When your four (or five if you’re lucky) glorious years of college are finally over, you’ll inevitably miss one place more than the rest. Maybe it’s the dingy basement of your favorite frat, or the Moscow Mountain hike and view or the diner that serves a to-die-for brunch that you religiously go to every weekend.
But for most of us, it will be the Corner Club.
I once read an article that said at some point in your life, you should try to become a “regular" somewhere. I figured that a bar was as good a place as any while in college. Plus, everyone needs a constant and stable thing in his or her life. What's more stable than a cement building? So what if it happens to serve beer… and hard alcohol. And hard cider. And champagne. And offer it in a 32-ounce tub. How does that saying go? The bigger the Sunday morning mimosa, the better? Or the more the merrier? Either way, both are true.
However, the Corner Club isn’t just some bar that has claimed the hearts of thirsty Moscowians. It has gained fame on a national level. In 2012 the Corner Club made the list of “99 Things To Do Before You Die” in ESPN magazine. It was featured in Sports Illustrated’s 2013 “Top 25 Sports Bars Tournament.” Then, in April of 2015, it won “The Big Tap: Historic Bars Tournament.” Each round the bars with the lowest votes were eliminated; each round the Corner Club gallantly soared on—beating the next closest contender with a final vote of 3,974 to 2,234, according to the Huffington Post’s site.
As college kids, we don’t fool anyone when we stumble into Walmart on Sunday mornings to load up on ibuprofen and Gatorade or when we stroll into the Breakfast Club to carb-load on greasy food that’s supposed to help hangovers. Everyone knows why we look haggard and we can just feel the local's gazes burning into us as they scurry by, holding their children’s hands as we advert all eye contact.
But there’s one place where even the locals can’t judge… the club. Because on Sunday mornings, or early evenings of about any day of the week, they are there too. Who doesn’t want to enjoy 10 last drinks one more drink before Monday hits? Your first Sunday visit will probably result in you questioning your life decisions and wondering if you’re an alcoholic… but then you see all the other college kids and locals. The best is the people who bring their computers to study/work on homework while at the club. Yeah…like that’s actually going to happen. Kudos for trying.
It’s the place where, after a few visits, the bartenders know your name and you don’t even have to bring your ID. They greet you with a friendly wave, or sometimes just a smile and nod if their hands are full.
It’s a place where tooling out happens, but hardly anyone judges, because they’ve been there. Personally, I think there's some unwritten rule that each Ladies Night a part of your dignity will be stolen... maybe that's just me.
But most importantly, you’ll miss it more than anything else because it’s the one place where all letters and labels come off. Where everyone unites in their love of drinking with perfectly buttered and salted popcorn in one hand and a drink in the other, while shoulder to shoulder with your favorite people in the cement building that overflows every week.
That's the place you'll miss the most.
