More than 100 women crowded into one of Charlotte’s most beloved dive bars recently to bond over cheating exes.
Why it matters: Johnny Dollars has become a magnet for Charlotte’s twenty- and thirty-somethings, thanks in part to its viral social media presence that taps into online humor, nightlife culture and the city’s messy dating scene.
Context: The Charlotte staple, which opened in 1999, checks every dive-bar box: cheap drinks, dim lighting, pool tables and a photo booth that never sits empty.
- But unlike most dive bars, the LoSo spot has a strong online presence, with posts that frequently go viral and capture the unfiltered (sometimes blurry) chaos of a night out.
Catch up quick: Its social media manager, Sarah Desourdy, regularly shares photo dumps of the bar’s patrons — always with consent, she says. The posts have become part of the bar’s identity, something customers have come to expect.
- But one night, she snapped a photo of a man who had hopped into a picture with a woman he didn’t know. Once posted, the moment looked like something it wasn’t.
- “He reached out and told me the photo got him in trouble,” Desourdy says. Realizing she had accidentally sparked a relationship crisis, she posted an Instagram story to the bar’s page jokingly acknowledging she had “offended the noncommittal dating community in Charlotte.”
- That story unleashed a flood of responses urging her to host some sort of dating-themed event, and one suggestion stuck: a night inspired by the “Are We Dating the Same Guy?” Facebook groups.
The idea: Women who showed a picture of the person who cheated on them at the door would receive a free drink. Desourdy ran it by owner JT Foster, and it was game on…