Drafting the Irish
“Irish Car-bombs, tons of Irish Car-bombs,” said local bartender and USU public relations major Amanda Harris. An “Irish Car-bomb” is a drink she said she sells a lot of on St. Patrick’s Day at Mulligan’s, one of Logan’s four bars.
Mulligan’s is on the corner diagonal to Café Ibis, off Church Street and Federal Avenue. The other three places a thirsty student can go to if they want to drink in Logan are The White Owl, Sultan’s Tavern or The Fraternal Order of Eagles (FOE).
Nutrition major and Cache Valley native Angelee Hancey said she has to work on St. Patrick’s Day but might go out for a beer after work. She said she doesn’t think there are a lot of people in Logan that go out to bars compared to other places.
“I like the social aspect of it, I really enjoy playing drinking games with my friends and I also really like beer,” Hancey said. “My Mormon friends are pretty cool about it, they don’t do it, but they don’t look down on me for doing it.”
Recreation resources management student Ryan Baum said a lot of his Mormon friends are the people who drink with him the most. He said his favorite bar in Logan is The White Owl.
“I may have to go and have a green beer on St. Patrick’s Day actually. I’m always down for a celebration,” Baum said. “The bar scene in Logan is lacking, it sucks. The establishments themselves are just loathsome.”
Farrukh Malik, kitchen manager and bartender at The White Owl, said St. Patrick’s Day is one of their busiest parties.
The White Owl: Burger and a Big Dog
The beer-only bar offers liter mugs of domestic draft beer called “Big Dogs” for $5. On Thursday the beer will be colored green with food coloring. Malik said they usually sell a lot of Killian’s Irish Red and Guinness Draft Pub Cans also.
“Killian’s Red is giving away a trip to Ireland,” Malik said. “Tell the students to come in, we always treat them great and we’ll treat them even better on St. Patty’s Day.”
David England, a senior majoring in environmental studies at USU, said his favorite place to go is The White Owl because there are more activities to do than just sit and drink, like playing pool or darts.
The White Owl is on Center Street just west of Main. The facade is illuminated by a bright white sign that shows off the building’s melange of different colored bricks – remnants of the two aging properties that were combined to make The White Owl.
“I’d rather go there during the summer time so you can sit on the patio, that’s another awesome thing about The Owl,” England said. “It’s cooler because up there you can just grab your burger off the grill and fix your burger.”
Malik said the White Owl offers a burger and a “Big Dog” special for $8 to $10 every Tuesday. In the summer time customers tend to flock to the upstairs outdoor patio with its own set of beer taps and chefs who prepare burgers on an open grill.
Mulligan’s: The DNA Couch
“I think the bar scene is pretty lame here if you ask me, coming from a big city,” Harris said, after moving to Logan from Dallas. “Although, I do love that we don’t stay open ‘till two o’clock in the morning so I can get home.”
Harris said she bartends at Mulligan’s to pay for tuition and support her kids while she is in school. She said the owner hires “cute chicks,” which causes the male-to-female ratio in the bar at a given time to be about 10 to 1.
Every other Saturday, Mulligan’s hosts a hip-hop deejay that plays music on the second floor loft, Harris said. The high walls of the bars interior are lined with aging liquor and beer signs that are strategically placed in awkward places. When the deejay is not there, the relic of a jukebox plays blues tunes while blue-collar folks belly up to the bar to imbibe boilermakers and mixed drinks.
“I wouldn’t say we have a typical crowd, it’s a total dive-bar, there’s an inch layer of dust on everything. It still smells like cigarettes from when you could smoke in here. The whole floor is sticky, the chairs stick to the floor,” Harris said.
On weekends, with two or three ladies behind the bar, Harris said there is a younger group of people. The bar gets packed and takes on a completely different feel from the slower weekday evenings.
Sometimes the place gets out of hand, Baum said. One night after last call, he said he witnessed a bar-clearing brawl that consisted of about 20 intoxicated men and women.
Harris said she has seen several crazy things happen while bartending at Mulligan’s.
“We’ve caught some people having sex upstairs on the couch, we call it the DNA Couch – pretty gross,” Harris said. “I’ve caught somebody in the bathroom too.”
Sultan’s Tavern: Hotel California
Sultan’s Tavern is another beer-only bar, located on Main St. near 200 South. England said he’s been there a couple of times and has noticed an “older” crowd. He said his favorite quality of Sultan’s is that it offers live music.
On weekend nights the bar charges a $5 cover for bands like the one that was playing last Saturday. Several women shrugged off their 9 to 5 weekday worries and danced the night away to songs like “Hotel California” and “The Pompatus of Love.”
“We try to make it a fun place for everybody,” said bartender Tony Hill. “The crowd really depends on the band. We get a decent college crowd.”
The FOE: Members Only (Except on Band Nights)
On a night when the FOE is the venue for several bands, like this past Saturday, the 210-capacity club costs students $5 to enter. Otherwise, past president Clint Crockett said having membership, or knowing somebody who does, is required to get in.
Anybody can join the charity-driven club for an initial fee of $58 and a subsequent annual fee of $38.
“We have six major charities that we raise money for, such as the Heart Foundation, diabetes and seeing-eye dogs,” Crockett said. “Then, we pick charities every year. This year it’s Primary Children’s Hospital.”
Crockett said there are some USU students who are members of The F.O.E. The membership has gone from an older crowd to a younger crowd and on an average weekend night there will be about 75 to 125 people there.
He said he’s thinking about leaving because nowadays younger people don’t seem to care about giving to charities. Every now and then he said he has to kick out people who get bad tempers when drinking alcohol.
England said people complain about the bar scene in Logan but it’s not that bad. He said he moved here from Illinois because there was less trouble here.
– dan.whitney.smith@aggiemail.usu.edu