CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The pandemic dealt a financial blow to a lot of people and businesses last year.

One group still working to recover are bartenders.

Warren Styles is one of those bartenders. He has owned his bar the Midwood Country Club in Charlotte for the last six years and never imagined it would look as empty as it does.

“Being a private bar without food, we can’t let anybody inside so it’s outside only. So if it’s raining or cold, we’re basically closed,” he says.

The pandemic forced Styles to close his bar for months last year. He was finally able to partially reopen in October, but he’s still struggling.

“We’re probably doing about 10 percent of the business we were doing before because we’re outside only,” he says.

Styles and other bar owners have done everything they can to bring in more money.

So when community members reached out to him about participating in a fun calendar, he took them up on the opportunity.

“We all had a lot of fun doing it...the pictures and not telling anybody what our month was going to be like until they bought the calendar,” he says.

The Men of Midwood-ish is a quirky calendar showing the fun sides of 13 different Charlotte bar owners and their employees.

The Abari Game Bar is one of the bars featured in the calendar, but unlike the Midwood Country Club, its doors are still closed.

“We went from doing pretty well for ourselves every year to having second, third, fourth quarter zero in income,” Zach Pulliam says.

Pulliam is the owner and says his game bar has been closed for almost a year.

The proceeds from the calendar will help bars like Pulliam’s, which have had no money coming in.

“It’s more than just us being out of work, it’s our livelihood basically being stripped away,” he says. “This calendar is a way to supplement some of that income that we lost during this past year.”

Pulliam has plans to relocate and open the doors to his game bar soon.

But for those like Styles who are able to still work, they’re hopeful things will start improving in the next couple of months.

“If we can get to March when it's warmer, we’ll have both patios open, and we won’t have to stress quite as much,” he said. “I hope maybe we’re inside by football season in the fall.”

Calendars are still available for sale and can be picked up in a variety of bars in Charlotte or shipped.

You can find more information about how to purchase a calendar here.