Ana’s Arepas owner Ana Alexandra canceled a Saturday evening pop-up at Dalila’s after receiving over 75 messages “attacking” her on Instagram, with some threatening to protest at the Spring Street bar. The messages came after an interview she gave to The Post and Courier Friday, in which Alexandra shared her disdain for crowded bars that reportedly closed or canceled Thursday night activities after getting wind a national morning show was taping in Charleston.
“That article came out, and all of a sudden I started getting a lot of stuff — people attacking me on social media,” Alexandra told the City Paper. “I was just getting a lot of nasty stuff.”
The newspaper reached out, Alexandra said, after she posted several Instagram stories showing crowded local bars with unmasked patrons on her Beer Girl Meets World Instagram account. The Post and Courier reported several typically busy bars along King Street and Calhoun Street closed or canceled programming Thursday night.
A segment on TODAY Friday morning showed scenes filmed downtown as part of a report about a South African strain of COVID-19 that showed up in South Carolina this month — the first cases in the U.S. South Carolina bars and restaurants have been permitted to operate at 100% capacity since October.
Cases in South Carolina are down from record-high levels earlier this month, but analysis by The New York Times shows an “extremely high risk” of COVID-19 remains in Charleston County.
Alexandra made her social media account private Friday canceled the scheduled Saturday-night pop-up at Dalila’s after a couple threatened to protest the event. The decision to cancel the event, Alexandra said, was out of concern for Dalila’s, an establishment where the team, she says, has been “nothing but supportive.”
“I think it’s upsetting that this is what happens,” Alexandra said. “I was never intending to cause harm — I was just trying to inform people what was going on. It’s really sad because I rely on these pop-ups to pay my bills, and that was going to be one of my busiest ones.”
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