Nightlife / Stephanie Depasquale

Students boost bar business

By Stephanie De Pasquale | Saturday, September 06, 2008 | () comments

Now that Augustana College and St. Ambrose University have started classes, local bars have also begun to feel the students’ presence.

The Carriage Haus in downtown Davenport is frequented by students from both schools, and Andy Lank, the bar’s manager, estimated attendance would increase by 25 percent now that school is in session.

He had already seen some Ambrose students about 11:30 p.m. Friday, but he expects more and more to start coming downtown once they get their syllabuses and figure out what weekends they can get out and party.

“They build up more rather than come down all at once,” he said.

At RIBCO in The District of downtown Rock Island, owner Terry Tilka said several Augustana students visited Thursday for the bar’s 50-cent drafts special, but he isn’t expecting to draw college students on weekends until after Christmas.

“A lot of it depends on how many house parties get busted,” he said.

I was able to find only one Augustana student and one recent graduate at RIBCO on Friday night. Phil Tyska graduated in the spring and was in town for one night while preparing to head to China to teach English for a year. He was out with senior David Fager, who usually spends four to five nights a week at RIBCO between the bar’s burger basket special on Mondays and Tuesdays, karaoke on Wednesdays, 50-cent drafts on Thursdays and live music on Fridays and Saturdays. Fager said he began coming to RIBCO frequently during the spring term of his junior year and that his grades “weren’t any worse than usual.”

Besides the specials, what keeps the two men coming back is pretty simple.

“You can usually count on Augie people coming here,” Tyska said.

As an Augustana alum, I am well aware that the nights when fraternities host parties at off-campus houses are on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, so Tilka’s comments make sense to me. But I also know that once my friends and I turned 21, we preferred to go out rather than have to prove that, yes, we were old enough to have a red cup filled with beer when the cops invariably showed up at a house party.

I figured that on the first weekend back, I’d be able to find several seniors out in The District, attempting to escape house parties crowded with freshmen looking for their first taste of college nightlife. But since I could find only two Augie students in a very popular bar at midnight, I took a quick drive by the party houses near campus and easily spotted five parties as well as numerous groups of students walking the neighborhood streets, looking as though they either were going to or coming from a party.

I have a feeling the Augustana neighbors will be making the same complaints as those of St. Ambrose for the next couple of weeks. I also would like to apologize to any neighbors I may have awakened during a walk home in Augustana’s Rock Island neighborhood. That is, hopefully, a short list.

Stephanie De Pasquale can be contacted at (563) 333-2639 or sdepasquale@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.