Francesca JaroszThe Daily Northwestern

I’ve often wondered what makes the 1800 Club so loveable. As a Chicago Tribune nightlife advisor pointed out last Thursday in a comparison of “Hundo” to the sleeker Indigo Lounge at Hotel Orrington, the place is our dive.

The drinks are cheap, the music loud and the crowds thick enough to beckon a police raid. But our affection for the humble corner bar stems from sources deeper than its beer specials and proximity to the sorority quads. Hundo, in effect, is our “Cheers.”

It’s a place where you can feel just as comfortable watching a sports game over nachos in workout clothes at 6 p.m. as you do clutching your amaretto sour in stilettos and a skank top on a Thursday night. It’s a place where bouncers greet the regulars with hugs and managers tell aspiring student bartenders to come before the crowds so they can learn to make drinks.

With this grasp of Hundo’s charm, I sought out to explore its so-called classier counterpart down the street, touted in the Trib as a cozy gathering place for a “sexy crowd” of mature working people with a taste for $10 martinis.

The venture, on which I was accompanied by six classy Northwestern senior ladies, was in part a social experiment. How does a group of Hundo regulars take to a place that’s not supposed to be their scene?

In a bigger sense, though, as about-to-be graduates, the mission made us confront a question from the real world: What lies beyond the college bar scene?

My group conceded that Indigo’s slow service and nacho-laden menu made for a stuffy and failed attempt at sophistication. Thankfully, though, we know there’s plenty of social life beyond that realm. The post-graduation years promise many a happy hour and beer garden gathering outside the familiarity of our college world.

But there’s also something these first years of real life don’t promise: the security of having a place to call your own, where you can go anytime and feel truly at home, a place where the abundance of familiar faces overshadows the random ones.

It’s doubtless that as we establish ourselves in new places, we’ll find our own versions of Hundo in the New Yorks and D.C.s and Olympia, Wash., of the world.

Still, for now we’ll side with the Trib’s nightlife advisor who, while perhaps a bit shallow in his depiction of Hundo’s significance, hit on a universal truth: No high-backed chairs, pricey drinks or elevator music can replace the quintessential college gathering place at this stage in our lives.

And when it comes to the appeal of Hundo, there’s no questioning why.

In the words of one of my fellow Indigogoers: “At a time when you’re so insecure about your future, you want to go where everybody knows your name.”