The West End Falls to Communism

Count this sentence among the few you never expected to hear: "The West End is being turned into a Cuban restaurant." While you may feel inclined to gnash your teeth, rend your hair, and scream like a banshee, none of those will help. We are losing "the bar."

Deep in his secret lair (all bad guys have lairs, no?), Fidel Castro must be congratulating himself on another piece of brilliant devilry. Pulling strings like an accomplished puppet master, he has struck deep into the heart of Columbia University's mediocre bar scene, tearing out the home of Jack Kerouac, Duke Ellington, and Wednesday Senior Nights. For this transgression, I vow that I shall not rest until he is secluded, powerless, and crippled by age ... never mind.

Let us be honest. The West End is (henceforth "was," out of mourning) no beauty. It had nothing special. But every college must have its bar, and no one else-not Nacho Mama's Kitchen Table, not the crowded Heights, and especially not Mona with it's "Have you got your STD yet?" nights-comes close to being the generic hang-out where you drink watered-down beer and snack on shoestring-thin French fries.

Think of the memories that the West End holds, all soon to be replaced by mojitos and salsa music: beer pong in the backroom, the blind guy who gave out toiletries in the men's bathroom, the big-screen television that I'm convinced is in the girls' bathroom, painful attempts at karaoke, and the skeezy old man who would buy drinks for every young girl around him in hopes that they would not notice the cane, the glass eye, or the bald head. All of it, soon to become... Cuban?

The West End was itself only 17 years old under the ownership of Katie Gardner, J '81. But it represented a tradition of mediocrity and ubiquity so great that it raised the bar to a level that no other establishment could hope to achieve. Every cliche of a college establishment was in play there: the music that stifled conversations, the plastic cups of Bud, the football team, the Quiz Bowl team, the girls walking around with body language that suggested, "You want this? You want this? Well you can't have it because you are the kind of swine who enjoys the West End!" Talk about tough love. It was like watching Cocktail, except completely different and without the Scientologists.

Very few people ever loved the West End. You never came home and sang the praises of its beer selection or its kind and attentive bartenders and bouncers. More likely, you'd wake up the next morning with a lime in your hair, salt on your nose, and tequila splashed across your chest. But that was its appeal, believe it or not. Like a discount dominatrix, it punished you, and you came back for more because it appealed to your basic sense of what a no-frills college bar should offer. No pretensions, nothing fancy. Only beer, burgers, and bodies.

A word of warning to Los Cubanos: the Romans had it right when they said "caveat emptor"-buyer beware. Remember AmCafe? Used to be a second-string West End with a lively nightlife. Now after being gussied up, it's often emptier than campus on a Friday. Change is generally good, but watch out when you touch campus traditions.

This is not like Cannon's changing hands and reopening as the exact same establishment with the same drug habit, bearing only a different name. Fer' cryin' out loud, Cubans are taking over! Do they even believe in cheap American beer? Hell, can we even go there? Will the American embargo on Cuban goods extend to the West End? Who knows?

The time is ripe. We must strike first and consume drinks of mass destruction. I suggest that next Wednesday, during the Senior Night glory of $1 beers, we pay homage to the West End's two decades of illustrious service by combining the best of the Kennedy and second Bush administrations in a pre-emptive Bay of Pigs invasion of the West End, with hopefully better results.

Or as the Cubans might say, Viva La West End!

The author is a Columbia College senior majoring in political science.