Crawling for Journalism
It started out as a joke.
What if The Crimson did a crawl? A bar crawl? What if we gave the people what they wanted: an investigative report on the Cambridge going out scene for college students?
Fine, we commit. We plan to crawl to five bars: Daedalus, Charlie’s Kitchen, Shay’s Pub & Wine Bar, Whitney’s, and Grendel’s Den Restaurant & Bar.
In our group, we have upwards of three scarves and two frat boy caps (in a cool way). We channel a data-driven approach, a spiral notebook with 16 handwritten bar criteria, and a fighting spirit. The night is young. It’s time to embark on our journey.
9:59 p.m.
Daedalus
Daedalus is daed. We shuffle past and attempt to act like we were never going to go inside anyway. We can’t do them like this. We like Daedalus; this clearly just isn’t their moment.
10:04 p.m.
Charlie’s Kitchen
Some guy shouts, “Hey! This guy?” at us. We have barely sat down. Maybe it’s because of the aforementioned frat boy cap.
It’s very hot and there is no music playing. Wait. As we’re writing this, the music starts. It’s very quiet. It’s Ke$ha.
The vibe is “post Friendsgiving,” with secular Christmas decorations — colored lights strung haphazardly across the ceiling. Our table is set with a non-alcoholic Lagunitas six-pack cardboard container, a Coronita bottle-turned-salt-shaker, and a nondescript ketchup dispenser (we hope Heinz). The table nearby has the privilege of a Coronita pepper shaker that we were not afforded.
We discuss our angle over a Downeast, a Lagunitas (alcoholic), and a grilled cheese. We realize we should’ve gotten the Charlie’s Stinger — Gosling’s rum, Amaretto, pineapple juice, and Downeast cider — and that we shouldn’t have come here on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
We are taking notes on nontrivial bar attributes (there’s only one bartender but three TVs, as well as a jukebox in the corner) when we hear a crunch from the other side of our table. The grilled cheese is not just hot and here — it’s audible. It’s a classic oval shape we clock as sourdough. It contains multitudes, i.e. both orange and white cheese.
We ask for the check. Everything is $8.41, each beer and the grilled cheese. Peculiar.
The music has ended, and we can’t remember when. We were busy writing about the grilled cheese. Ke$ha came and went. And so did we.
10:35 p.m.
Shay’s Pub & Wine Bar
Crickets in Harvard Square, but Shay’s is poppin’.
Like always, there’s two to three men smoking a cig outside the door. One of them is gesticulating so passionately about the merits of candlepin bowling that he nearly hits us with his lit cigarette.
“Oh, candlepin bowling? Like Sacco’s?” we ask. He looks stunned, and nods vigorously. “Fuck yes. Amazing. Amazing.” We connect over candlepin bowling, wish him a lovely evening, and head inside.
The menu intrigues. Ever the pacifists, Shay’s features a Kyiv Mule and Dublin Mule, but no Moscow. We see you, Shay’s.
We end up with a fall sangria — delicious, like regular sangria, but with cinnamon, and also delicious. There’s a crockpot of cider in the back.
Around the room, we spot several hats and beanies. The vibe is lumberjack chic. The bartender says the sangria is free for us.
It’s snowing in the football game playing on the TV. It was also snowing in the football game playing on the TV in Charlie’s Kitchen. We conclude: It’s likely the same football game.
We walk out to the tune of ’70s soft rock and the blue light of a cop car speeding down JFK Street. Excelsior.
11:02 p.m.
Whitney’s
Whitney’s is gloriously untouched by the melancholy of post-Thanksgiving Saturday. As we turn onto JFK and Mount Auburn, we hear “Love Shack” blasting through the speakers.
“Why are you taking notes?” we hear from next to us. We strike up a conversation with Jafar from Montreal who compliments one of our perfumes, and we chat for as long as journalistically appropriate until we must go back to our note-taking.
Meanwhile, another of us is having a conversation with two middle-aged guys, which was obviously initiated by them. One of them is “a famous Bollywood dancer.” We choose to believe him. They ask what we’re studying: “English.” “But you’re so pretty already!” one says. The other goes, “That was lame.” True.
Every inch of the wall is covered in polaroids. A portrait of Whitney Houston hangs on the wall. Is this the titular Whitney? we wonder.
Behind the bar, there is a baby’s onesie with the text “Not Gonna End Well” and a sign that says “Buy One Leave One.” We ask one of the two bartenders what this means. He does not know.
The other tells us that people can come in and buy a drink for someone to redeem later. The sign says things like “Lydia → Mare” and “Scott → Mike S.” Cool!
It’s not snowing in the football game that’s playing on one of the TVs at Whitney’s. It’s between UCLA and Berkeley. The snowy game is playing on a separate TV. Iowa vs. Kentucky State. As we remark on football, the second ABBA song in 10 minutes begins, and we dance it out to “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” For the last 12 minutes we’ve allotted to this stop of the bar crawl, we bop.
We conclude that we’ve been sleeping on Whitney’s for the last three years.
11:29 p.m.
Grendel’s Den Restaurant & Bar
We sit down and breathe a sigh of relief — we’re home.
While Grendel’s is a space of comfort, it’s a difficult place to describe. Its ethereal chaos evades the reach of the English language at times. Now is one of those times.
It’s 11:30 p.m. on a Saturday, and against all odds, it’s relatively ‘daed’ in here. Still, two people are making out at the end of the bar. Such is the nature of Thanksgiving weekend. Sky’s the limit: We order a Rumchata hot chocolate and half a pitcher of white sangria. We’re not seeing any scarves. Except the girl at the end of the bar has a scarf. Thank god. Scarved.
The waiter asks if we want whipped cream on the Rumchata hot chocolate. We sure do. The result is heavenly.
The sangria comes, too, and we’re transported to Saint-Tropez. It’s pure peach and sunlight and effervescence. We consider ourselves having studied abroad after this sangria.
Grendel’s Den Inc. is more than meets the eye. As one of us explains, pink wine glass sloshing in hand, Grendel’s went all the way to the Supreme Court in 1971 when a local church denied them a liquor license with Massachusetts state law on their side. Now, set by Grendel’s victorious precedent, religious entities can’t impose restrictions on private businesses. Cool!
One thing we know for sure: Whether in a Supreme Court case, or in the liminal stretch of time between Harvard-Yale and reading period, Grendel’s will always be Grendel’s, baby.
As we get ready to leave, by the hand of God — or at least beautiful coincidence — “Your Love is My Drug” by Ke$ha starts playing. Ke$ha bookends our night, and we walk out with our hearts full and our stomachs bubbling.
12:14 a.m.
Home
We started our journey in search of an angle, but we left with the knowledge that we’re so pretty already. Tonight we’ll be taking our scarves off in peace and slipping into bed a little wiser than before.
Consider Cambridge crawled.
— Associate Magazine Editor Hewson Duffy contributed reporting.
— Associate Magazine Editor Sarah W. Faber can be reached at sarah.faber@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @swfaber.
— Magazine Editor-at-Large Michal Goldstein can be reached at michal.goldstein@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @bymgoldstein.