By Brendan Packert
It’s 7:30 p.m. on a Monday night. Before his bar opens for the evening, Grumpy Dave’s Pub manager Dave Harper sits alone at the end of his bar with stacks of papers in front of him. He’s filling out brackets for the evening’s entertainment, a weekly euchre tournament.
Groups of people begin shuffling up the flight of stairs from Main Street to the bar, located just above Easy Street Café.
It’s still rather quiet as couples, friends, and co-workers take their seats in pairs at the square wooden tables. One of the bartenders turns on the sound system to play ‘90s alternative music. There’s close to 40 people in the pub by 8:30 p.m.
The crowd is getting a little chattier as the minutes tick by. Chairs are shuffling across the old hard wood floor as euchre groups are being put together. Then in a thundering voice, Harper starts calling out names.
“Greg and Linda, table 3.” “Brett and Sarah, table 4.” “Robin and Jessie, table 12.”
Harper doesn’t need a microphone to project his commanding voice. The pub goes silent when he’s calling out names. You can’t even hear the music playing in the background.
After setting up the last few groups, he wishes everyone good luck and the euchre tournament begins.
“There are probably only five or six students here tonight,” Harper said, sitting back down at the bar. “Usually it’s only the townies that come out on Mondays.”
In a town like Bowling Green, there are countless numbers of bars and clubs people can choose to patronize. Harper knows he could never draw in a crowd the size that the Attic would get, or even the Cla-Zel. Grumpy Dave’s Pub is a 21 and older bar, with the exception of Tuesday’s comedy night and Friday’s local band showcase.
“We rely on the locals here, without them we wouldn’t have a business,” Harper said.
On any given night, the crowd could be 50 percent college aged patrons and 50 percent local patrons, he said. But without that local base, his business wouldn’t survive year round.
“If I had to only rely on the college crowd, I wouldn’t be able to survive through the summer months,” Harper said.
Harper knows that the window is closing for good business. Once summer hits, and the students go back home for the summer, business drags to a near halt.
“The weekend before finals is usually the last strong business weekend until August comes around,” Harper said.
Tim South, a bartender and bouncer at Grumpy Dave’s Pub, has spent the past three years living though and working through the summer.
“My first summer after graduating and working here was something else,” South said.
“It’s really weird to go from almost 100 people a night on weekends to less than 20. This place is just a ghost town in the summer,” South added.
“We get a lot of graduate students in the summer that stay in BG, but business isn’t the same,” Harper said.
Harper wouldn’t give exact numbers, but said his bar easily takes 25 percent cut in business.
“The two weeks right after BG lets out is the worst, that’s the worst part of the summer,” Harper said.
Once summer classes start is when business begins to pick up a little bit, Harper said. But the summer time crowd only softens the loss his bar takes.
“We try not to change the bar too much during the summer months, usually I only staff one bartender on the weekends, instead of two,” Harper said.
Kristie Capetillo has been working as a bartender at Grumpy Dave’s Pub for just over a year. She’s already experienced the lulls of one summer, and she’s not looking forward to another.
“The slight cut in hours doesn’t bother me, but just some nights nobody is here,” Capetillo said. “I don’t solely rely on my tips, but it’s a big part of my income.”
The overall state of the economy is hurting business too, Harper said.
“The price of domestic beer has gone up almost 10 cents per case, and that adds up especially when you carry almost 50 domestic beers,” Harper said.
The pub hasn’t had the strongest last couple of years in business, but Harper said he’s able to get by.
“All the businesses in town know the down period is coming, but at least we are able to stay open, some shops and businesses have to close up for the whole summer,” Harper said.
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