![]() ![]() 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.’” 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.
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