Each week, Amy examines a small group of students in order to understand the individual Dartmouth experience as part of a whole. This week, Amy schmoozes with Canoe Club bartender Gavin Mace.
It has happened. Senior spring and I'm majoring in loafing at the Canoe Club. The thing is, I know I'm not the only one. Every time I'm in there, I see at least a few other seniors -- normally the same ones, really -- nursing a beer or snacking on the garlic aioli fries.
And then there are the Tuck students.
I passed a tour of prospective students the other day under the canopy of Rocky, and the guide was talking about the interconnectivity of (or lack thereof) undergraduate and graduate students. He said that although undergrads get the opportunity to academically take advantage of the graduate programs (what does that mean exactly?) there is no social interaction between the two sets of students.
False! Has this guy ever been to Canoe Club? Tuck students are on the prowl for cheap beer and coed companionship, even if it's only a little small talk before both return to their own friends. As a senior, I've run into more Tuckies than I ever thought I would, and while I've certainly made some acquaintances in other places around town and campus, the hot spot for Dartmouth graduate and undergraduate students to mingle is the no man's land of Canoe Club.
After an epic interaction in which a gaggle of my friends and I were bought shots of Pabst Blue Ribbon by three determinedly-cheap young men, I thought I would interview one of them to see the Tuck perspective of life on a predominantly undergraduate campus.
But to no avail. Apparently the deal wasn't sweet enough for him -- facetime in an undergraduate publication, in his mind, is hardly facetime at all. So I went to the second-best source, the sage of all wisdom, otherwise known as a Canoe Club bartender.
I slinked up to the bar yesterday afternoon for a chat with Gavin Mace, who as a bartender, gets to see all the daily happenings in Hanover's comfy bistro. (Incidentally, who else has seen that new sign above the door? My friend Kat and I were pondering this one: Since when did Canoe Club need to declare itself a bistro? Her response? The same time that Murphy's became "polished casual.")
I asked Gavin about the demographic that he sees wandering in on a regular basis.
"To start the evening off, we have older people, business people, couples." He paused for a second. "And by older people I don't mean old, more like 30s and 40s," he said.
"Thursday night is Tuck night," he added.
I nodded my head, as I've already discovered this fact. I asked Gavin why he thought this was so.
"In college, Thursday night was the night to go out to the bar ... so it seems to work that way for them, too. They take over this entire area when they go out," he explained, gesturing to the bar and surrounding floor.
I asked him about undergraduates.
"Sometimes it's hard to tell," he said, mentioning that the prime nights for undergraduates in Canoe Club are "Friday and Saturday, but those are the nights that Daniel, the head bartender is on."
Mostly Gavin sees undergrads here as "couples on dates, or in groups of six, eight or 10, out to have drinks without having to fight crowds at the bar," he said.
"But," he added, "They're not big drinkers."
I asked him if that was the case for Tuck students.
"Is this going to get me in trouble?" he kidded. I shook my head no.
"Tuck students are more -- rowdy's not the right word -- more boisterous," he said.
I asked Gavin what the most popular orders are with us college kids.
"Fries and aioli," he said without hesitation. "And burgers are big with the college crowd."
As for the liquid diet, "Pabst is the best selling draft by far," he said. "The Smuttynose is very popular, and the Switchback."
I asked him if there was anything else that was particularly popular.
"One of the fastest growing fixtures is the shot known affectionately as the Bearfight. It has quite the cult following."
I asked him to describe it.
"You have to do it with two people. It's a car bomb followed with a Jaeger bomb. The winner gets to pull the other in a bear hug and shake him all up. It scares the living shit out of me, but people say it's remarkably smooth."
I shudder thinking about this one, and suddenly the shots of Blue Ribbon don't sound so bad after all.
