No Beer, No Work

The “Pub” (as I will refer it) is a subterranean enclave unremarkable in nearly every respect, offering an entirely un-unique mixture of mediocre menu items and overpriced libations. But the Pub manages to do great business, as it is known to youthful denizens of Manhattan’s Upper West Side as one of all too few establishments that will serve alcohol to anyone tall enough to get their head over the counter. The many Columbia undergrads who frequent the Pub still have what we have lost: an FDE. (Free Drinking Establishment, not to be confused with FDO).

Now, before everyone runs down to New York, I should add that I do not mean “free” in the base, worldly, monetary sense—indeed, quite the opposite, as the Pub is able (perhaps as a deserved compensation for audaciously defying the authorities) to exact prices on drinks that exceed what one can purchase retail in a corner store by many hundred percent. But in another important sense, every drop of mind-numbing ferment that passes into the hands of the Pub’s thirsty customers is absolutely gratis—free of the pesky “I’m gonna need to see some ID.”

Places like the Pub, which subscribe to the Bill Clinton theory of alcohol salesmanship (that is, of course, the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy) are to stodgy urban neighborhoods what oases are to parched deserts. Indeed, there are few things that can bring together such an eclectic group of youngsters as an FDE. At the Pub, for instance, you will find 14-year-old debutante prima donnas and shady 26-year-olds hitting on those 14-year-old debutante prima donnas. You will find the high school kids who don’t get invited to parties, and so go to the place where you don’t need an invitation. You will find these outcast high-schoolers’ inverse: The college kids who were the ones throwing the invitation-only parties in high school and are now too cool for lowly open-house parties. You will find, in short, an amalgam of local youth whose variety is only surpassed by its vibrancy.

Of course, the precise demographics of an FDE will vary based on the local area’s population. But such establishments universally share the role of being to local under-21’s what the agora was to the ancient Greeks—an open forum to meet, eat, drink, discuss, fraternize, argue, be friends.

FDE’s are often in a state of flux, continually subject to the threat of a crackdown by the local precinct or, far worse, a loss of the pluralistic nature that defines them. FDE’s have a tremendous and rare opportunity to be truly open-house, as they are not controlled by people with any interest except money (distinguishing them from most student-run parties), which means that no one need be nervous about being kicked out by the host. One might even go so far as to say that an FDE, in its consummately pluralistic and capitalistic incarnation, is the very embodiment of the American Dream. Well, maybe not. But you get the idea.

FDE’s also have going for them perhaps the most unifying force in existence: a broken rule. Anyone underage who has bought from an FDE has taken a risk, and there is an implicit, and sometimes explicit, fraternity between all the patrons in such an establishment. Just for having gained entrance, or more precisely for having the courage to enter, everyone feels at home, linked to each other by, if nothing else, the subtly strong twinge of shared excitement at being partners in a victimless crime.

Going to the Pub on trips home is, these days, bittersweet, serving as a painful reminder of the sorry situation in Cambridge, which now is bereft of FDE’s. The Grille was the closest thing we had, and it has gone the way of the Dodo. Final clubs now have a monopoly on the weekend social scene; there is no public place, owned by a capitalist adult, where Harvard, Tufts and Boston College students can mingle with creepy Cambridge locals, all reveling in their shared bending of an obsolete and absurd drinking age.

Every legitimate college town must have an FDE. In fact, three or four of them. And most college towns do. We had one over-crowded one for a while; now we have a choice between final clubs where few can get in, and house parties where one usually finds 100 people packed like sardines in a room not meant to hold more than 20.

An FDE would provide a much-needed appendage to Harvard’s social life—an appendage that could snap weekend options out of their current funk.

An improved social life, of course, has as much extrinsic as intrinsic value. A student body with better options on weekends—a campus that knows it has a dependable place to look forward to socializing in—may well be sprightlier in its approach to the daily grind of getting work done. At any rate, it will at least be happier, and that in itself warrants an FDE. Any takers?