It’s closing time for one longtime University District dive bar. This will be the final weekend to visit the Bier Stube.
Patrons spent the last few weeks saying goodbye to the nearly 60-year-old bar in the University District.
The block of 9th Avenue and North High Street is set to become a towering off-campus student apartment building built by Illinois-based developer Harbor Bay Ventures.
To make way for the 13-story building, places like Portofino’s Pizza, 14&O Express, and of course, the Stube, have to go.
“This is not just a bar. This is an entire family. And all it does is it grows. We don't lose touch,” said Suzette King, who has been coming to the Stube since 1985. “I don't know how I'm going to maintain contact with all these people that are so important to me.”
King has been wearing a Bier Stube t-shirt every day since late August, when she heard that her favorite haunt was closing.
Bier Stube owner Craig Kempton said he can’t keep those t-shirts in stock. He can’t keep anything in stock, and the small, dark dive bar has been packed every night.
Kempton believes the Bier Stube was a plumbing store before it became a bar in 1966. Since then, basically nothing has changed.
“It's the same booze, the same light fixtures, the same desktop, the same tables, the same everything,” Kempton said.
Kempton took over the bar about two decades ago. He said the Bier Stube has always brought people together. The Stube sponsored local sports teams. People got married there. Couples who met there had kids.
“I myself met my wife here. We have two beautiful kids,” Kempton said.
As development plans for the block changed, it was hard not knowing what would happen to the Stube.
“It's been hard on my workers, my staff, the people that call this place home,” Kempton said. “It's been a long process of we're in, we're out, we're in, we're out.”
Now, it’s clear the bar can’t be saved. It’s the latest change in the ever-developing University District.
“I guess it's easier to say what hasn't changed,” said Donald Gibson, who has been coming to the Stube since he was a student in the late ‘70s. He used to drive from Grandview to play video games at the bar.
“It's like the local flavor of, you know, small businesses like this have, you know, mostly gone away. And now we've got, you know, places like CVS on campus,” Gibson said. “I guess I hate to see this place go. And I know the staff that work here, and I'm going to I'm going to miss them.”
Alex Pickles, a Stube patron of five years, said he understands that students need housing and the city needs more housing in general, but he wishes there was a way to stave the historic bar.
“It's going to be weird. It's going to be a big vacuum in all of our lives,” Pickles said.
Pickles will miss the Christmas parties, potlucks and Sundays during football season.
“I've never been so a part of something in my entire life in this place,” Pickles said. “And, you know, so many people that are just from different walks of life. And it's really a beautiful thing, I guess.”
And the Stube’s longtime patrons certainly have their stories.
Steve Hertz, a patron of 50 years, said the Stube was probably the first bar in Ohio to serve Jägermeister, well before the German drink was known in the U.S.
“Because of a certain bartender that worked here who traveled the world knew of Jägermeister,” Hertz said.
When Mike Pacifico was moving to Arizona, he had his final going away party at the Bier Stube.
“They had cracked bags of pizza and tomatoes in it. And somebody picked me up. He came around and slammed the bags into me. And we had a food fight in the dumpster,” Pacifico said.
In the 1980s, James Martini played on one of less than half a dozen hockey teams in the original hockey league in Columbus.
“So we always came here every night after games on Sunday nights. We closed this place down for 10 years straight, every Sunday night after games,” Martini said. “So we got them to sponsor us.”
A Bier Stube team hockey jersey hung on the wall of the bar for years. Martini wants the jersey back, but owner Kempton said he likes it so much, he has it hidden away at home.
Then there was the time Dick McKinley just wanted to hear “Layla,” but every time he tried to put it on the jukebox, he got Chuck Berry’s “My Ding-a-ling.”
“There's one guy who's going to kick my butt. You go 'you play that one more time, we're going to kill you,'” McKinley said.
He never got Layla to play, because everyone ran out of money.
The Bier Stube will close its doors on Saturday. That gives Kempton little time to get everything out and he means everything.
He's taking it all with him, because if he finds just the right place, the Bier Stube might rise again.
“It's got to look and feel everything,” Kempton said. “So, when you walk in, you go, my God, there's the jukebox, there's Woody Hayes, there's the bar top.”
Until then, the Stube will live on in patrons' hearts and minds.
