Jazz series holding annual Pub Crawl, featuring Gumbohead
Every fall, the We Always Swing Jazz Series holds a party that meanders from one restaurant or nightspot to another in downtown Columbia , with jazz music and tastes of food and wine or beer at every stop on the route.
It’s like adults night out in Columbia, explained Ron Newman, the Columbia branch manager for the beverage distributor Glazer’s Midwest, who came up with the idea back in 1996. “They can take to the streets and enjoy the wonderful atmosphere of the downtown venues.”
This year’s Pub Crawl, the Jazz Series’ main fundraising event, will take place Oct 2.
It began with 150 participants, divided into two groups of 75, Jazz Series founder and director Jon Poses said. One group went to the Pasta Factory and Village Wine & Cheese on the east side of Ninth Street and the other went to Boone Tavern and Trattoria Strada Nova on the west side. At the end of the night, all were invited for dessert at the now defunct Cornerstone Restaurant.
“It went over very well,” Poses said. “We sold out via word-of-mouth within days.”
The next year, the crawl took a big leap and opened to 500 people with 10 stops. Ninth Street remained the dividing line for the simultaneously run crawls. They moved the final gathering spot to The Blue Note. The idea was to have 50 people starting at an assigned point, and theoretically stay with the same group through the evening. By the third year, they expanded to 800 participants and devised the current concept of assigning only the starting point for each ticket holder and then letting them go where they please.
One year they tried hosting the event at 20 sites, which presented a challenge because venues overflowed.
This year, there are eight venues on each side, and 16 live bands performing. With 800 people, up to 50 are assigned to each venue, and Poses said ticket sales may reach 1,000.
“By and large I think people are pleased,” Poses said. “I think we go to great lengths to ensure people who buy tickets enjoy a fair quantity and quality” of food and beer and wine.
For longtime crawlers, some of the locations remain the same, but with new owners. A few have former owners at new locations. New this year are the Orr Street Studios and the new Ragtag Cinema/Uprise Bakery on Hitt Street.
Deb Rust, co-owner with Robin Ayers of Tellers Gallery and Bar, has been participating for many years. She says the event is nice for downtown. “The crawl is a fun activity and there’s “a nice vibe in the air.” This year, the restaurant is looking forward to preparing “well-rounded examples of our menu,” Rust said.
Students from the university’s hotel and restaurant management program will get hands-on experience helping at various locations. The MU College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources is a Jazz Series sponsor.
To keep the event as safe as it is fun, participants are informed of the open container ordinance and given guidelines for not violating it. “It’s not meant to be like a football Saturday,” he stressed. If patrons do overindulge, they can take advantage of a special rate at the Regency Hotel downtown.
At 9 p.m., the crawl ends and patrons head over to the Blue Note for a 9:30 p.m. concert, included in the price of a crawl ticket but open to the public. The featured band will be Gumbohead, a zydeco, Cajun group. Poses said the group was selected because its music provides a good segue to the Roots ‘N Blues ‘N BBQ Festival that opens the following day. Although they’re not affiliated with it, Poses said the Jazz Series hopes people will come into town a day early to kick off the festival weekend.
“We want music to flow everywhere, which we think it does,” Poses said. “And we want it to be a successful fundraiser.”
Tickets are $36 at The Jazz Series Box Office, 218 N. Eighth St. 449-3001
Pub Crawl locations since 1996
- Addison’s
- Bambino’s
- Bangkok Gardens
- Blue Note
- Boone Tavern
- CC’s City Broiler (closed*)
- Cherry Street Artisan
- Cherry St. Wine Cellar
- Colosseum Bistro (now Shiloh’s)
- Classy’s (closed)
- Cornerstone Café (now Room 38**)
- Felini
- Flat Branch Pub & Brewing
- Glenn’s (now Kaldi’s Coffee***)
- Grill One 5 (now Coley’s)
- Legacy Art & Bookworks (now Slackers)
- Le Petit Bouchon (now Felini)
- Lou’s Palace (closed)
- Main Squeeze
- Mojo’s (1013 Park Ave.)
- Orr Street Studios
- Pasta Factory
- Ragtag Cinemacafe
- Sake
- Shattered (now Billards on Broadway)
- Sycamore
- The Palomino (was below Harpo’s)
- Teller’s
- Top Ten Wines
- Trattoria Strada Nova (closed)
- 2008 loctions in red
*CC’s uses downtown restaurant for private parties, opened restaurant on Forum Boulevard
**Otto’s took over space before closing recently
***A reprised Glenn’s opened last year in Boonville, space was a noodles restaurant before Kaldi’s
Pub Crawl illustrates restaurant market volatility
You and your friends decide to have a night on the town, a personalized pub crawl (with a designated driver of course). Where would you go?
How about this itinerary: a house beer and appetizer at Flat Branch Pub and Brewery, a glass of wine and a spring roll at Bangkok Gardens and some hummus across the street at Cherry Street Artisan. Then it’s on to a second Mediterranean course at Felini, up to Boone Tavern and back down to Addison’s, Teller’s and Sycamore, for dessert and a properly paired wine. Oh, and there’s jazz, blues or roots music at every stop.
That would be the West Side tour in the annual Downtown Columbia Jazz, Wine & Beer Pub Crawl on Oct. 2. The East Side has stops at Top Ten Wines, Main Squeeze, Bambino’s, Sake, The Pasta Factory, Mojo’s and two new hosts – Ragtag on Hitt Street and Orr Street Studios.
For 13 years now, the We Always Swing Jazz Series founder Jon Poses has been organizing the pub crawl, a key fundraiser for the organization. He arranges the host sites and books the bands that play at each stop.
The task gets trickier when host restaurants close; 12 of the 28 establishments that have hosted the Pub Crawl since 1996 are no longer around. Seven are operating with different owners and names, and only a few of the buildings are vacant.
The restaurants on the first pub crawl were Boone Tavern, Pasta Factory and two establishments that have closed, Trattoria Strada Nova and, recently, Village Wine & Cheese.
The final stop, for just one year, was Cornerstone Dessert. Remember that place at the southeast corner of Eighth and Locust streets? It was in Otto’s old spot, now the home of recently opened Room 38.
The second year, the participants expanded to include Bambino’s and Cherry Street Wine Cellar, along with four establishments that have since closed: Lou’s Palace, Legacy Art & Bookworks, Glenn’s Café (currently Kaldi’s) and CC’s City Broiler, now closed to the public.
The Blue Note became the after-event location beginning with the second Pub Crawl.
In 1999, Mojo’s joined the Pub Crawl along with another restaurant that has since closed, The Palomino, downstairs from Harpo’s.
In 2001, Tellers joined the Pub Crawl crowd, along with Flat Branch Pub & Brewing, Ragtag Cinemacafe, Teller’s and Addison’s, at the same time as four establishments no longer in existence: Colosseum Bistro (now Shiloh’s), Shattered (now Billiards on Broadway), Le Petit Bouchon (now Felini) and Grill One 5 (soon to reopen as Coley’s).
Two years later, the Pub Crawl included three new stopping points that are still around, Sake Japanese Restaurant, Top Ten Wines and Cherry Street Artisan.
Felini and Sycamore joined the 2005 pub crawl, as did a short-lived participant, Classy’s Restaurant, which closed two years later. Main Squeeze and Bangkok Gardens joined the 2007 pub crawl.
This year, the pub crawl had to deal with the closings of four long-time participants CC’s on the east side and Colosseum Bistro, Shattered and Grill One 5 on the west side. The organizers moved Tellers and Bangkok Gardens to the west side, got Mojo’s to rejoin and recruited Orr Street Studios.