{"id":35353,"date":"2025-11-04T22:03:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T22:03:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/35353\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T22:03:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T22:03:06","slug":"cheer-up-charlies-sale-called-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/35353\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheer Up Charlies sale called off"},"content":{"rendered":"

The sale of Cheer Up Charlies<\/a> to a Florida investment firm is off.<\/p>\n

In the latest twist of what has been a chaotic year for the beloved Austin queer bar, Cheer Up Charlies will no longer be acquired by Pride Holdings Group. Bar owner Maggie Lea told KUT News on Tuesday that the parties have \u201camicably agreed to part ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth parties have rescinded, and Pride Holdings is no longer involved in Cheer Up Charlies,\u201d Lea said. \u201cOur membership interests have been returned and we (Tamara Hoover & Maggie Lea) remain owners of Cheer Up Charlies.\u201d<\/p>\n

“I have nothing bad to say about them,” she added. “It just didn’t work out, you know?”<\/p>\n

Pride Holdings Group did not return multiple calls, texts and emails for comment. But as of Tuesday afternoon, the corporation appears to have removed a press release about the acquisition from its website.<\/p>\n

The announcement last month that the bar known as Cheer Ups was being sold<\/a> to an out-of-state corporate entity shocked the local queer community. Coming just days after the bar raised about $60,000 in donations<\/a> to pay back rent, the news rankled some who said corporate ownership was out of step with the bar\u2019s identity as a safe space for queer Austinites.<\/p>\n

The scuttled deal would have involved Lea and Hoover staying on as managers, with Pride Holdings Group taking over the business\u2019 ailing finances. The company has acquired multiple struggling LGBTQ+ bars in the U.S. and Australia in the last few months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The sale of Cheer Up Charlies to a Florida investment firm is off. In the latest twist of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,19829,5907,5627,22557,1183,3950,22558],"class_list":["post-35353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-austin-nightlife","tag-bar","tag-cheer-up-charlies","tag-cheer-ups","tag-lgbtq","tag-nightlife","tag-queer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}