South campus. To current students, it means Panera Bread, a bookstore with escalators, and an ugly tuna. As the South Campus Gateway slowly awakens with trendy retail stores and concept restaurants, many strolling along bottom-lit sidewalks take for granted a cleaned-up, mostly sobered south campus district.
But, to some older students, south campus conjures memories of streets crowded with bars and swarming with underage students, looking to chug cheap beer by the bucket.
Only one bar, the Bier Stube – German for beer room – survived the wrecking ball that demolished the once-thriving south campus alcohol culture.
The Stube sits outside the Gateway redeveloping boundary, almost hidden behind its own parking lot and a convenience store.
The bar is old compared to its surroundings. It opened, in its current form, in 1966.
“That’s what’s good about this place,” said Craig Kempton, manager and co-owner. “It’s just a straightforward bar.”
Kempton started out working the door nine years ago, and plans to become the sole owner now that current co-owner Doug Millsap has opened another Bier Stube in Linworth.
Pinned to the wall is the first couple of dollars that Millsap made when he bought the bar in 1979, Kempton said. The money has turned brown from all the cigarette smoke that used to fill the room in the days before the smoking ban.
Unlike many newer campus bars, there are no theme nights at the Stube, no country night or liquid dope night, and the only live music plays on Mondays. Its hardwood countertop and dimly lit booths along opposite wood-paneled walls are a far cry from the open air of the Gateway.
“I just don’t believe in theme nights,” Kempton said. “The alcohol is already cheap; if we lowered prices any more, we’d be out of business.”
T-shirts printed with the Bier Stube logo, though, help to put a little more money in the bar’s coffers.
“I wore one of our shirts up in Cleveland and a group of men in their fifties were like, ‘Dude, the Bier Stube is amazing,'” Kempton said.
Kempton also said there are a lot of alumni that come back to the bar to reminisce.
“A couple of ladies came in because they saw an article (about the bar) in The Columbus Dispatch. They wanted to see if the place had changed,” Kempton said.
It had not. Not only is the Bier Stube the only original bar left standing on south campus, it has changed very little during its almost 40-year tenure.
The recent advent of Gateway has had an impact on the bar’s business.
“A lot of our weeknight business has gone to the Ugly Tuna Saloona,” Kempton said. “But that bar closes at 2 a.m. We close at 2:30 a.m., so by about 1:30 a.m. you’ll see that crowd pour in.”
But a Thursday night excursion to the Ugly Tuna is sure to be interesting with a weekly Catholic schoolgirl night, where waitresses dress up like Catholic schoolgirls, something that the Bier Stube does not offer.
The tropically decorated Ugly Tuna Saloona features current rock, rap and R&B, but also has a small stage for live acts, where patrons in the restaurant-by-day, bar-by-night establishment can enjoy anything from funk, jazz and rock, said manager Jaquine Williams.
Like the long-demolished bars, the Tuna has a balcony that overlooks the main Gateway Drexel entrance and High Street.
And, like the Bier Stube, the newer bar tries to appeal to both young and old.
“We’ll see anyone from law students after a big test, to a retired couple on their way to a movie,” Williams said.
But the Bier Stube has an ambiance not found at the new bar nearby said Mitch Modlich, a senior in engineering.
“I like a bar where you can hold a conversation without yelling,” Modlich said.
Though quite disparate in age and atmosphere, the Bier Stube and Ugly Tuna Saloona represent the changing face of south campus – one a link to its past, the other a sign of the future.
