PHOTO VIA COCKTAILS AND SCREAMS FACEBOOK PAGE
Cocktails and Screams (Instagram), downtown Orlando’s year-round Halloween bar, is closing. The venue announced the news on social media this week after six years of business at 39 W. Pine Street [GMap]. Its final night is scheduled for March 20.
In their statement, the owners pointed directly at the city: “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.” They didn’t mince words about what those changes mean for other venues like theirs, either, saying, “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.”
Their farewell schedule runs nightly from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m. through March 20, with Sunday, March 15, and Monday, March 16 off. Tonight, Wednesday, March 11, is the kickoff for their “Farewell Tour.”
