This College Town Needs More Bars
By Kevin Wilkerson, PubClub.com
There are nearly 40,000 students at the University of Alabama, yet just a couple dozen bars to serve them.
Tuscaloosa is a great college party town but you had better go out early in the night because if you don’t, then you’ll be stuck waiting is a blocks-long line for more than an hour and may not even get in at all.
The fact of the matter is, Tuscaloosa needs more bars. That goes against what the city wants because the people making the rules don’t understand simple math. They are restricting bars, even holding them accountable for people waiting on the sidewalks while ignoring the true source of the problem.
There would be fewer lines, fewer people on the sidewalks and fewer heated incidents (which are rare there, really) if there were more places for the students to go out to eat and drink.
And it’s just not the college students who must deal with the limited nightlife options. Residents often complain that there are no non-college bars for them, places where they can go to after work, for entertainment and for a few drinks.
There’s an old business adage of “uild it and they will come.” This would be true in Tuscaloosa because the “they” are already there. And you can find them waiting in long lines outside the bars.
Kevin Wilkerson is a University of Alabama School of Journalism graduate and publisher of the nightlife website PubClub.com
