From that first public urination ticket while stumbling through bubble gum alley to the 100th drunken attempt at picking up someone you had no chance with, downtown provides memories that run the gamut of human emotion.
The one constant thing that fuels the creation of those memories is money. From the $300 fine for urination to the $30 you spent on drinks while trying to convince that hot brunette to come home with you, the entire economy of San Luis Obispo depends on your drunken expenditures.
So when people walk up to the entrance of a local establishment and are required to pay a cover charge to enter, that just gets my goat.
Let me get this straight: you want me to stand in line for 15 minutes to pay for the right to enter your establishment?
The increasing nature of bars charging for access is an idea that turns me sour on the downtown scene.
It’s already bad enough that we have to pay the outrageous prices that some bars charge for a beer. Four dollars for a bottle of Budweiser? Six bucks for a pint of one of the “upper-class” beers like Blue Moon? I might as well buy a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label for the price I’m going to pay downtown.
What’s next, Z-club charging cover?
Ironically, the bars that don’t charge cover are the ones that I would prefer to frequent. Frog and Peach, a bar that generally has a bad reggae or cover band playing, and is so packed that it takes an hour to wade through the humanity to the broken dartboards in the back is one of the best options to be found in this town.
Not because it is so great, but because they don’t charge to enter the premises. But there is a general principle that should be followed.
If you have seen bigger and better things, you don’t pay more to see things that are of lesser value.
That is where the bars get you in this town. Moving from Seattle, my experience with the bars up there gave me a greater expectation of what a bar should be, and what it should charge.
But to most students that moved here at 18, this is their first bar experience. They don’t know that there are other options out there.
It’s like having Panda Express as your first-and-only Asian cuisine option, when there are so many better authentic places that not only please your taste buds, but save you hours spent in the bathroom as well.
Speaking of bathrooms, we’re paying cover to get into places where the toilets haven’t been serviced in six months.
You can’t take 10 cents per cover and put that money towards hiring a janitor? Or better yet, put that money toward one of those old washroom attendants we see in the movies. Who wouldn’t want a guy to dry your hands and give you a breath mint after you stumble in and piss all over the wall and floors?
At least give your patrons something for their cover charge investment. And no, a stamp for re-entrance in a couple hours does not count.
Settling in a free-entrance bar for the night is almost a near impossibility. Eventually you or your friend will pick up someone and she will inevitably demand that you find a livelier place to buy her drinks (and eventually ditch you for someone cooler).
The only way we can fight the growing epidemic of cover charges is to rally against them. So the next time one of those hulking doormen tries to take your (parents’) hard-earned money upon entering, join me in protest and find a slummier free bar to create new hazy memories.
Scott Silvey is a journalism senior and a Mustang Daily reporter and sports editor.