Tragedy has struck my college town. Big investment companies have come to rip out my city’s heart and replace it with apartment buildings. What is the heart of any good college town you may ask? Well, that’s a simple question to answer: freshman bar. My freshman bar was called the Grog House Bar and Grill, but for obvious reasons, they stopped serving food a while ago. It has since adopted the name Grog, and is notorious for housing some of the younger individuals that attend my university. It will be taken down this Summer, and as an homage to its death, I wanted to write a post about your average night in a freshman bar.
It’s Friday night and your journey starts out with a pregame in a sweltering hot dorm room. This shoulder-to-shoulder rager quickly comes to an end when your RA, the third-year theatre major, busts the party and kicks you all out. You slowly migrate to the bar, but on the way, you start pondering the idea that your Connecticut fake might not get you in the door. You think about turning back, but your friend convinces you that, “he’s been here before,” and, “they’re easy with fakes,” so you continue your migration.
You eventually arrive at the bar and see the moshpit of freshmen waiting in line. You realize it’s survival of the fittest and you and your boys budge your way into line. After 20 minutes of waiting in line and studying your ID, you finally make it to the front. Now it is time to let some 40-year-old dude with a goatee decide your fate for the night. You hand over your ID as you run the address and zip code through your head one more time. The guy looks down for a second looks at you and says the fateful words you’ve been waiting to hear: “he’s good”. You get banded and make your way inside. You go up to the bar and are greeted by a swarm of kids trying to get drinks from one bartender. After ten minutes of pushing your way through you finally make it to the front lines. You’re leaning over the bar, but the bartender doesn’t get to you for at least five minutes. The tender eventually notices you and you order a rum and coke, a freshman classic. You get your shitty drink in a dixie cup and start fighting your way through the kids trying to get drinks behind you. You link up with your boys and start scanning for potential targets. You see a group of girls with the same squad depth as yours across the bar and decide you’re gonna approach them.
You walk up to them and the rizzler of your group starts the convo. You pick off the girl you think is cute and ask her the basics. Eventually, you make it to the fateful question and ask her what year she is. Thinking that only freshmen would come to this bar, you get caught off guard when she responds sophomore. Not knowing it could possibly make a difference you tell her that you are a freshman. This instantly changes the vibe of the convo. She tells you that she needs to go to the bathroom and you learn a dreadful lesson about being a freshman: girls who are older than you don’t want anything to do with you. You turn to your friends and compare notes coming to the conclusion that tonight is going to be a guys’ night. You spend the rest of your night pounding lemon drop shots, and when your small intestine can’t take any more, you decide to make your way back to your dorm. After an absolute journey, you make it home and are greeted by the fact that your roommate brought a girl home. While this is phenomenal news for him, you know this means you’ll be spending the night on the common room couch. The next morning you are woken up bright and early by the sound of nerds going to the library on a Saturday. If your freshmen bar is good enough, chances are you’ll be doing it again tonight.
