Students donning “polished casual” attire lined up in the Hopkins Center on Thursday, hoping to escape the fluorescent lights and tiles of the Courtyard Café for the low-lit ambiance inside the Garage Bar, where groups of students sat around small tables and laughed over drinks. The room was filled with the sound of live jazz and conversation.
Though many students find themselves among the aisles of Baker-Berry on Thursday night, a new social option opened to students on Feb. 6, offering an alternative scene that also acts as an on-campus bar.
The three-room venue, located across from the Courtyard Café, organizes a different theme each week to attract students, Hop student relations advisor Sean Gao ’13 said. While the bar’s first goal is to provide a space for students to socialize, performance groups and live musicians hold shows there as well.
“In everything that happens in the Hop’s Garage, there is an experimental aspect and an interdisciplinary aspect,” Gao said. “It’s really whatever the students want.”
So far, the Garage Bar has drawn hundreds of students each week. Amber Porter ’14, an intern with the Garage Bar program, said that the space adds a new social vibe to campus.
The idea of creating a social space, she said, has arisen in the past few years, but the opportunity presented itself this term when the studio art studios moved to the Black Visual Family Arts Center.
“It really is students creating a space for their fellow students,” she said, “which I think is a great place to start in creating a Dartmouth that we all want to be at.”
Thursday night, the Garage Bar featured a live performance by student jazz musicians, a D.J., drawing stations and a live model to create a social drawing space, Gao said.
Kachi Anumonwo ’14, the Garage Bar’s bartender, said the events have been better attended than the programmers had hoped.
“It’s nice to have an alternative thing,” he said. “It can be more inclusive than the Greek scene. You can come with friends and just do what you were going to do in sort of a nicer environment.”
Gao said that though the primary goal is to offer students a bar-like social scene, the space’s other aim is to involve the arts, like student performances. He added that when student groups are performing, they bring in bigger crowds and do their own publicity.
Student groups including Ujima dance troupe, the Dog Day Players improvisation comedy group and Street Soul dance group performed at Garage Bar last week. The students performed in one room, leaving the other two rooms open for socialization.
Terren Klein ’17, a member of Dog Day, said that the performance at Garage Bar marked one of the first times he had performed outside of a Greek house. He said that the space had a more casual vibe, with attendees not focusing solely on the group’s performance, like a “dinner and a show atmosphere,” he said.
The Garage Bar’s first week featured three D.J.s, one in each of the rooms, all playing different type of music. One room served as a “warm up room,” another was a more intense dance party and the final D.J. played more relaxed music, Gao said.
Organizers have advertised the space to campus in emails and posters. The Garage Bar serves free alcoholic beverages to those older than 21.
The program received approval to continue into the spring, Porter said, adding that as time goes by, she believes the space will serve less frequently as a programming venue, instead becoming a space for people to socialize.
One of the space’s downsides, Gao said, is each room’s 49-person capacity. In total, the space holds 147 people, forcing organizers to think creatively about how to use the rooms.
“The rooms are each taking their own identity,” he said.
Porter said she saw a suggestion on the Improve Dartmouth website saying that the venue should be open on Wednesdays and weekend nights as well. Organizers, however, prefer Thursdays, so the space stays more relaxed and doesn’t compete with other events.
“We’re trying to keep hold of that sophistication,” Porter said. “It’s more of a study break than a party.”
Jessica Avitabile contributed reporting.
