THE CAVE

On January 19, 1974, a bar on Franklin Street posted an advertisement in The Daily Tar Heel for a Bob Dylan Appreciation Night—three straight hours of Bob Dylan on stereo. “Beer will be ridiculously overpriced,” it threatened, “in keeping with Dylan’s revised philosophy.”¹ Of course, it was The Cave.

The Cave first opened in 1968, making it Chapel Hill’s oldest continuously-open bar—and since that time, it has never changed location. The building itself was constructed in the late 1940s, and originally the space that would become The Cave was simply a basement for West Franklin Grocery above. Some reporting suggested that a speakeasy briefly existed in the basement, with all the windows boarded up to prevent detection.²

Around 1952, it opened as an electronic repairs shop named the Radio Service Shack, which only survived a few years before it became a pool hall sometime around 1964.³ Sometime in these years the owner of the business above it donated the basement to Chapel Hill High School—then located on W. Franklin Street—for use as a rec center, and a group of students, Joff Coe among them, came up with the idea of covering up the interior with cement to mimic the rock walls of a cave.⁴

Bill Sparrow, founder of The Cave.⁵

The week that The Cave opened, a station wagon covered in metal and concrete to mimic the famous walls and ceiling of the bar drove around town, advertising the establishment: “Chapel Hill’s Newest Bar!”⁶ The bar was initially opened by Bill Sparrow and catered to an after-work crowd, largely avoiding the masses of students further up on Franklin Street and quickly becoming known as a “townie bar,” which it mostly remains today. This was also the year the back room was dug out, having not been part of the original construction.

There were occasional performances, such as an early show by bluegrass group “The Country Boys” in 1969, but the bar had not yet established its tradition of live music. In those early years, The Cave was known as a relatively rough establishment in a largely undeveloped part of Franklin Street—business had not yet expanded so far West, and many of the properties around it were empty or entirely undeveloped. Perhaps this is why it closed within a few years and was replaced by Pegasus, a bar and coffee shop that opened on September 25, 1972, advertising itself subtly as a home for those who “mourn the passing of the old Tempo.”⁷ The Tempo Room was a jazz bar owned by Harry Galifianakis that had a reputation as a safe space for gay men, owing to a relatively famous incident in which Harry expelled a homophobic patron.

The first advertisement for Pegasus, in The Daily Tar Heel.

Therefore, the Pegasus was Chapel Hill’s first openly gay bar. It was founded by Glen Rowan, who was deliberate about creating a safe space for the gay population of Chapel Hill—several LGBT graduates of Chapel Hill have described him in their memory as kind and gentle, happy to offer bartending jobs to gay men struggling to find work. Years after the closing of the Pegasus, around 1987, Glen Rowan died from HIV/AIDS and was remembered with fondness by the many LGBT people who passed through his bar. Many alumni described it as the first place they had ever seen gay men publicly acknowledged, able to speak and dance freely—all for a $2 yearly fee.

Further accounts by gay visitors to Pegasus may be found here and here.

The Pegasus remained in the location for only two years before it was sold to Jim Rideout in 1974 and started going by The Cave again.⁸ By 1976, the bar had reopened as The Cavern after it was sold to John “Wheaties” Richardson and Bo Porter, and began to build the community that would keep it going for decades. Close friendships began to form between bartenders and regulars, and it was around this time that Meg Sorrell, eventually a longtime owner of the bar, discovered The Cavern for the first time.

Meg was at Southern Railway Station—where REM played their first local gig in 1981⁹—when she heard about the bar from a man named Jim Rideout, who at some point had been involved with the ownership of the building. She loved it, Meg said, because she’d been a cave explorer in her youth, and the bar’s low ceilings and semi-claustrophobic darkness felt like home. She began working as a bartender in 1979 after Bo Porter, who often left the bar to get drinks somewhere else and left a regular in charge of handing out drinks, asked her to take over a few nights. Soon, “Wheaties” was looking for someone to buy out his share, and Meg Sorrell and her friend Mary Sue took over The Cave in 1982.

The stage of The Cave, featuring a painting by muralist Scott Nurkin.

Chapel Hill in these years, by Meg’s recollection, was quaint and familiar—everyone knew each other, and nearly all businesses were small mom-and-pop stores deeply integrated with the community. People who went to The Cave didn’t go anywhere else once they had begun showing up to watch Jeopardy, or the basketball games on the TV, or play pool in the backroom.

It was early in Meg’s tenure that The Cave began hosting live music almost every night. The first band to play was a local bebop group from Raleigh called the Love Masters, whom Meg had invited after hearing them play. Soon bands were mailing in cassette tapes constantly, and Meg would play them for the regulars late at night to decide who would be allowed to play at The Cave. She met and married Dave Sorrell, a bartender at the establishment, and under her leadership The Cave thrived. Among her favorite memories of this time is when country star Lyle Lovett agreed to play for pass-the-hat instead of his usual fee, and donated the entire amount to the bartenders working that night. Around 1985, The Cave bought their first PA system—also funded by pass-the-hat. 

A 1974 advertisement in “The Daily Tar Heel” for a Bob Dylan Appreciation Night.

While Meg was running the Cave, current owner Melissa Swingle (of the band Trailer Bride) began working as a bartender. She vividly remembers Meg’s strict no-tolerance policy for any aggression or harassment inside the bar, as well as the baseball bat that was kept behind the counter. Meg eventually passed ownership of the bar over to her husband Dave and their friend Mouse Mock in 1999, retiring from bar ownership to work at a plant nursery until her retirement. Sometime in 2003, R.E.M. showed up and played a free set at the bar until 2:30 in the morning, and remained longer to talk to the regulars. Here is one account of that night.

Mouse bought out The Cave from Dave Sorrell within the next few years and ran it until October 2012, when he sold it to Mark Connor and Van Alston. In 2018, the owners announced on Facebook that The Cave would close on Monday, April 30, 2018.¹⁰ The series of farewell shows over the last week is remembered with great fondness by patrons and previous owners, as musicians and regulars drove down from various parts of North Carolina, and further, to play a series of sets every night.

While the farewell shows were happening, longtime bartenders Melissa Swingle and Autumn Spencer scrambled to finalize a last-minute purchase of The Cave.¹¹ It reopened on June 29, 2018, with a show by Trailer Bride—Melissa’s band—and has remained open since.¹² The rich, insular community of The Cave has given it a staying power that no other bar in Chapel Hill can claim. In the words of Meg Sorrell, whose baby photos hang above the bar, “The Cave represents a piece of Franklin Street that people go to because it’s constant.”

The low-slung textured ceiling over the bar of The Cave. A childhood photo of longtime owner Meg Sorrell hangs directly under the air vent.

ENDNOTES

1. The Daily Tar Heel, 01-17-1974, Page 3 ↩︎
2. The Chapel Hill News, 04-15-2001 ↩︎
3. Open Orange NC ↩︎
4. Joff Coe via Facebook ↩︎
5. The Chapel Hill Weekly, 01-23-1966, Page 1 ↩︎
6. The Chapel Hill Weekly, 09-22-1968, Page 1 ↩︎
7. The Daily Tar Heel, 09-23-1970, Page 2 ↩︎
8. The Daily Tar Heel, 08-26-1974, Page 40 ↩︎
9. Open Orange NC ↩︎
10. Indy Week, 05-02-2018 ↩︎
11. Indy Week, 06-27-2018 ↩︎
12. The Cave via Facebook ↩︎