Less is best when it comes to this bar's crowd

I haven’t been to Half Barrel too many times, but it’s a different place each time I go.

I first covered it more than a year ago over my favorite “holiday,” spring break, when, as expected, hardly anyone was there. A friend and I had the place to ourselves, for the most part, and enjoyed a plethora of draft beers while watching “South Park.” It was a great night.

During the past school year, I ended up at Half Barrel occasionally, usually on the tail end of an evening, and always on Thursday nights, which is karaoke night there. It was always wall-to-wall-packed with heavy-drinking college students doing poor renditions of Journey songs. It was usually amusing, although often for the wrong reasons.

Given that it’s summer and the college crowd has dwindled, I had no clue what to expect from Half Barrel on a recent Friday evening.

Fortunately, Half Barrel has 33 beers on draft, so I expected that no matter what the crowd was like or what was going on at the bar, I would at least be able to enjoy cold draft beer.

My friend Randall and I headed down later in the evening, getting there just before midnight. It’s been awhile since I’ve been to a place that’s as full of college students as Half Barrel. It’s been just as long since I’ve even been down to the Strip. Over the past year, I’ve lost my fondness for most of the bars on Cumberland, including Sunspot, which was once my go-to bar. As such, I was worried about a Half Barrel outing.

But as we were walking in, we noticed the new White Stripes single, “Icky Thump,” playing, which gave me some confidence in the evening, given that I haven’t been able to stop listening to the group’s like-named album since it came out two weeks ago.

I made a beeline for the bar and ordered a $3.50 Carolina Blonde — one of my favorite beers to experience on draft. Randall and I then headed to a table in the back of the room. Most of the booths along the left side of the room were occupied by people who were obviously college students. No one looked like they could be a day over 24 (at the oldest), but fortunately, the crowd was diverse and not simply full of fraternity brothers and sorority sisters. There weren’t many popped collars, there wasn’t an overabundance of orange, and I didn’t notice a single pair of plaid shorts.

Instead, Randall noticed that most of the women were dressed up. It’s something I’ve never noticed before — women dress nicely to go out and get obliterated. Some women clearly had difficulty navigating the bar in their high heels.

This is something I’ve never considered. Why get dressed up to go to a bar and get filthy drunk? It’s been awhile since I’ve worn a dress and high heels (since Halloween, roughly), so I can’t say for certain if it’s all that comfortable to wear out to a bar. But when you think about it, you may as well wear your pajamas to a college-y bar like Half Barrel so if you leave at 3 a.m. too impaired to walk, you can at least sleep comfortably wherever you end up. You’ll also be more comfortable at the bar, I assume.

Regardless, Randall and I chatted about music for most of the evening. Occasionally, friends would sit at the table with us and join in the conversation for a bit, including two friends of mine I didn’t even know were in town.

We were able to sit down and calmly enjoy the evening, even though the rest of the crowd had more energy than we did (in our defense, we had just come from a metal show at the Corner Lounge, so we were a bit outrocked).

Still, Half Barrel is at its best when it’s less crowded.

HALF BARREL
Phone: 865-595-4848
Address: 1829 Cumberland Ave.
Hours: Open daily at 2 p.m.
Full bar and menu

By Greg Wood
Friday, July 13, 2007

© 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.