The East Campus Coffeehouse no longer lies dark and silent. Now denoted “smoke-free” but otherwise little worse for the wear, the traditional hang-out spot for alternative culture at Duke made a solid re-entrance to campus party life with a lively night of drinks and good music Thursday.
At the beginning of last semester, the Coffeehouse closed for renovations after a controversial management switch. Traditionally run by an independent staff of students loosely associated with SHARE, Duke’s first non-greek selective living group, the Coffeehouse suddenly became a Duke University Union subcommittee. Complaints quickly arose that the University was trying to make the venue more mainstream and squelch Duke’s embattled alternative culture. Thursday night, however, the animosity and divisiveness seemed to drown in the funky beats of Man Man, Mike Uva and Uncle Jemima.
“I don’t think a lot of the changes are going to be that big and I feel like a lot of them are going to be for the better,” said senior Ben Leshin, who noted that the Coffeehouse was a favorite hangout during his freshman year. “The atmosphere is really the same. We’ve got some new couches, some new floors, some things that just really needed to be fixed, but I just don’t think it’s going to change the feel.”
Senior Andy Kay, the new manager of the Coffeehouse and head of the Union committee, said changing the feel of the Coffeehouse was never the University’s intent.
“There was a lack of direction with what [the Union] wanted to do with the Coffeehouse. They weren’t being clear enough about it, so a lot of people didn’t know what the Union was going to do. The people that had been running it rightly felt that the Coffeehouse had been taken away from them,” he explained. Yet many of the members of the old staff have been incorporated in the new management, and such controversial suggestions as painting over the murals never got beyond talk. The committee even matched paint for the new trim to one of the murals, a silent promise that if they ever are painted over, it will be by Coffeehouse patrons with a vision, not as part of a University-inspired cultural white-washing.
The Coffeehouse certainly seems to be keeping up tradition in its event lineup for the spring. In addition to the thriving local music scene to which the venue has long played host, drawing in patrons from throughout the community, generous Union budgeting has allowed the Coffeehouse to book more ambitiously, pulling in such popular Indie bands as The Butchies (Feb. 4) and The Wrens (Feb. 12) from their national tours. “I actually know people who are coming in from out-of-town because of the bands who are playing [at the Coffeehouse],” senior Macy Parker said.
But much more is happening at the Coffeehouse than music. Weekday hours at the Coffeehouse will run from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. and from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. on weekends, providing yet another campus study spot. Senior Erica Mutchler will continue to lead her Active Arts Collaborative Tuesday evenings from 8 to 11 p.m., encouraging “people who normally wouldn’t, to engage in creative activity” through crafts and community art pieces.
Kay is simply concerned that everyone feels welcome—old patrons and new alike. Before enacting changes at the Coffeehouse, he spoke with a group of seniors who had long frequented the venue. “They felt that the Coffeehouse wasn’t inviting to a lot of people, and I think that it’s still possible to stay an alternative environment, but there are a lot of people that had been looking for that on campus that were turned off by the lack of openness in previous years,” he said.
Though some have complained about the changes that have been made, such as the bathroom walls that were painted over due to a miscommunication with the administration, Kay continues to smooth things over. He’s encouraged every band to begin anew the tradition of graffiti on the bathroom stalls. “Magic markers can do wonders,” he said.
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