did a The Office-themed Christmas party one year.
McGinn: I think we just play off each other’s energy. Somebody will present an idea and the other one will be like, “Oh yeah, and then we could do this.” We just build with a sense of play, and I think people tend to ignore that.
Duke: I think it is in the play, and I think sometimes we’re like, “Oh my gosh, that’s so stupid,” and then we have this moment where we’re like, well, there’s no one to stop us from doing it, though, so we might as well just do this stupid thing. And I think part of what made the Nook work was it taking risk and playing.
Using the notion of play as a business model is so intriguing.
Duke: Yeah, you might as well. I don’t know.
McGinn: Bars are supposed to be fun, and we try to create a fun space for people to escape whatever they’re ….
Duke: We always wanted the free events. We never have a cover, and that might have worked against us occasionally, but we wanted people to be able to come here and hang out.
McGinn: And keeping our $3 beer the entire time, even with crazy inflation and prices going up, it was important to us that we maintain accessible pricing. So we’ve got a $15 mead and a $10 IPA, but we also have $5 craft beers and $3 lagers, and making sure that we’re accessible for people that don’t have a ton of disposable income was important to us this entire time.
Talk about the last of the Circuit Church, Please Understand and Golden Flower residency nights. You were giving a prime weekend night to very experimental musicians for years.
Duke: We liked working with those people, and same as Movie Trash with Josh [Martin], they were just amazing people that kind of understood or had a vision of their own, where we opened up the space and let them run with their ideas.
Those groups brought in so many different artists from all over to come and play, and gave them a chance to give it a shot. Circuit Church specifically was on my mind; Jared [Silvia] opened it up to so many people and the Nook was such a good space for so many people to have their first show or to experiment. I’m very happy to hear that they’re all continuing on, we would have never wanted anyone to end with us. We’re excited that they’re going to continue making Orlando interesting. These things, some of them were around before the Nook, and I love that they’re continuing to go on.
McGinn: That’s part of the reason why we announced so early. Like a lot of businesses will just be like, “We’re closing!” and then close. We wanted to give our communities time and space to say goodbye to this space and to find a new house for whatever night that they were doing. It’s been bittersweet having such a long goodbye, but giving people the time to come and say goodbye was something that we were pretty intentional about.
The party is going to spill out into the back parking lot, which is a great callback to so many events you did back there, especially in the immediate “post-pandemic” years.
Duke: That parking lot, we’ve done a lot of cool stuff out there, and it was unfortunate that we lost access to it over the past, what, two years maybe, but we were able to … I think partially because we’re closing we were able to get it one last time. It’s exciting that everybody gets to be out there again and in the open air. It’s a good time of year. It all just worked perfectly.
I remember during one of your Nookiversary parties, I think you both were standing on a table in the parking lot to do it. It’s a nice callback.
Duke: We’ve been talking like, “Oh, should we say something? Should we do a toast?” We’re gonna figure out something just so we can. It’s hard to suspend our emotions a bit as this goes on, and it’s like you don’t want to suspend so hard that we’re not feeling the sadness or the loss with or the love with people. It is difficult.
Given the fact that y’all were only open a few nights a week, and it was just the two of you for the most part behind the bar for many years, it became almost a Cheers-esque dynamic.
McGinn: I think a lot of our regulars, that’s the thing that they’re going to miss most. Because it’s such a small, intimate space and we’re very protective of the vibes. If someone isn’t being respectful and kind we’ll easily bounce them. But having that space where, like, every time you come you make a new friend, because it’s an intimate space. I feel like we we’ve worked hard to create a welcoming vibe, and try to introduce people like, “Oh you’re into this type of music. This person over here is also into that type of music.” And because Matt and I are there day in and day out, we can create those connections and then facilitate other connections, so it’s been it’s been really wonderful to like help or to witness this building of this community that we hope continues on after after the physical space is done.
Duke: It is nice to have such a tight [group] … I’m thinking about my routine, and I’m like, “Man, I’m gonna miss seeing these people on Tuesday. I’m gonna miss seeing these people on Friday.” We kind of talk. Where are we gonna hang out? What are we gonna do? We really got to know everybody because we are here. It’s always both of us, or at least one of us, I don’t think it’s ever not been both of us.
Broadly speaking, where do you see this strip of Robinson in the Milk District heading?
McGinn: I think it’s been changing forever, but more recently, like with Sportstown getting liquor and Bull & Bush getting liquor, the street is changing. We’ve seen a lot more like younger people, which has been cool to see. When I first started going to Sportstown when I was 21, it was full of super young people. And as the craft beer crowd kind of ages into maybe staying home more, it’s fun to see like a vibrant neighborhood, but all things change, and it’s already been changing for the past year or so. I think our community, a lot of it started as people that were living and walking in the neighborhood, and as property values increase and rent increases and we get nicer and nicer cocktail bars coming to the neighborhood, a lot of our walk-in regulars were priced out of the neighborhood. All things are changing and hopefully it’s all good stuff. I don’t know.
Duke: We continued to keep and find an audience despite that, but it definitely did, like, it changed the block a little bit? Like just who’s walking around, who’s out there, and not that it — it didn’t slow us down too much, but I think we operate on the the idea of the working class or just the people that I think we are. We’re mostly open to those people, and I think as as rent goes up and as things get more expensive, it’s definitely harder to find spaces that celebrate …
McGinn: … indie, artsy working-class folk.
Duke: I hope whatever’s next for the neighborhood, that there’s always room for …
McGinn: … third spaces.
What will each of you miss most?
Duke: Man, aside from my routines with seeing people and or just having a friend stumble in, like — putting the telescope out front and pointing it at the moon and letting people look at it as they walk by, things like that. I’m just gonna miss like walking into the space before we open and preparing it, moving things around, changing it up, redecorating, and making it ready for when people walk in to have a cool look and ready to go. I’m gonna miss that. I’m gonna miss it.
McGinn: I think I’m gonna miss buying the local beers. We’ve always had local beverages, and just going through the inventories and seeing what local breweries are putting out, what new stuff. That’s definitely a part that I’m going to miss. Hanging out with my delivery drivers as they’re dropping off product, but then also just having a place where people can come and they know that we’re always going to be here. It’s just like, “Oh, I want to see Matt. I want to see Mary.” And rather than having to schedule and make plans, [they] can just pop in and hang out. Having to put in more effort into a social life is something that I’m gonna have to pivot and figure out.
What’s next individually or collectively?
Duke: The easiest answer is we both need a break. Nine years of running a small business and all the fires we put out along the way — it deserves like a moment to lay in the grass and feel the wind blow. Make art, love people and just see what happens next. I would have never expected to be here. So I’m probably not expecting whatever’s next either.
McGinn: It’s kind of unknowable, especially because Matt and I both just kind of say yes to things. It was just what happened with the bar. It’s like you don’t know what opportunities there are out for you until you’re out there with them. We’ll just figure out what our next yeses are as they come.
Duke: Small business has really gotten us good at pivoting. So it’s like, “Obstacle? All right, we’ll work around it,” and as long as we continue that, something will come up.
