The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/bars/)
Bars bring much of the excitement back to college. A big part of college is the opportunity to make new friends. It’s easy, however, to fall into the same social ruts. You hang out with the same people in your Greek organization or social group every night. On the off chance, such as a short planned dinner or a quick chat in the library, you might be able to catch up with your freshmen year friends.
For the bars that have survived the past year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D-N.Y.) recent decision to extend closing time by an hour comes as a slight reprieve to an industry rattled by the virus.
For the first installment of a Moosewood Mess, I started out with dessert because it seemed like a relatively easy first step — something very much within my comfort zone. I invited my friends for the inaugural Moosewood Meal, which only ramped up the pressure. I felt like I couldn’t disappoint them, but I also didn’t want to make something overly complicated and ruin everything before it even started. That brought me to Chocolate Cranberry Crunch bars and chocolate sugar cookies.
When I first looked at the recipes, they seemed to be idiot-proof. However, it appears I’m an idiot.
From Marg Mondays to Fishbowls on Wednesdays, there seems to be a drink for every night of the week. That being said, bar culture has transformed into blackout culture among Cornellians, with pregaming becoming more and more popular while the idea of meeting up for a beer or two being considered taboo or just plain boring.
Whether it’s draining a fishbowl at Level B or heading to Loco for karaoke night, taking part in the local Ithaca bar scene is a rite of passage that many Cornell students are familiar with. Not many students, however, know much about what happens behind the bar. The Sun caught up with three student bartenders who work three of collegetown’s watering holes — Hideaway, Loco Cantina, and Level B. Since the age limit for bartending is 18 years old in New York State, bartending in college is a viable opportunity for many students. Students initially seek out bartending for a variety of reasons. For Stephanie Neitlich ’21, a bartender at Hideaway, bartending began with a goal to push herself in a more extroverted direction.
I am now 22 years old and I can drink legally but, for much of my Cornell career, I was underage. I came into college with the I.D. of a friend of a friend who looked kind of like me and whose name was “Yelena.” That got taken at a liquor store and then I used a string of fakes before I turned 21. Being underage in Collegetown is more of an obstacle than a barrier. The bar scene here is always changing but there will forever be three or four places that 18 and 19 and 20 year olds can get into if they know the right tricks. Some of these bars don’t care at all.
All I wanted Saturday night was to get funked, and The Rozatones made sure that I did. With an energetic set that ranged from brass-balled bravado to Latin-laced electricity, their show at Castaways demonstrated once more why The Rozatones sit at the top of Ithaca’s funk-rock feeding chain, and just what it takes to get a mass of college-age bodies moving.
The night began with a set from Nat Osborn and The Free Radicals, a large and conspicuously all-male band that plays with reggae riffs and the odd hard rock motif. There were occasional highlights hidden among the Dispatch-derived vocal harmonies and off-beat guitar chords, but for the most part their sound featured nothing new for the roots-heavy Ithaca music scene.
Vegas, Baby
by Rebecca Shoval, Sun Senior Writer
It took us until we got about five minutes outside of Los Angeles to bring up the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas reference. Of course, Las Vegas looks nothing like it did when Hunter S. Thompson visited there in 1971. Following an almost five-hour drive past the occasional cluster of homes, a solar powered-energy plant and one large rest stop occupied almost entirely with fast food chains, arriving in Las Vegas gave mirage a new meaning.