In times of turmoil, a cry rose from the quad uniting the student body in protest and revolution. We will not stay home! No longer will we wait for Thursday to go out! We vow to go out when we feel like it, not when convention dictates. Paying no heed to days of the week, our weekend will begin and end on Sunday and revolve around fun, only fun. God save the weeknight!
But being Tufts students, all of us looking forward to bright futures, so we will of course conduct this revolution in a responsible and well thought-out fashion. There will be no jetting off to Foxwoods or Montreal for us, at least not during the week. Instead of hiring a car to take you around to Boston's hotspots (which on a weeknight are far and few between), shuffle onto the shuttle and poke around Davis Square for a change. It's easy to be attracted to the big lights and thumping bass of Boston (can you taste the sarcasm?), but the real social challenge lies in finding fun nearby where you live. And thanks to Davis Square's position as an up-and-coming location -- we have a Starbucks, that must mean something -- there are more options than one might imagine, especially on a weeknight.
Sunday is the perfect night to start the revolution. Whereas most people will be camped out in the library doing all the work they didn't get to over the weekend, allow us to suggest a lucrative alternative. Go to class. Every Sunday night Johnny D's offers salsa dancing lessons for $10, so grab a partner and learn something useful. Chances are that at a cocktail party in 10 years, you won't need to take the derivative of an equation. But if you can dance, well then that's another ballgame entirely.
Beginners line up facing the stage and follow the instructions of a small but agile Latin woman in fabulously pointy shoes and painted-on snakeskin pants. If you think it's daunting to be next to the intermediate dancers, who are learning moves that looked to me more like a human knot than anything else, wait until the instructor stops teaching and starts dancing. If she finds a suitable partner, the two go to town and it's worth it to stop your own graceful fumbling and watch their fancy footwork. It's amazing that no one gets hurt with pointy heels flying and appendages waving as they do.
The crowd at Johnny D's on a Sunday night is everybody but Tufts students. There are old married couples out to cut a rug, young grad students just catching on to the fad of ballroom dancing, and of course your old regulars who nurse their drinks at the bar and watch the dancers with a scoffing eye. Men, hold on to your ladies, or one of these drifters might just try to snatch her up. It seems as though all of the women in Johnny D's have come with a dance partner, and the men who arrive hoping for a pick-up game leave sorely disappointed... or dance by themselves.
Having tired your feet on Sunday night, kick back on Monday night and head to Sligo pub where you can really get your hands dirty. Think of a dive bar. Now think of a dive bar in Davis Square. Now think of a dive bar in Davis Square on a Monday night, and you've got Sligo. You'll be at the bar in between... well, it's hard to tell just who these people are, but it's a rare Jumbo who wanders in for a beer on a Monday night. Unlike the Joshua Tree or the Burren, here you can hide from the Hill and celebrate having passed a physics exam or commemorate having lost a job in the same atmosphere.
The idiosyncrasies of Sligo are what make it worth visiting (and the fact that it's a Monday and you're out drinking implies that you belong there and nowhere else). The tables have been carved with so many initials that there's hardly any of the original surface left, and what is there seems to be covered in stickiness. If I didn't know better, I'd think there was sawdust on the floor. Not all of the lanterns that line the walls and light the dim room are in working order, and the piece de resistance on the wall is a massive Bud ornament featuring the Clydesdales pulling a carriage. But you can't beat the laid-back atmosphere. And you can't beat the Sligo Punch, a red concoction that tastes like Kool-Aid and works like a miracle.
And if a miracle is what you're looking for, spend your Tuesday night at PJ Ryan's in Teele Square for their weekly Pub Quiz. Are you a hotbed of useless knowledge? Do you play along with Jeopardy? Have you ever tried to make it into a drinking game? It's all been child's play until now, when a clever little neighborhood place like PJ Ryan's can offer you the chance to compete against your peers for alcoholic prizes! That's right folks, if you can name the last five mayors of Boston, then you too are eligible to win a round of shots for yourself and your teammates. The questions aren't all that tough, though. The one we got right asked about the world's largest invertebrate. In case you're wondering, it's the giant squid.
The crowd is made up mostly of grad students or Tufts grads who have stayed in the area, and it's a clean, well-lit place where you can enjoy a drink on a Tuesday without getting any grit under your fingernails or smoke in your hair. People take the quizzes seriously, though, so don't interrupt anyone while they're pondering their answers and don't expect to chat with anyone you don't already know. Teams are formed and they're competitive, so look out. Those of us still in school might not appreciate the novelty of a quiz, but it seems that once graduated, people just can't get enough of them.
So maybe real life isn't that different from college life after all. Except I'm not sure if in real life you can go out on weeknights.
