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One of them included a14-year-old prostitute who would come in late at night. When I asked Hale if she has stories of customers that stick with her, she doesn’t even pause. They could go in the Roxy and get a meal, stay warm, feel loved.” You know, sleeping on the couch, trying to just make it. “We all know the stories of youth that were kicked out by their families living on the streets. “There’s so many things that she did for this community, especially for the youth to make them feel safe and loved and wanted and important.” “You know, she will not sing her own praises,” former regular Maria Peters Lake said of Hale.
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Owner Suzanne Hale, known affectionately as "The Lovely Suzanne," on the The Roxy's Hall of Fame in Portland. They were the ones who would tend to ‘dine and dash,’ or cause trouble.” A refuge for thousands “There’s only one customer that I gave the stink eye to, and would watch like a hawk,” Shattuck said.
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Night after night, it was a welcoming family, a true model of radical inclusivity: straight and queer, housed and homeless, young and old. You know, ‘Oh, did your grandma get out of the hospital yet?’ There was a real sense of bonding and I’m so grateful and humbled to have been included in all of that over the years.” You may not even know their name, but you know their usual order. “Everything from telling dirty jokes to sharing things that are going on in each of our families. “Great regulars, all those people, especially from the gay bars in the city,” Shattuck said. when the staff from those same bars showed up. Shattuck said crowds would come in waves: a surge of drunk revelers after the bars closed at 2:30 a.m., then a second rush at 4 a.m. You don’t go to Denny’s in drag in the ‘90s.” The late-night crowdĪ late night at The Roxy in downtown Portland in 2011. A lot of the drag queens get out of drag and go to a regular restaurant or straight restaurant or whatever. That was really our street because after the party, after the bar, it was 24 hours and that’s where you would end up going. “It gave us a space to be who we were, so we felt comfortable,” Peters Lake said. She said the restaurant was an important complement to the LGBTQ-friendly queer bars and businesses that made up the Burnside Triangle. Today, Peters Lake runs the nonprofit Peacock Productions. At the time, she was the reigning Empress of the Imperial Sovereign Rose Court, Oregon’s longest-running LGBTQ charity organization. Maria Peters Lake was one of those queer adults when The Roxy opened in 1994. It created this space where people could really explore their queerness.” Especially, there just really wasn’t that many places where you could really interact with queer adults. “I think that a lot of young queer people don’t really have a ton of queer spaces available to them. “The thing that was really special about The Roxy is that it was an all-ages space and a 24-hour space,” said Brooke Jackson-Glidden, Editor of Eater Portland. It left a giant, pancake-and-chicken-fried-steak-sized hole in the hearts of a generation of people who grew up and found community there. It’s part of why people felt safe there, because we didn’t tolerate any of that.”Īfter struggling through the pandemic and a building fire, The Roxy closed for good on March 20. “A 24-hour restaurant can be a sketchy place, a rough place to be,” Hale said. “The Lovely Suzanne” and her daughter (and Roxy General Manager) April Shattuck created something that sounds like an anomaly: an often raunchy all-night diner that was also a place of safety and security for hundreds, if not thousands, of people. For queer or homeless teenagers, it was one of the few places they could always find refuge, no matter what time of day. It was also an anchor for the city’s LGBTQ community. Open 24 hours a day, except Mondays, the diner attracted partygoers, cab drivers, and graveyard shift workers in droves. Hale can be gruff, but there’s a reason why her legions of adoring fans call her “The Lovely Suzanne.” Hale’s restaurant, The Roxy, was an anchor for downtown Portland’s nightlife aficionados for 27 years. “If a customer came in and said, ‘I just want a fucking cup of coffee,’” Hale said, “I would just smile and say, ‘Well, a fucking cup of coffee is extra.’”
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If you ever found your way into Suzanne Hale’s restaurant, I hope you knew how to behave - for your own sake. Photo from Instagram provided to OPB by Kincannon The Roxy, Portland's 24-hour, LGBTQ-friendly diner closed its doors for good on March 20, 2022.