Last week, a whopping 130 Evanston residents signed a petition to block a bar from receiving a liquor license and moving in. Citing the risqué nature of the wait staff uniform, the petitioners want the mayor to ban the liquor license for “the community good.” With the flattering description of being “Hooters-like,” which entails a sort of kitschy creepiness, it struck me as odd that the bar actually still wants to move in here. I don’t really care either way – let the owner take the risk if he so chooses – but I’d like to run down the bar scene at Northwestern and hopefully make clear why, regardless of whether the bar should or should not move here, it won’t make much money.
The key to making money as a bar in Evanston, at least in the location the bar is choosing, is by pandering to Northwestern students. As far as that goes, there are basically two types of students who go to bars: above-age and underage. This leads to a lose-lose situation for the Tilted Kilt. This is a campus where people take cabs on Thursday to the Deuce, where the bouncer is so jaded by fake IDs that he’ll usually say “looks nothing like you” before letting everyone in. If you’re underage, why go to this new, untried and likely strict place when The Keg is a hop, a skip, and a jump (over a fence) away? Above-age students craving a place with Irish décor will probably choose Nevin’s or the Celtic Knot, not a place where the main appeal is, and I quote from the testimonial section of their website, “when the waitress staff makes my son get all red in the face.”
Maybe it’s because I’m averse to tacky gimmick restaurants, but I just can’t imagine Northwestern students, and indeed Evanston residents at large, going to the restaurant more than once, and only then as a novelty. The Tilted Kilt markets itself as a place to get food and beer and have a good time, lightly stepping around the fact the “good time” is accomplished by ogling scantily clad women. Having been to a Hooters once, I can say that the food won’t be very appealing. And because the business model caters to men, the restaurant won’t be able attract many female patrons. We go to restaurants to eat and we go to bars to socialize. Most of us, especially those lucky few with female friends, won’t want to go to the Tilted Kilt on a night out to do either of those things. Except, of course, as a joke. So that leaves only two main sources of income: people who go one time as a goof and lonely people who stomach the food week after week in order to see all the pretty girls. In this regard, it’s not unlike a strip club.
At least 130 people don’t want the restaurant here. That’s not a very good start. The Tilted Kilt is also entering a city that already has fierce competition for college students’ beer money. Once the bar gets going and it starts attracting those gawking weirdos, the bar’s image will certainly plummet, losing any real chance of charming the student population. If the proponents of the Tilted Kilt want to go ahead with their plan and hope that the other roughly 60,000 of-age residents pay them a visit once or twice, I say more power to them. I doubt that they’ll be very successful regardless of whether the liquor board allows them.
Tom Hayden is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected]. Illustration by Alice Liu.
