A dive bar’s bathroom can be a special place, but there’s not one as special as the women’s room at The Hub in downtown Tampa.
“I have been a way too regular customer for fuckin’ years,” Chloe Davis told CL.
Davis, 25, is an audiovisual tech by day, and she posted the first pic to @the.hubs.bathroom over the summer. It’s a mirror selfie of her and friend, and there’s a phone balanced skillfully on top of a Stella Artois cider bottle in the foreground.
Davis romanticizes the time before The Hub’s women’s room was renovated. She loved the old graffiti; some of it was her own. Sometimes a toilet would just sit there after being ripped off the wall.
“It was disgusting and comfy,” Davis, who moved to Tampa from Maine 13 years ago, explained. “It was my home.”
And to this day, it still is. Davis — a Hillsborough High School grad who worked at Ella’s Americana Folk Art Café for 10 years — said that 80% of her pics are in the Hub’s bathrooms.
Other photos on the social media account are nostalgic (there’s one of the previous Hub location two blocks away on Zack Street and Florida Avenue). Some are scandalous (a woman straddling a commode in the upper-decker position). There’s even one that shows a Bird e-scooter cooling off in the iced-down men’s room urinal trough.
Most of the pics, however, are of regular people practicing self-love in the mirror. Davis said that love translates into the interactions she’s had inside of the bathroom’s sacred walls, which are very different from other bathrooms in the Bay area.
“Everyone is just nice in there. I wouldn’t talk to a stranger in the bathroom if I was at The Bricks, “ Davis added. “Everyone in the Hub is just so nice — it’s like the bar Cheers, but inside a bathroom.”
As of Wednesday, the account had nearly 1,600 followers and just 68 posts. As its followers grow, Davis — whose preferred order is a shot of whiskey (“doesn’t matter what kind”) and a Miller High Life — said she had just one message and hope for fans of the account.
“I want them to continue frequenting The Hub and drinking heavily,” she joked just before getting serious for a second.
“And I want them to keep being nice to each other.”
The 70-year-old dive has a long history in downtown Tampa. It's a place for concerts, epic foosball games, stiff drinks and late-night runs to buy something from the package store. It's also the home of a great jukebox, and The Hub is frequented by musicians like Shock G of the Digital Underground. In 2018, indie-rock prima donna Father John Misty hung out there after his set at Gasparilla Music Festival. In August, during his set at MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre, Spoon frontman Brit Daniel proclaimed his love for the bar that lives at 719 N. Franklin St.
“Y’all remember that Gasparilla?” Daniel asked 11,000 fans, referencing his band's 2018 set at Gasparilla Music Festival. “We went to The Hub afterwards. That was a good one.”
Daniels went to the Hub again directly after that concert two months ago.
Want to know everything going on with Tampa Bay's food and drink scene? Sign up for our Bites newsletter.
This article appears in Nov 7-14, 2019.