We’ve all done it. We have walked up to a bar, handed the intimidating bouncer our ID and heard the most depressing sentence one could ever hear: “That will be $5, please.”
That is, if we even get a please.
At this point we have two choices: angrily grab for whatever cash we have in our wallets to pay the cover charge while mumbling obscenities under our breath, or look across the street at the bar you know won’t be charging and make a break for it.
We at the Editorial Board say: ?Run away.
Cover charges for a bar might just be capitalism at its worst — perhaps even a sole reason to consider the self-proclaimed socialist Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential race. It takes a certain kind of arrogance to believe your bar is so amazing we should have to pay just to get in the door and buy overpriced drinks.
And yet, we all do it anyway. Why? Is it for the sake of the party? Is the long island iced tea at Kilroy’s really worth abandoning what it means to live in a civilization?
OK, OK, that might have taken it a bit too far.
But no one likes paying a cover charge just to get inside, and the choices Kilroy’s on Kirkwood made this past week are forcing us, the voice of the poor college student, to ?speak up.
Most weekends, as the collective blood alcohol content of the IU student body begins to increase, a line can be found stretching its way around KOK’s outer fence. The typical cover for KOK is $3, a high price to pay after waiting in line for too long to have to shove your way to the bar and yell over the crowd to talk to ?your friends.
But, if you are willing to pay two more dollars, you can get in early through a side door.
We call it the door of the privileged (or for the people too weak to wait outside in the cold).
At its surface, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal. If you are willing to pay for it, go for it. You get what you pay for there. This past week, though, in light of the madness that is Little 500, KOK suspended some of its weekly specials, undoubtedly adding a great revenue boost for the bar. Goodbye $3 long island that wasn’t even strong enough to begin with ?anyway.
Now, IU students will put up with a lot for the sake of a good time. We will pay the cover, we will wait in the lines and we will go out rain or shine, but don’t you dare take our cherished drink specials away from us. This is the very kind of tyranny we simply cannot stand idly by and accept — we should demand more from our ?favorite venues.
At least when you go to a place like the Bluebird Nightclub to pay a cover, you get live music and 15-cent beer to compensate for the insanity that is a cover (on Wednesdays, at least).
So here are our demands: If you are going to charge us just to come inside, we are going to need something from you, too. We hope you remember that next Little 500 week, Kilroy’s.
