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A vibrant bar along Red River Street beckons patrons with colorful neon lights, a celebratory ambiance and outdoor music. Inside, there's a room with a small stage and strobe lights that malfunctioned on a recent Tuesday, casting the audience in rotating pink and blue lights. Cheer Up Charlies — a year-old queer bar, space and entertainment venue in downtown Austin — is named after a small black poodle and optimistic song from the Willy Wonka musical.

Owners Maggie Lea and Tamara Hoover designed the lighted logo on the main stage in the outdoor patio to look like a square maze with symbols interspersed that represent their life and journey with the business: fire for power, water for emotion, an upside-down star for challenges to overcome, and a red heart for love.

The past few years have been tough on the business. But Lea and Hoover, who are business and romantic partners, believe in their bar and the purpose it serves for queer communities, for creators, for free expression.

Best Bar in Town

After teaching art and coaching sports at Austin High School, and a brief stint in frigid Gay York, Hoover in launched a food truck business with coconuts and chocolate on a clear lot on the corner of East Sixth and Waller streets — the seed of Cheer Up Charlies. It was intentional. It became a place of creative expression and experimentation.

Soccer games in the afternoon would evolve into electronic dance DJ sets in the evening, with tasty drinks and cozy chocolate to bring together the community that Hoover always coveted. Inthey moved to bar new space along Red River Street. They covered the concrete floor with wood from an old basketball court, added art and invited local artists to paint the walls.

Its outside space has one of the only limestone walls left in downtown; two outdoor bars with kombucha, THC drinks and cocktails; and a photo booth and quiet area in back. Lea is there most nights helping run events and greeting regulars and out-of-towners alike. And the community they've built is powerful.

People would tell the couple they met their partner or best friend at Cheer Up Charlies. And am I going to burn out? A year ago, the couple posted on social media begging the community to help them stay open. In news interviews at the time, they said they were thinking of perhaps offering coffee or otherwise adapting.

With an executive order on his first day back in office, Trump ordered the federal government to only recognize two genders — male and female — erasing the lived experience of transgender people and nonbinary people who don't identify as either a woman or a man, advocates said. The administration also put pressure on companies to end initiatives that help improve and foster diversity, equity and inclusion.

Amid the push from the White House, major corporations have eliminated their open support for diversity and queer people, which Cannon said will negatively affect the economy. The local chamber, with its nearly business partners, is among the top 10 in size of all LGBTQ chambers nationwide, and Cannon helps connect, educate and advocate its members.

Inthe U. Not everywhere charlies safe for queer people to work. Ryan Czvikli, a transgender man, has worked at Cheer Up Charlies for a year and a half. Before then, he was an early austin teacher. For Czvikli, working at Cheer Up Charlies is a way to be with and serve a community he deeply cares about.