Confession: I am a college girl. My friends and I are the bane of your existence at the bar. We sing karaoke. We are loud and impatient when trying to order a cocktail. We flock to the bathroom in herds. And it doesn’t matter if the night is young or it’s the wee hours of the morning, on a Tuesday in winter or a Saturday in spring. We are always there. Except for right now.
Well, I’m still here. But by and large, the college population that cleared out back in May and June won’t return for another couple of weeks, and you ought to be using that time to your advantage. Specifically, you should check out some of the college bars that are worth checking out even if you’re a “real person” now.
1. The Mission
The Mission Bar & Grill is Northeastern’s classiest watering hole by far, but it nevertheless attracts student clientele en masse during the year. The menu is large, varied and includes brunch on the weekends—easily as good a place to eat as any of the bars on the Boylston drag. Their beer selection and cocktail menu follows suit, with local favorites like Pretty Things on tap and a seasonal rotating house-made infusion behind the bar.
2. Pour House
While The Pour House is not adjacent to a college campus, people over the age of 30 tend to be in short supply there. But that doesn’t mean that everybody shouldn’t take advantage of their happy hour food specials and $3.25 BeerTini’s. You can select a booth if you’re looking for a low-key night with friends or mingle by the crowded bar and flat-screen TVs for a rowdier evening of loud music and drinking games. This is a fun bar, and if you catch it soon, it may not be packed to the gills.
3. Jillian’s
It’s easy to understand why the 20-something crowd tends to overrun Jillian’s. It’s located behind Fenway Park, and the general vibe is reminiscent of the bowling alley in your hometown, except with several floors’ worth of billiards, bowling and booze. It’s a fun place to start a birthday celebration or unwind after a week of work, and if there’s a game on, it’s one of the only places in the city where you can watch it on a TV screen that takes up an entire wall.
4. T’s Pub
This bar blends the magic of a dirt-cheap college dive bar with the atmosphere of a storied local hangout. I will grant you that the bar’s interior does not offer much by way of aesthetics, but at $3 for a PBR or Rolling Rock ($10 a pitcher), $4.25 for a Sam Adams Lager and $6 for a Guinness, you’ve no real right to complain. They’ve got hearty snacks to soak up the booze in your stomach, including gravy fries ($4.95) and a twin hot dog basket ($5.95). T’s tagline is “the place to meet,” but it’s more like “the place to live like a kid without breaking the bank.”
I had the misfortune of being inside Sweetwater the night the Emerson College Class of 2013 graduated, and boy, did I wish I had waited until the next day to celebrate with all of my Emersonian friends. But on a typical off-season night, this place is pretty empty. This might owe to the fact that it’s a bar in an alley off Boylston that isn’t much to look at, but the food is affordable and delicious, and the bartenders are friendly and good at their jobs. Wednesday is karaoke night, and if you go before the last week or so in August, you may be the only performer there, so stage fright will not be a problem.
The White Horse Tavern is much like any college bar. It has a few pool tables, some TVs to watch the game, a good enough beer list and pretty good food. But it has something many dive-y bars lack: a nice ambiance. It has lots of room and big windows that open out onto the sidewalk when the weather’s nice. On top of that, the staff doesn’t treat you like the millionth drunk person they’ve seen on any given weekend, even if you are. I’d definitely hit it up before the BU kids come back, although there is rarely a line there, and never a cover.
