There are staples in every good, gay town – a big parade, caring organizations and a community bar where everybody knows your name. That bar in St. Petersburg is Enigma.
Enigma, voted Favorite Local LGBTQ Bar/Club and Favorite LGBTQ Happy Hour, was opened just before St. Pete Pride in 2014 by Ed Gonzalez who started his own bar after working many years at Georgie’s Alibi.
Georgie’s was an institution in St. Pete filled with people who felt like family, and that’s why after it closed its doors in late 2015, Gonzalez brought many of those family members on to Enigma.
Just as every good, gay town has staples, so does every good gay bar. A key to a good bar is a great bartender, and for Enigma that is Jeremy Fetters. Watermark readers recognized that and voted him Favorite Local Bartender/Server..
“I am overwhelmed,” Fetters says. “I’ll be honest, I didn’t realize the WAVEs were going on. We had a customer come in and say, ‘Oh, congratulations. I voted for you.’ I was like ‘What, best bathroom attendant?’ and he pulled it up to show me. Then to find out I won, are you kidding me? Just to be in the top three was crazy; CJay is amazing, Jeff’s amazing and all of the other bartenders and service people who have been in the area for years, so to even be on that list is just wow.”
Fetters joined Gonzalez at Enigma after Georgie’s closed, but they had worked together for nine years before Gonzalez opened Enigma.
“This bar is amazing. Eddie made Alibi what it was and then carried it over here. Everything I know I learned from Eddie,” Fetters says.
Fetters has been serving and bartending for several years now. He worked a variety of “corporate” jobs from taking X-rays to managing a Starbucks but he says of all those other jobs none have made him happier than this one.
“I love it. I love meeting new and different people, and you meet so many different people,” Fetters says. “I love that I can come to work and be a cheese ball, and you get people come in and they’re sad or have had a terrible day and you get to pick them up so by the time they leave they are feeling great.”
Fetters won another WAVE honor, Who You Would Like To Be A Watermark WAVE Centerfold. Fetters was a little less enthusiastic about that one.
“I’m angry about that one; it’s a lot of pressure,” Fetters joked. “I had to wake up early and get my hair did and my eyebrows waxed all on three hours of sleep. Honestly, I mean I don’t look at myself as a sexy centerfold; I am just me, but it’s sweet. Actually it’s all the adjectives I can think of put into one big bubble, that’s how I feel right now.”
