It’s another Saturday night in Durham. You swear to yourself that tonight is NOT a Shooters night. Sure, you plan to go out with all your friends to whatever pre-Shooters shenanigan is occurring earlier in the night, but once Shooters o’clock rolls around, you are calling it quits-hell, maybe you’ll even finally let yourself indulge in those late night drunchies you have been so diligent about resisting these past few weeks, but one thing is certain: you are NOT going to Shooters. Yeah. Right. 12 am…midnight, and after a few too many adult beverages and a little peer pressure, here you are, lined up against the infamous brick wall, waiting for the gates of Heaven to open and let you in (or at least all the sloppy, sweaty bodies in front of you to push past Kim Cates, and her motley crew, into the Western-themed bar we call home).
Inside, it’s time for your crew to make a decision: where to go? Upstairs is the ideal spot for a slightly cooler temperature and, bird’s eye view of all the action, but you and your girlfriends want to dance. You’ve had a stressful week, full of midterms, and it’s time for you to take T-Swift’s advice and shake it off- after all, you did spend $5 to get in- you might as well get your money’s worth. But the dance floor is SLAM packed- per usual- and it doesn’t take you long to spot some creepy Durhamites, verging on forty, circling the dance floor like vultures with a taste for underage Duke students. The “cage” is another option, but ever since that one girl broke the seal in it last spring, and the other kid took a drunken tumble of shame out of it, the cage seems to have lost some of its appeal, at least in my opinion.
Sweaty, scantily clothed bodies close in on you, while your posse attempts to make a decision. You silently pray to the Gods of Shooters II Saloon for an answer: where o’ where can you and your girlfriends go to dance, where you can avoid the friendly gropes of unwanted Durhamites, steady flow of sweat from strangers, and unidentifiable liquid coating the floor? The answer: an elevated surface of course, more specifically, the bar! Girls, the bar is the answer to all of your Shooter-related prayers. Not only does it give you an escape from all necessary Shooters evils (sweat, strangers, unidentifiable liquids), but it also provides the perfect view for spotting friends (or previous hookups) in the crowd, and the laughable opportunity for channeling your inner Britney, and giving the raunchy dance floor couples quite the show. As Duke girls we spend an insane amount of hours with our noses buried in books, and/or stressing over any number of extracurricular activities-but on the bar, we can let go. We don’t have to worry about what we are going do with our lives after this four amazing, but short years are over, we can, and should let our freak flags fly.
Elevated surfaces are truly a party girl’s best friend, and the Shooters bar is no exception. The bar allows us to escape, it makes us feel sexy and flirty, but most importantly, it gives us slightly better air flow- and for that, Shooters bar, we are forever grateful. But hey, don’t take it from me, go experience it for yourself, and I’ll see y’all there on Saturday.