A real lumberjack. Note the saw.
Photo: Creative Commons/Kyle and Kelly Adams
Hey, Winter Quarter. You’re off to a kind of bizarre start. We’re not really sure what to do while our sorority girls are acting all crazy, so this week we hit up our favorite dives, dressed like lumberjacks and drank some wicked moonshine. Maybe next week will be more exciting?
Monday Night: Nevin’s = Keg
Before you graduate from Northwestern, you have to graduate from The Keg. And in typical affirmation of their upperclassman status, a sizable portion of seniors bypass The Keg and hit Nevin’s. But it’s a sham: Nevin’s is a brighter version of TKOE, only with books on the wall and no dancefloor. Students are squeezed in, and it’s just as crowded as The Keg, which is where everyone ends up anyway after the bartenders shut down the bar on a whim.
Wednesday Night: Bollywood Top 40 at BDubs
A Tufaan/SASA fundraiser for an Indian dance competition fills up Buffalo Wild Wings as the SASA crowd and their acquaintances grind to a Bollywood-laced Top 40 playlist (yes, as strange as that sounds, it happened). Anxious bartenders spend the night double-and triple-checking the age of the clientele at the bar before eventually throwing up their hands and letting the booze flood forward. Note for future SASA events: Spend less time sending Facebook messages about the event and more time on better drink specials (or any drink specials, really).
Friday Night: Karaoke intervention
A group including a party-enabling frat brother, three Crush-smoking Asians, and a scantily-clad Korean girl start taking SoCo and Bacardi shots early in the night to belatedly celebrate a mutual friend’s birthday. Half the crew stays sober and decides to skip the main event: Karaoke, not to be stereotypical or anything. The cabs arrive around 11, and to the dismay of the enabling-bro, much of the party lazily puff cigarettes on the porch instead of jumping in. “Fuck you, you cigarette smoking bitch!” the bro jokingly yells as he grabs half-smoked cigs from two different people. “Get in the cab!” (The rest of the crowd obeys in fear of losing the second half of their precious cigs.) Once at the bar, things sail smoothly. That is, we think they did? Two girls speak Korean in worried-tones for a while; everybody else briefly acts confused before returning to sing “Genie in a Bottle.”
Friday Night: Sailing with lumberjacks
What will it be this time? In their perpetual obsession with themed parties, members of the sailing team crowd into a basement with low-hanging pipes and wear plaid. Hipster invasion? No, lumberjack theme! The lumberjacks engage in typical party behavior, and someone gets out all of the ingredients to make pancakes, but breakfast never comes to fruition. Instead, a couple of guests leave, get high and watch that disgusting episode of the TLC show “Hoarding: Buried Alive,” in which a man hoards live bunnies. Gross.
Saturday Night: Speaking of lumberjacks…
A sizeable crowd of mostly underage undergrads populates TKOE, evidence that there are few other social outing options tonight. It’s no packed-and-sweaty Monday night, but it’s busy enough that navigating the dance floor hook-up fest takes some swift maneuvers. The crowd is noticeably male heavy, and their usual female counterparts are walled up in their respective sororities, discussing the ever-important bid situation. Recruitment needs to end. We really can’t take any more nights of fist-pumping, plaid-shirt wearing frat boys. You’re a student, not a lumberjack.
Saturday Night: Practically toxic film shoot
During the shooting of a student film, the cast and crew sipped a uniquely potent, 196-proof concoction, made from a recipe apparently passed down from the grandfather of a crew member. Thankfully nobody blacked out (which would have meant finding replacement actors), nor was anyone blinded by this most epic of moonshines. Reactions ranged from, “Oh my GOD,” to uncontrolled and slightly violent coughing. We didn’t try the stuff, but we’re still wondering whether it was really that bad, or whether everyone was overreacting. And we’re definitely regretting not taking any home to use for DIY fire-breathing or hand sanitizer.
