(Knowshon Moreno with a group at Washington's)
By Jackson Shoaff-Bembry
The evening is cool and crisp and the road is still a little damp from the rain, which makes the air smell sweet and delicious. The front of Washington’s Sports Bar and Grill is lit up like a Las Vegas road sign, but it gives the old building character.
Denver Broncos running-back Knowshon Moreno is about an hour away from making an appearance at the bar and the anxiety is so thick you can feel it surging from every bar employee. This is supposed to be one of the largest events the bar has held in years but the bar is as empty as a ghost town.
“I’m nervous man, I’ve never seen it this dead,” says bartender Tucker Veltkamp.
So far there have only been around 300 people through the door. Normally there are around 700 at this time.
As the minutes tick by the uneasiness of the situation becomes more and more apparent.
This is a growing trend, not just at Washington’s, but also at every bar in the downtown Fort Collins area. Within the last school year traffic through the bars has dropped significantly. How significantly? So much so, that all the bars are starting to get nervous.
Again and again the question is asked, why is it students no longer go out?
Three causes have been discussed by bar owners, police officers and students. All seem equally likely as the leading culprit behind the suffering numbers at the downtown bars.
The causes linked to the lowering numbers are stricter enforcement at the doors on IDs, economics, specifically economics affecting students and parents, and a shift from the downtown bars to the bars located on the west side of Colorado State University’s campus.
Stricter Enforcement
The owner of Washington’s has been pacing back and forth now for close to an hour and is progressively getting more and more agitated with the situation. Employees give him a wide berth as he storms by grumbling under his breath.
“If things don’t pick up by 11 we are in huge trouble,” says bartender Trevor Justice, “I don’t know if we’ll be able to do another party like this.”
The District 1 or downtown police officers enter through the front door and don’t hide their surprise at the small numbers very well. At the same moment a group of about six far from sober students stumble in, take one look at the empty bar, one look at the police, and promptly turn around and rush out the doors.
As the police leave, along with more and more patrons the somber atmosphere continues to grow and the future of the party continues to look bleaker
Prior to 2007, if students were polled at CSU and asked how many were in possession of a fake ID or had been to the bars prior to turning 21 chances are it would be a pretty high percentage. That same question was asked in an independent survey in 2011 and only 22% of students said they have a fake ID or have been to the bars prior to turning 21.
In 2004 Samantha Spady, a student at CSU died of alcohol poisoning, and with her death a new trend of safer drinking, stricter enforcement of underage drinking began. According to CSU PD, Fraternity and sorority houses were cracked down on and more and more bars began instituting stricter policies at the doors to eliminate the number of underage drinkers. The result of that policing is now catching up with the downtown bars.
“Bar owners may not like it because they are losing some business, but in the long run it means a safer atmosphere for everyone involved and less issues of vandalism and injuries related to alcohol,” says District 1 Police Officer Bob Younger.
Along with a stronger police presence reducing underage drinking, all door staff is required to go to a class put on by police about how to catch fake IDs. With this class, incentives are added that include $10 for every ID confiscated by door staff.
“Once we started cracking down, people got the message that certain bars weren’t worth trying to get into. It definitely is a change from the way things used to be done but it’s definitely better,” says head of Big Al’s Security Big Al.
So with a push for safer bars and stricter rules it means a smaller clientele for the bars and it definitely shows. Most bar owners agree it is the right thing to be do but they also know that students are less likely to go to the bars when most of their friends cannot get in to the bars anymore.
Economics
“You must be joking. You’re trying to charge me $15 to see some crappy football player?”
An irate student yells at the cashier at the front door. The student is so livid that spit is flying from her mouth and hitting the table in front of her. Her friends grab her and in a huff storm out the door.
“I don’t know why they are charging the 21-year-olds anyways,” says 22-year-old student Ramarcus Dobbs, “we are the ones spending the money in this place.”
Dobbs heads off towards the bar while back at the front door it is like watching a bad rerun. People come in one door, learn they have to pay cover and leave right out the same door.
Even with a large amount of people being too frugal to enter the bar, a crowd is slowly starting to form as the arrival of Moreno ticks closer, so perhaps the night is not lost after all.
Economics has always been a factor in whether or not students go out and it has never been more apparent than in this current time of economic trouble. With the country facing one of the worst economic downturns in history, parents are less likely to send their kids off to college with bar money.
Other economic factors play a role as well.
Increasing gas prices, the city ordinance You Plus Two means higher rent, and of course higher tuition costs.
According to CSU’s financial services, tuition and fees increased during the 2009-2010 school year by 7.6 percent for resident undergraduates. That would be $2,411 for off-campus resident students and $3,129 for on-campus resident students.
With this increase students and parents are struggling to afford tuition let alone a beer at the local bar. No matter how good Fat Tire on tap may taste.
Moving West
(The dance floor at Washington's)It is not yet 11 p.m. and the crowd at Washington’s has picked up quite a bit. Women dressed in scantily clad clothes and men dressed in jerseys are slowly filing in to the bar and the line outside is beginning to wrap around the patio.
The bar staff now all have their game faces on and are preparing for the night and the look of concern has left almost all their faces.
The only face still showing any sign of concern is that of the owner Shane Belcher.
“I’ve been hearing Road and Sully’s are pretty packed,” Belcher says with a cringe.
Belcher then turns and heads off to another portion of the bar apparently to try and get his mind off this growing concern.
This is the most concerning trend to the downtown Fort Collins bar scene.
The emergence of this blossoming bar scene is something the downtown bars did not see coming. Not only did they not see it coming, but they are also struggling to find an answer to it.
Sullivan’s, newly renamed Mo Jeaux’s, has always been a staple of west campus with its four for one drink specials and dollar beers but it has slowly created a climate for other bars to move in.
With the addition of Ma’s Juice Bar, Road 34, and C.B. and Potts, the west campus bar scene is emerging as the new place to be.
“It’s walking distance to my house, I don’t have to deal with the Old Town cops, and everyone is there,” said 21-year-old CSU student Chase McNary, “why would I even think about going to Old Town?”
This attitude seems to be the norm amongst students at CSU especially with the large number of fraternities and sororities and student houses on the west side of campus.
On average every year there are around 30,000 DUI arrests per year in Colorado according to the DUI-USA website.
With such high numbers of arrests CSU students are obviously choosing to be better safe than sorry. Although it is unsubstantiated students at CSU also strongly subscribe to the myth that Laurel is the street with the most DUIs in the country.
Convenience, safety, and being part of the crowd seems to be winning out amongst students.
The Future
Tables are being wiped down, stools put up on tables, and glassware is being cleaned. Everyone in the building looks as if they just went through some type of battle that consisted of alcohol as the ammunition as everyone seems to have one piece of damp clothing.
Shane Belcher wearily sits down in one of the booths and begins counting his tips for the night and he cannot help but smile as he counts.
“Well I was definitely worried there for a second,” Belcher says, recounting his stack of dollar bills, “but it looks like we pulled it off again, just barely.”
As much as things are changing for the downtown Fort Collins bars, they are also staying the same.
Everything moves in waves and perhaps this wave of apathy towards downtown is simply longer than usual, but the bar owners agree that it is just a phase.
This optimism is what keeps everyone going and hopefully sooner rather than later the downtown bars will have a steady flow of money to keep things going, because money runs a business much better than optimism does.
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