Admission to Shooters: $10. Riding the bull, caging your inhibitions and bathing in the sweat of your lab partner: priceless?
Shooters II, the giant of off-East Campus nightlife, welcomed students back to Durham with a significant price hike. Underage partygoers hoping to sweat off the stress of orientation week were billed $10, double last year's entry fee. Students over 21 paid $5, up from the previous price of $3.
Despite the price increase, a mob of students jostled to enter Shooters II Friday night. The air inside the club was thick with the perspiration of about 800 people. But some students opened their wallets with a hint of remorse.
"Shooters is worth $2 and a bottle of Aristocrat-nothing more," sophomore Ari Bar-Mashiah said.
Kim Cates, manager and owner of Shooters, said she increased the fee over the summer to make the Western-themed watering hole a safer environment for student patrons. In recent months, the club has improved lighting and installed more surveillance cameras. Cates has also increased the number of employees patrolling the bar and dance floor from four to 15 in an effort to curtail underage drinking.
"We are concerned that it might slow the business down some, but how else do you pay the bills?" Cates said. "If we drop the price, then we have to drop some of the staff, and then where's the safety of the children?"
Cates met for the first time with Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta, Sue Wasiolek, dean of students and assistant vice president for student affairs, and Tom Szigethy, associate dean and director of Duke's Alcohol and Substance Abuse Prevention Center, to discuss safety issues potentially presented by the club about two weeks ago. Szigethy plans to meet with the owners of other local bars as well, but he began the year by sitting down with the Shooters management.
"We've heard from students who have been returning to campus intoxicated, and sometimes Shooters is the last place they've been," Wasiolek said.
In response to administrators' concerns about students traveling to and from the saloon on foot, Cates decided to reinstate the "Shooters bus," a vehicle that links the club to the East and West Campus bus stops as well as several off-campus apartment complexes. The bus is free and will be in service on nights when the management expects particularly heavy student traffic, but there is currently no regular bus schedule.
"I thought the bus was great, except the door was open the whole time," sophomore Dan Haughton said. "I don't know how safe that is."
Cates noted that the increased entrance fee for underage students seems to have played a part in reducing alcohol citations, which have been a major drain on the club's liquidity. The saloon has paid as much as $5,000 per night in fines to Alcohol Law Enforcement officials.
During orientation week last year, 35 students were cited for underage drinking by ALE, Cates said. This year, only 15 students were flagged.
Although the saloon is a perennial student favorite, Shooters has not been immune to the recession, and the club's management felt it had to raise the entry fee to stay afloat. Skyrocketing property taxes, utility fees and labor costs have left the bar thirsty for cash, Cates said. The management may reconsider the fee increase if market conditions improve.
But students said the economic downturn has made a dent in their wallets too, and the increased cover fee may keep them from dancing in the cage as often as they would like.
"I can't even pay for college. You don't have to raise my Shooters price too," Bar-Mashiah said. "Rather than it being an every weekend thing, people will think, 'I've had such a hard week, I'm going to treat myself to a little bit of Shooters.'"
Some students predicted that they will keep the club packed and sweaty, if only for lack of a better option. George's Garage-a restaurant that was once a popular venue for greek crush parties and formals-closed its doors in July, further depleting students' options for drinking and dancing in the wee hours of the morning.
Early attendance figures tell the same story. Roughly the same number of students visited Shooters during this year's orientation week as last year's, and Saturday night's foam party was even more packed.
"It's like buying a water bottle at a ball park," Bar-Mashiah said. "You're limited in your choices. You have to pay."
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