John Bowman and Amanda Barr want to finish their bar’s fifteen-year run in style.
“Did you watch White Lotus?” Barr asks over the phone, referring to the popular HBO show. “You know who died, our favorite couple? Anyways, I just feel like sometimes wonderful things don’t last forever, and that’s just part of life.”
Bowbarr, located at 705 West Rosemary, isn’t going out of business (nor, like the White Lotus characters in question, is it bleeding out in a pond from gunshot wounds), but it is closing—a decision that married couple Bowman and Barr have been mulling over for some time. Barr says that they held on for several years, hoping to find the perfect buyer to take the space on, before finally selling it to a cannabis dispensary.
It felt like time, Barr tells the INDY. The couple is timing the bar’s closure with the expiration of their liquor license at the end of April.
Bowman and Barr opened the space—its name is a portmanteau of their surnames—in early 2010, while expecting their son, Teddy.
“My son was born on April 15, and I think we opened in February,” Barr says. “My son is now 15 years old, and the bar is 15 and his entire life, we’ve been running a bar.”
After the couple met in and moved from New York (where they both worked on the MTV show Celebrity Deathmatch) to Bowman’s home state of North Carolina, Bowman began bartending at the since-closed restaurant Milltown, and Barr got a job at the Carrboro ArtsCenter. When Teddy came along, they called the number on a scribbled “For Rent” sign in a window and opened Bowbarr.
The result was an artist’s dive, its dark shotgun space filled with lights, records, decorative baubles, and other friendly touches from Barr you might only otherwise encounter in a grandparent’s basement. The bathroom (frequently the site of a long line—there’s only one) featured a grotto mosaic mirror and Carolina blue toilet.
Bowman’s expertise as a bartender elevated the cocktail list, which, particularly pre-inflation, toed one of the more affordable price points in the Triangle. The mezcaltini—mezcal, lime juice, ginger simple syrup, and a splash of ginger ale—has remained a steadfast crowd favorite.
While Barr says she’s grateful for the bar’s successful tenure, she does express worry over the future of spaces like it.
“I worry that people aren’t investing in Carrboro anymore,” she says. “We hear what people say in this town, you know, and people keep moving to Durham, and then the investors don’t want to invest in Carrboro.”
Bowbarr is the first business you officially encounter in Carrboro—greeted by “Carrboro Man,” a lusciously-lashed mural by local artist Scott Nurkin that extends across the building’s side—upon crossing the Midway block from Chapel Hill.
In recent years, downtown Chapel Hill and Franklin Street have seen marked turnover with longtime institutions like Ye Olde Waffle Shop and Linda’s closing their doors and newer chains going in. Closer to Bowbarr, neighboring businesses have also shuttered—Crook’s Corner closed in 2021, Nightlight has not been open since 2022 (its website says “closed indefinitely”), and Mama Dip’s closed last August. Perhaps Bowbarr’s impending closure marks a moment of Chapel Hill’s development catching up to its younger sibling.
“Carrboro is a utopia and we all know it,” Barr says. “It’s a utopia of North Carolina. It’s where Black people and gay people and everybody is accepted. It’s awesome.”
Senior year in college, I lived a block away from Bowbarr, then just a few years open and at the height of its townie powers. I was enchanted by the bar’s tree stump seats, chemical-based photobooth, and wall of smokers posted up on the outside patio. One night, a housemate, buoyed by the easygoing arrogance only a barely-legal college student can have, carried an open PBR can from our kitchen over to the bar to finish and promptly got us all kicked out. Good! That’s a valuable life lesson.
Those who have spent time in Bowbarr know what they’re losing. Like the White Lotus, the bar has a bit of a cult following. Over the years, it’s attracted a crowd of regulars, including, for a while, former presidential candidate John Edwards.
“People are flying out from San Francisco,” Barr recounts. “Someone’s coming down from New York. I saw a lot of posts on Instagram about how people are like, ‘I met my boyfriend there, we had our first date there.’”
Slowly, piece by piece, regulars are taking Bowbarr home with them—one person inherited the DJ booth; another person bought the Paperhand Puppet on display. (“The pickle is still up for grabs, though,” says Barr of another beloved bar tchotke.) A flurry of closing events is slated for both final April weekends, with a “Reggae Oyster Roast” on April 26 and a poetry evening on April 27.
“I am so grateful,” Barr says, “For the opportunity for 15 years to get to know Carrboro.”
Follow Culture Editor Sarah Edwards on Bluesky or email [email protected].
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