Ask a visitor what defines Myers Park and they will point to the oaks on Queens Road West, the 1920s Colonial Revivals, the long shaded sidewalks. Ask someone who has lived here a decade and the answer narrows to a 2.85-mile rectangle. The Booty Loop is not a scenic amenity. It is the organizing spine of a summer calendar that most guides describe as a scatter of unrelated events, when in fact each one bends toward the same stretch of pavement between Queens, Selwyn, Queens West, and Hopedale.
That is the thesis worth holding onto as July rolls into August. The loop is not competing with Freedom Park, with the country club, with the shops on Selwyn. It is quietly stitching them into one weekly rhythm.
The loop as calendar, not just a route
The Booty Loop follows Queens Road to Selwyn Avenue, right on Queens Road West, right on Hopedale, and back onto Queens. It has been described, for years, as one of Charlotte's most popular walking, running, and cycling routes, and it doubles as the course for the 24 Hours of Booty charity ride. That dual function is the point. On any given Tuesday in July, the same three miles serve a stroller loop before the heat, a lunchtime run out of the office towers a mile north, and a golden-hour group ride from a cycling club meeting at Queens University. By dusk the loop has hosted four separate audiences without ever being closed.
The route's utility comes from geometry. It is long enough to be a real workout, short enough to repeat, and residential enough that traffic stays civil. The intersection where Queens crosses Queens and Providence crosses Providence, in front of the Myers Park Branch of the Public Library of Charlotte Mecklenburg, has become a landmark in its own right precisely because it is the one moment on the loop that requires attention. Everything else is muscle memory.
The weekend the whole neighborhood plans around
The 25th 24 Hours of Booty takes over the loop from 7 p.m. Friday, July 24 through 7 p.m. Saturday, July 25. Myers Park Traditional School and Queens University of Charlotte again anchor Bootyville, the tent city where riders camp, eat, and rest between laps. This is a milestone year for the event, which has raised more than $31 million since 2002 for cancer navigation and survivorship programs, with local beneficiaries including Atrium Health Levine Cancer Institute and Atrium Health Levine Children's Hospital.
For residents, two practical facts matter more than the fundraising totals:
- The loop is police-secured for the full 24 hours, which means the streets you normally share with cars belong to riders and walkers from Friday evening through Saturday evening.
- Participants can get on and off the course as often as they like, and the opening lap is led by cancer survivors. If you have never done a lap, the survivor lap is the one to join.
"Twenty-five years is a powerful testament to what this community can do when we show up for one another," 24 Foundation executive director Katherine Murphy said of the milestone year.
Parking during the event is straightforward if you know the pattern. Participants staying the full 24 hours use the Queens University parking deck. Spectators and residents cycling in for a few laps are asked to park outside the loop and walk in. If you live inside the rectangle, plan grocery runs for Thursday or wait until late Saturday evening.
Where the loop lets you off
The businesses that matter to residents are the ones within a short walk of the loop's edges or a two-minute drive from the intersections. This is not a comprehensive dining list. It is the shortlist of places the loop actually delivers you to, sorted by what they do:
- Flour Shop, tucked into the Backlot of Park Road Shopping Center under chef Trey Wilson, has been running its pasta bar concept since 2018 and continues to earn OpenTable Diners' Choice recognition. The 24-seat counter with a view into the open kitchen is the best solo seat in the neighborhood.
- The Jimmy takes its cue from the Mediterranean coasts of Italy and France, with communal cooking and straightforward preparations. It reads as a neighborhood restaurant, not a destination one, which is exactly what a Wednesday off the loop calls for.
- Primo Prime brings classic Italian to Myers Park with a wine cellar and cocktail bar upstairs. Book it for the anniversary dinner, not the Tuesday run.
- Reid's Fine Foods on Selwyn Avenue functions as the neighborhood's specialty grocer and wine shop. It is the reason you can host a small dinner party without leaving the ZIP code.
- Napa on Providence consistently lands on the shortlist of the neighborhood's romantic restaurants.
The newer addition worth flagging is a Lagree studio that opened at 2909 Selwyn Avenue, according to Axios Charlotte's ongoing tracker of 2026 openings. High-intensity, low-impact strength work at that address means the pre-ride warm-up now happens indoors for the residents who prefer it. It also means Selwyn's morning foot traffic has shifted noticeably earlier.
The August lull is real, and it is useful
Between the last Saturday of 24 Hours of Booty and Labor Day, the loop gets quiet in a specific way. School has not started. The country club calendar thins. Symphony Park Pops concerts wrap. Freedom Park, which sits along the western edge of Myers Park and shares the Little Sugar Creek Greenway boundary, keeps its 7-acre lake and its free pavilion concerts, but the crowds shift toward evening.
This is when the loop is at its best for the people who live along it. Early August mornings, before 8 a.m., the humidity is heavy but the pavement is uncrowded. The willow oaks form a continuous canopy from Queens Road West through the Hopedale turn. Runners who normally avoid the loop because of weekend cyclist traffic reclaim it.
If you are the kind of Myers Park resident who tracks openings, August is also when you get ahead of fall. Fall sports tryouts at Myers Park High School land on July 29 and 30, and the school's open house sequence begins August 17, which means Selwyn Avenue picks up a school-year cadence roughly two weeks before Labor Day. Restaurant reservations that were easy in July get harder.
The September pivot back to the park
The summer arc closes at Freedom Park with the 62nd Festival in the Park, running Friday, September 25 through Sunday, September 27, 2026. Three days, nearly 200 visual artists, multiple performance stages, and a Saturday headline set from Greggy and the Jets, an Elton John tribute band. Admission is free.
The festival is worth understanding in relation to the loop rather than as a standalone event. Freedom Park sits at 1908 East Boulevard, a two-minute walk from the Queens West side of the rectangle. The best way to attend, if you live inside Myers Park, is to skip the parking entirely and walk in along the greenway. The residents who have done this for years know to arrive Friday evening for the lower crowd density, to plan Saturday around the headline set, and to reserve Sunday for the art booths, which are easier to browse before the afternoon rush.
Between 24 Hours of Booty in July and Festival in the Park in September, the neighborhood's public life stays within a tight geographic frame. Almost everything worth walking to sits within a mile of the Queens and Providence intersection.
What this means for the way you use your address
Most Myers Park summers are described as a series of separate pleasures: a run one morning, a dinner another night, a festival in the fall. The more accurate description is that a small set of streets does an enormous amount of work, and the calendar has been calibrated around that fact for 25 years. If you have been treating the loop as a fitness route and the restaurants and the park as separate categories, this is the summer to notice that they are one system.
If you are thinking about how a Myers Park home fits into your longer plans, whether that means preparing to list, valuing what you own now, or exploring a move within the neighborhood, the Helen Honeycutt Group brings 20 years of Charlotte experience and a builder's eye to that conversation. Reach out for a free home valuation when the timing is right.
