/ NEWS / MONDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2010 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
Local bars account for lesser alcohol sales
BY NICOLAS ROESLER
nroesler@kansan.com
It used to be that Britt McKeever, a bartender at The Bottleneck, the Grenada and Crossroads in Kansas City, Mo., could work three nights a week and make around $800.
Not anymore. Now he works four or five nights to make $600.
The tough economy has affected not just the consumers of alcohol, but also the people who sell it. According to a study by research and consulting firm Technomic, bars and restaurants have been selling less and less alcohol for the last three years. The forecast for alcohol sales for 2010 at on-premise drinking locations like bars was that 2.5 percent less alcohol would be bought.
Not only have McKeever's tips gone down, but his nightly sales reports are decreasing too. He said that people used to average spending around $10 on drinks per night. Now the average is between six and seven dollars, he said.
Andrew Wallace (far right) and Todd Stuke (center), Lawrence residents, watch Sunday Night Football and enjoy a drink at Louise's, 1009 Massachusetts St. Lawrence bars like Louise's have had to adjust for a decrease in alcohol sales during the last three years.
"Being a student, you know where the deals are," Coder said. "That's what you base your nightly
Some students have also become a breed of "special-chasers" said McKeever. It doesn't matter what bar they're going to — these students just follow around the cheap drink specials. James Coder, a senior from Topeka is one of these students.
decisions on."
"People are not as inclined to start buying their friends shots," McKeever said. "They all buy their own shots."
Chris Bronson/KANSAN
McKeever couldn't comment about the profits or losses the bars he works at are seeing, but he said the economy has had a big effect on everything and sometimes specials don't make a difference. Some bars have felt the effects worse than others.
Rob Farha, owner of The Wheel,
507 W. 14th St., said his sales have
declined 20 to 25 percent this year.
"It's just a sign of the overall economy," Farha said. "These students get money from their parents and their parents are cutting back and not sending that soft dollar just to go out all the time."
He said his bar is hard to compare to national bars because of its specific clientele of college students and alumni. As the owner for 14 years, Farha said the bar usually goes through three-year cycles, and this is the low third year. He said his best year by far was the 2007-2008 school year. He attributes that to the success of the Kansas football and basketball teams that year.
Farha said people don't notice the small stresses the tough economy puts on a bar. The small plastic cups that get filled with the daily special of beer have gone up in price from one cent each to seven.
"As a customer, you're just looking at what you're paying for," Farha said. "But you got rent, taxes, property tax. All those things on the outside people don't see keep going up and up and up."
He said he has not changed anything as far as pricing goes to adjust for his losses. He doesn't think adding more specials on drinks will draw more people to his bar.
Some bars have added specials to bring more costumers in on specific nights throughout the week. The Barrel House, which opened in April 2009, has broken the national trend in its first two years."Because we're a different kind of bar, we keep seeing increases," said Emily Akers, a 2009 KU graduate and coowner of The Barrel House.
She said her bar has had to get used to what she calls the cycles of people that visit and leave her bar. She said many students go to one bar for a short time, then move on to another to meet their friends. This means that they spend less time at her bar and spend less money — but the constant influx of different cycles throughout the night make up for it. Sometimes, charging a cover is the way to do that.
But charging an entrance fee can also turn away costumers, Akers said, so she tries to limit the nights the bar has a cover charge.
Kayla Nelson, a senior from Olathe, said she often won't go to a bar if it has any cover.
"If there are a bunch of bars that my friends and I want to go to, but they all have covers, we'll either just go to one and spend most of the night there, or think of other options without covers," Nelson said.
The recent success of The Barrel House has also been matched by one of the oldest mainstays on Massachusetts Street, the Red Lyon Tavern, which does not charge a
cover any night.
Trina Baker, a manager at the Red Lyon Tavern, said the bar has seen a constant profit over the last three years. And like The Wheel, they have not made up specials to bring in bigger crowds.
"People want to come here because they want to come here, not because we have $2 Bud Light bottles," said Baker, who has worked at the Tavern for 16 years.
noticed a slight dwindling of the tips filling their tip jars. She said people have been more frugal in the last five years with their money than in years past.
Baker, similar to McKeever, has
Whatever the formula is for bars and restaurants to make it through the country's recession, the Technomic report expects an improvement in alcohol sales. It expects alcohol sold in bars, restaurants and other on-premise establishments to grow by 1.1 percent
in 2011. The report said that it will take two to three years to bring the amount of alcohol sales back to a relative normal.
as a roller-coaster ride," Farha said about the fluctuations in his sales. "You get some good years, you get some bad years. I'm hoping this has just been one of our two down years."
— Edited by Roshni Oommen
LOCAL
Professor teaches inmates poetry
BY KELLY MORGAN kmorgan@kansan.com
In a place where time is the enemy and the word freedom is synonymous with a release date, assistant professor Brian Daldorph wants to make a difference.
Every Thursday from 1 to 3 p.m., Daldorph leaves the University of Kansas' campus and takes the 15-minute drive over to the Douglas County Correctional Facility where he teaches a poetry class to the jail's male inmates.
Daldorph
On Thursday, the class consisted of nine inmates but has had as many as 22. Wearing uniforms of bright orange pants, dark grey t-shirts and black sneakers
every single one of them walked into the room with a red, identification band wrapped around their left wrists.
"They're in here for a variety of reasons." Daldorph said. "A lot of small crimes that are drug-related or that deal with substance abuse and mental health."
The rules for the class are simple. The poems that the inmates write cannot: snitch on a fellow inmate, complain about the jail's policies, contain any hard or soft-core porn and cannot describe a violent scenario. Profanity is acceptable but only if it's important to the story.
"We've had three fights break out in the course of the class' 11 years," said Mike Carron, the Programs Director of the Douglas County Correctional Facility. "A lot of times it's because someone tattled on another person through their writings and that eventually led to a confrontation after class."
Despite these three fights, the class has found great success in the prison.
"Going to the class gets my feelings on paper and out of me," said one of the inmates. "It's a good way to express stress."
The course was not initially intended to be a poetry class. When it was first formed by associate professor Anna Neill and then-KU professor Kirk Branch, the purpose of the course was to help inmates acquire their GEDs. However, when it became apparent that the inmates were not interested in the course, Branch and Neill shifted their focus to poetry and creative writing.
"It sort of evolved into the class it is today," Neill said. "Many of the students connected various conventions of their lives to relevant readings we introduced them to and found some peace through writing."
Under the instruction of Daldorph since he substituted for class nine years ago, the group always begins by reading poems written during the previous class. On Thursday, these poems consisted of many topics, ranging from a sub sandwich to
feelings on love and betrayal.
"To some extent just being in jail, you do have to be real with yourself," Daldorph said. "People in here are really trying to understand who they are."
While writing down their feelings can be therapeutic for the inmates, it doesn't necessarily make them law-abiding citizens.
"I don't think there is a kind of arrow that points from self expression to reform." Neill said. "It's just a way of allowing reflection upon circumstances and arriving at a different place.
Carron echoes Neill's statement and adds that for some of the inmates, Daldorph's class is the first time they're getting positive recognition for any work.
"It can help to boost their selfesteem and give them credit for creating something of value," Carron said.
Recently, Daldorph and Carron chose to collect some of these poems and created an anthology entitled Douglas County Jail Blues. The anthology features the poetry and drawings of more than 20 inmates and is being sold at the Raven Bookstore for $10.
One of the guys told me when we were walking back that he had told his mother that his poems were going to be published," Daldorph said. "Nothing like this has ever happened for him and it was a very proud moment for him."
MEDIA
Diversity class hosts digital summit
BY SAMANTHA COLLINS
collins@samanthacollins.com
scollins@kansan.com
Journalists from around the world visited the University on Saturday - without evensetting foot in Kansas.
The journalists, along with about 200 others who streamed in to watch, used Skype to enter room 100 in Stauffer-Flint Hall on Saturday to participate in "Telling Stories of Diversity in the Digital Age", the first digital diversity summit held at the University. The summit was hosted by the Diversity in the Media class, which is taught by associate professor Simran Sethi.
Sethi said multicultural communities use social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and even blogs, at higher numbers compared to Caucasians. She said this was because although many underprivileged people don't have access to a desktop computer or laptop, they use their phones to access social media. This idea, she said, planted the seed from which the digital summit grew.
"And the students just went with it." Sethi said.
The summit focused on four main topics that looked at various aspects of American communities and its relation with social media, women in the media, the
rote of social media in a global context and how new social technology helps the disabled communicate. It was the students' responsibility to organize the discussion and unite both journalists and non-journalists to tell their stories on various social groups using social media. Nick Valencia, CNN reporter, and Vicky Lu, a University journalism school graduate, were two of the more well-known guest speakers.
"It gives them a voice," Siegle said. "It's as simple as that."
playing field in the United States and anyone could make a blog or create a Facebook.
"I didn't want talking heads," Sethi said. "I wanted them to make the invisible visible."
Throughout the semester, it was the students' job to learn how to give a voice to all communities. Siegele said most multicultural groups are underrepresented in the media. She said journalists often have a general idea of what the world consists of and
Lindsay Siegey, a graduate student from Lansing. Mich., helped organized the
Journalists from around the world streamed in via Skype to discuss four main topics that related to diversity in the media.
discussion focused on women in the new media. She said contacting the speakers was the biggest struggle. The group contacted about 15 people, and out of those, four people participated in the summit. She said it was important for all the speakers to have a common thread, which, for them, was new media. She said women have a strong voice in new media such as blogs. She said social media provides a level
they overlook most minority groups.
Aaron Cornett, a graduate student from Lansing, said people often didn't realize that minority people were voiceless in
the media. He said the summit showed that there was an unlimited amount of unheard voices out there that social media and technology can unveil.
"It can be a very powerful thing;" Cornett said.
Edited by Anna Nordling