On the last Wednesday-night Art Attack before Halloween, Paddy's Irish Public House on Raeford Road will look less like an Irish pub and more like a scene from a sword-and-sandal epic. The Greek Mythology & Toga Party Art Attack Night on October 21, 2026, doubles as a joint birthday celebration for two of the weekly arts night's organizers and hosts, Patrick "Paddy" Gibney and musician Lorena Sanchez, and the invitation is as literal as it sounds: dress up, come out, and celebrate.
The billing promises performances from Ethris, Awakening Ghost and Morior, with more to be announced. Ethris is a Fayetteville band that describes its sound as shoegaze and metal, blending ethereal melodies with heavy riffs that swing between the dreamy and the crushingly intense. Awakening Ghost, also based in Fayetteville, bills itself as alternative rock and progressive metal, a band that, in its own words, "comes with a punch." Morior is a newer Fayetteville metal outfit that calls itself "just a group of misfits making heavy music," drawing on metal, metalcore and modern heavy sounds and leaning hard into an intense live show. It is an odd but fitting triple bill for a party with a classical theme: three local heavy bands playing a room decorated for a Roman feast.
The historical hook the organizers are leaning on is real, and it is a strange one. The first known toga party at the White House was held on January 30, 1934, for President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 52nd birthday. According to accounts of the evening, the celebration was staged by Roosevelt's tight circle of longtime political advisers and friends, a group known as the "Cuff Links Gang," and the theme was a pointed joke. Roosevelt's critics had taken to comparing him to a dictator and calling him "Caesar," so the president and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt turned the insult into a costume party. Roosevelt dressed as Julius Caesar, complete with toga, sash and symbolic regalia, while Eleanor appeared as the Delphic Oracle. Cabinet members and staff arrived in togas, laurel wreaths and even centurion armor. The party came in the depths of the Great Depression, at a moment when the New Deal was under fierce attack, and the Roosevelts used humor and spectacle to answer their critics. It is, by most accounts, the first toga party on record at the executive mansion, and it is the model Fayetteville's version is borrowing.
Art Attack itself is a weekly institution rather than a one-off. Held every Wednesday in the club at Paddy's, it is described by its organizers as a show and a shopping trip at once: painters and poets, comedians and craftsmen, dancers and drawing, musicians and a muse. Everything art, in other words, and everyone welcome. Doors open at 8 p.m., and the night is free and open to all ages, though anyone under 18 needs to be accompanied by someone 21 or older. Artists who want to showcase, show off or sell their work can set up between 6 and 8 p.m. and keep 100 percent of whatever they sell; tables have to be requested in advance. People who want to get involved can come to a show or email [email protected].
The concept did not start at Paddy's. According to the pub, Art Attack was originally devised by Shawn Adkins, a well-known and respected Fayetteville artist and businessman who owns Back-A-Round Records, the popular downtown record store. Art Attack has run in various forms around town over the years, including a stretch at The Rock Shop, before finding a regular Wednesday home in The Church, the entertainment lounge attached to Paddy's. The pub's own description of the series frames it as an outgrowth of the venue's broader philosophy of collaboration with other local businesses, part of a schedule that also includes comedy nights, karaoke and live music across The Pub, The Patio and The Church.
Paddy's is a fitting host for a party built around a host's birthday. The pub is named for Gibney, the Irish owner known to regulars simply as Paddy, and it has been described in the Fayetteville Observer and elsewhere as an extension of his personality: an ever-evolving, warm and friendly space that functions as a gallery of sorts, curated down to the details. The pub's own line is that there are no strangers at Paddy's, only friends who have yet to meet. A toga party for the man behind the bar, co-hosted with Sanchez, fits that spirit better than a formal invitation would.
So the night is part costume party, part birthday, part art market and part local metal showcase, with a 1934 White House joke running underneath it all. Togas are encouraged but the doors are open to anyone, dressed for ancient Rome or not. The party starts at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, October 21, 2026, at Paddy's Irish Public House, 2606 Raeford Road, Suite B, Fayetteville.