The Local Ignites Rumor Mill
Part one in a series
“The kids are gonna lose their minds,” a longtime employee of the Local commented when I asked him about the changes that have taken place there recently. Apparently, a lot more are coming. He doesn’t want to divulge this early in the game…but there’s a lot of talk going on, and no one seems really sure how much of it is true.
The Local turning into a barbecue joint? I crave their pulled pork doused with mustard BBQ sauce as much as the next person, but I go there for the atmosphere, not just for the food. And it seems like that atmosphere is changing from the hazy, laidback, in-town bar it has been for the past decade into something that is making Local-lovers nervous.
After ownership shifted this spring, I was kicked back on the patio and everything seemed as chill and comforting as usual, until my fried okra came to the table in a plastic basket instead of the normal dinner plate. I was busy salting said unhealthy serving of veggies when my boyfriend Daniel, a faithful Local regular, piped up with indignity: “What happened to the real plates?! Do we really have to eat on plasticware now?”
I looked at my red plastic basket, the kind that formerly only held free popcorn at the Local. A basket my friend Sarah and I are guilty of snagging during particularly inebriated nights in order to enjoy our popcorn to-go style. A basket I’m sure other people have also “accidentally” taken off premises, that may now be buried behind the crockpot in their corner kitchen cupboard (like mine). Honestly, I would probably never five-finger discount a dinner plate. But a plastic basket? That’s just too easy for drunk fools to walk out with or shove into their oversized hobo bag. So, strike one: dinner plates out, plastic baskets in – which scream “bar food” (not barfood) and “steal me.”
Gone is the semi-private second room that housed high-backed booths and divided the noise level; the wall in between it and the main room with the bar has been knocked down. The booths have been replaced with tables and chairs. This means public but secret-feeling drunken make-outs in a back corner booth are no longer an option. It also means that when you open the door and step inside the bar on a Saturday night, the noise level of the crowd is somewhat deafening. And the games have been moved around. What was once a crowded game of four-person foosball can now be a game with a dozen or more onlookers encircling the table. The massive digital jukebox has been relocated to a spot on the wall next to the bathrooms. The are also new light fixtures in the form of empty liquor bottles arranged in a circle with rope lights stuffed inside them. They remind me of dorm rooms and keg parties.
The concern here is that what has been a haven for actual in-town locals for an entire decade is starting to feel like an anywhere-USA bar. The Local has been the place where someone will walk in with a pound of crawfish and get the chef to boil them for free; where the regulars are treated to a free meal on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve.
“It’s just weird…it’s drawing a different crowd,” commented Kiana Pirouz, an employee of Digitas ad agency. “A more mainstream crowd.”
In reference to the wall being torn down, Chad Phillips, longtime sound guy at neighboring Drunken Unicorn, remarked, “It’s not even the noise that matters. It’s that now, the douchebags know where our secret tables were. I heard that a group of guys with popped collars came in last week and thought the Local had just built a second room.”
The verdict is out about other changes in the works, but it was enough for the main man at the Local, Daniel, and a longtime bartender, Grant “Sister Louisa” Henry, to leave and start their own bar…
Part two of this investigative series coming soon
Photo Credit: Daniel Stabler
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