There are many ways to celebrate the Super Bowl, but it’s pretty much a universal law that they all involve chili. With that said, the line has to be drawn somewhere—and it’s here:

We suspect that the main ingredient is gin.

Does 1020 even have a kitchen? And if so, what’s it being used for the other 364 days of the year?

The life of a second-semester senior is usually pretty relaxed—we’re nearing the time of year when you realize that you’ve wrapped up your major requirements and now are pursuing a concentration in 1020. But alas, these hazy, lazy days will soon come to an end, and there’s no better wake up call than an alarming email from the straight-outta-the-nineties-named Student Affairs Graduation Zone with the all-caps title “ARE YOU PLANNING TO GRADUATE THIS MAY? If so read this!” Yep, they realize that after seven semesters here you only read about 4% of your emails anymore. But there is useful information to be had here, and in order to prevent you from having that awkward conversation with your folks about how you forgot to actually “Apply for the Degree” and can’t leave, we’ve pasted the email below. Hey, it may be useful, and then you can get back to your daydrinking.

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It's a good thing sex isn't this complicated

Some times the devil is in the details. Other times its in the name.

Girl 1: Where’s 1020?

Girl 2: On Amsterdam somewhere…

Girl 1: Like, where? It’s a pretty long street….

Girl 2: I don’t know… I’ve never been there before.

Bwog recommends brushing up on your celestial navigation before setting out on this evening’s escapades to protect yourselves from the same fate as these unfortunate souls.

Fancy looking device via Wikimedia Commons

Be on the lookout for the November and December issues of The Blue & White, on campus this week everywhere you look in Butler. As we always have done, Bwog will honor our heritage/amorous affair with our mother magazine by posting features from the upcoming issue. Below, Tom Humphreys asks a very important question: who chooses the movies at 1020?

Illustration by Louise McCune

A man walks into a bar in which a bad movie plays on several TV screens. Thirty minutes later, he freezes. “Wait…why are they playing Donnie Darko? Wait, wait, wait, that’s not Donnie Darko…why are they playing…the sequel to Donnie Darko?” This man is at 1020, where taste is relative and, perhaps, ultimately irrelevant.

The second favorite Morningside dive bar of the staff of The Blue & White (Tap-a-Keg takes the cake), 1020 has a tradition of favoring, shall we say, unorthodox cinema. Except for special occasions, the bar shuns traditional options such as Top Gun or baseball. Whether screening the atypically cerebral (Mulholland Drive), the disturbingly grim (Monster), the grotesquely violent (District 9), or the shockingly insignificant (Cuba Gooding Jr.’s direct-to-DVD works), patrons have come to expect, and even revere, the not-quite-irony of the screenings and their environs.

The reason turns out not to be as sinister as might be feared. Friday night bartender Thalia Dergham, CC ’12, explains, “Nobody ‘picks’ the movies at 1020. We simply pick a channel at the beginning of the night and usually leave it on unless something particularly disturbing comes on, even though usually when that happens we leave it on anyways.” She recalls Silence of the Lambs and The Lovely Bones as two—ahem—favorites. “The bartenders usually don’t know what is play- ing, because their backs are turned to the screens, so it’s a bit useless to ask them,” Dergham explains with a laugh. It appears that the randomness of 1020’s lineup is, indeed, random.

Just because the selection is governed by serendipity doesn’t mean that there is no accountability. 1020 lore has it that one Wednesday this semester, an uncensored porn movie ran for almost ten minutes. Eventually a middle-aged woman inquired at the bar. “I just wanted to see how long it would last,” the bartender replied.

Editors note: Last night Bwog was intrigued and disturbed by the insane samurai movie playing at 1020. If you have any information about this film, please email tips@bwog.com

Sorry buddy, no party here.

Always striving for topicality and curious as to whether 1020 would be offering a little something special on the date with which they share their name, we conducted the following, very brief interview:

1020: Hello, 1020, how may I help you?
Bwog: Hi, I was wondering if you’re doing anything special beause it—
1020: No.
Bwog: You’re not?
1020: No, we’re not.
Bwog: But this only happens once a year…
1020: We’re having happy hour from 4 to 7.

Sorry folks. Enjoy happy hour.

To the lad that fellow ale-sipper-cum-tipster Amanda Gutterman spotted last night: That splitting pain in your head is actually from 1020′s massive front window that you plowed into.

Apparently he was just "jokingly smashing his head" into the window

1020 groupies rejoice! That booth where you had one too many tinis is now famous. The latest prep school misfits movie, The Art of Getting By, stars Emma Roberts (the one from Aquamarine—which maybe made you tear up that one time) and the Wes Anderson look-alike from the trippy version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Isn’t it terrifying when kids in children’s movies get old?

Anywho, The Art of Getting By looks kinda sucky. But fast forward the trailer to 1:47 and check out where the happy couple is spinning?! Our very own 1020. Fact: this could not happen in real life because Emma Roberts’ pretty little head would be impaled by a dart.

And you may recall that Will Ferrell once freeze-frame peed in our favorite haunt. Basically 1020 is universally acknowledged as a dive bar. We’re weirdly proud.

If you haven’t already heard, uniformed policemen raided Campo and the Heights on Friday, and 1020 and Mel’s the following night. According to a sophomore, the cops entered 1020 at 12:30am and approached a group of students sitting at one of the front booths. “Can I see your fake IDs? Let us see your fake IDs,” the policemen allegedly demanded.

“The weird part,” the anonymous tipster continues, “was I didn’t even really see anyone from school. It looked like mostly grad students and older folks, maybe a handful of seniors. I left immediately, taking my drink with me.” A Mel’s drinker, who stuck around for the police raid, witnessed the cops lead a few students away. According to another tipster, at least three undergrads at 1020 received court summonses.

In their article, “Students surprised to see police checking IDs at popular bars,” (pithy, guys!) Spec talked to the Heights manager. He comments that though the cops’ arrival was “random,” the police have stopped by for surprise visits about 4 times a year. Bwog posted about a 1020 sting two short years ago. Correlation doesn’t imply causation, but perhaps last week’s intercepted package influenced the timing.

Ok, so what does this all mean? Can you still count on the kindness of bouncers/your cleavage? Will this make the EC, Heights or Campo decision less daunting? Or maybe you should just reconsider your ID-Ology—The Blue and White’s 2010 Orientation issue produced a series of bar trading cards, featuring all the local joints where your questionable plastic is typically (!) accepted without question. They’re a great way to waste 20 minutes of your life and test your local drinking lore.

The basement of the West End. Photo via Wikimedia

Sometimes, fresh-people, in a seminar, or at a party, someone will reference something that used to exist and doesn’t anymore, and you will have to nod your head or laugh knowingly. Ah yes, Morningside is like, so gentrified, you will say.

We asked alumni of The Blue and White and Bwog for places, events, and trends that once were and are no longer. Here’s your leg up.

• When at least some people on campus wore fleeces and baggy-ish jeans
• JJ’s at 4 AM (now open until 2 AM, was a bar when your dad went here)
• McIntosh Hall and the old WBAR studio in it
• Flashing, not swiping, your CUID to get into Butler
• A respectable 1020 (was once an upperclassmen bar before the West End became Havana, now your first NSOP stop)
• Shit in the McBain showers
• Arson in the McBain shaft
• Using AIM
• AmCaf
• The Village Pourhouse used to be Mona, a bar that was better than the Village Pourhouse. Before Mona, there was SoHa. Girls used to dance on the bar. “There would be massive drunken dancing,” one alum whispered over GChat, “and then you’d just start making out with random decent-looking girls.”
• CoBag (Columbia Bagels, open 24/7. Bwog editors coined the ‘Morningside Heights Happy Meal’: a 40 and bagel at 3 AM)
• “I once saw a rat in Ferris”
• The West End basement when Lil’ Jon was popular (fabled Columbia hangout of everyone, ever, including Obama and Jack Kerouac, with fantastic burgers and lots of beer pong)
• Creepy Wein doors that had horizontal slats at the top (for oxygen, we believe)
• The yearly letter Foner would write to Spec explaining that he is not a Gyllenhaal
• The old Westside
• Good Spec reporting (MEALAC!)
• Vampire Weekend performing at ADP and St. A’s
• CUCommunity (offered a share in Facebook, but they turned it down. Bummer!)
• Manhattanville protests
• 40′s on 40 without the playpen and drink tickets

We hear Campo has been a real shitshow (always the fresh-person word of choice to describe anything) the last few nights. Explore your other options, limited as they may be, with bar trading cards, originally posted in last year’s Orientation Blue & White. Have fun post-gaming your Intrepid party! Illustrations by Stephen Davan. Click to enlarge.

Media Luna Mexican Deli did not fare so well.

The Health Department is, as of this summer, requiring that every restaurant in New York display the letter grades they most recently received for cleanliness.

This is a nightmare for everyone; it’s rare that any restaurant will sneak away with no health violations. The grades will be assigned during the next year, when the Health Department conducts its next rounds of inspections. The grades will be issued as follows: 0-13 points gets an A, 14-27 a B, and 28 and above a C. You know, like Calc II. This numbered rating system, however, is due to be made more lenient (after all, who cares about burned-out lightbulbs?) before the letter grades are assigned so the correlation between numbers and letters isn’t accurate just yet.

In the meantime, that Health Department has created a website that lists the violations of every restaurant in the city after their most recent inspection. The results from Morningside are occasionally surprising (Hewitt/John Jay) and generally terrifying (there are mice everywhere). Here’s a list of the most popular Columbia restaurants and bars. We note when they were most recently reviewed and pick their most notable violations. Individual links don’t work, but if you want to go through every single one of them, go here for 10025 and here for 10027 and start clicking. These restaurants will probably maybe get their shit together in the next year so that they don’t get big old fat B’s in the window once the next round of inspections starts. We can but pray.

• As of February 23rd, Deluxe, blissfully, has a mere 5 points for its plumbing (which a friend of Bwog’s may be partially accountable for, as she got her pregnancy test stuck in the toilet. Whoops!) Mill Korean has 2 points for plumbing.
• Brownie’s, you are angelic. 0 points as of last September.
• Vareli and Maoz each have 2 points, Maoz because it does not have an “immersion basket.” Noobs!
• As of January, Koronet has a dazzling, sparkling 4 points for plumbing. The Heights also has 4 for mysterious pesticide use as of January.
• Law School’s Lenfest has 7 for bad toilets as of last November.
• Cafe East also has 7 as of May for improper cold food storage.
• Cafe 212 has 8 for inadequate lighting improper “non-food contact surface” construction. So, phew. Last inspected last September.
• As of last August, Symposium has only 5 points, even though the food sometimes tastes like it has been bathed in chlorine.
• After a rough 62 violations in June 2009, Campo bounces back with 4.
• Strokos has 9 violations as of January, one for cold food behind held above 41 ºF.
• Carleton Lounge in Mudd has 9 as of last December for evidence of mice.
• As of January, Dinosaur BBQ has 10 for bizarre internal food cooling/heating measures.
• Ferris Booth gets 12 as of last December for improper cold food storage.
• Lion’s Head gets 11 as of last February. “Evidence of mice or live mice.” Now it begins, friends.
• Thai Market has 14 as of March, for improper cleaning.
• As of May, Uris gets 14 for improper food surface cleaning.
• JTS: 15, for evidence of mice as of February.
• The Diana Cafeteria gets 14 as of April for improper cold food storage and undated or expired milk.
• Heartbreak: M2M gets 15 as of July, for evidence of mice, improper cleaning, “evidence of flying insects” and “inadequate personal cleanliness.”
• Butler Cafe got 18 in March for the thermometer rule and improper cold food storage.
• As of June 4th, Ollie’s also gets 15 for cold food held above 41 ºF and evidence of mice.
• La Negrita, or 999, or whatever, has 15 as of July 8th, but no mice!
• As of June, Taqueria has 17 points (coulda been worse) for cold food held above 41 ºF but no vermin!
• John Jay Dining Hall, the would-be mother of them all, got 18 last July for evidence of mice, rats and flying insects.
• As of last September, Columbia Cottage has 21 points for cold food storage and some weird problem with a thermometer.
• Le Monde was last inspected in April, and got 21 points for spoiled food. Fun fact: Bwog once found a caterpillar in our salad at Le Monde, but they were very nice about it.
• Cannon’s, which the Health Department spells “Gannon’s” gets 21 for improper handwashing, a bad bathroom, etc. Last inspected in March.
• Max Soha has 23 points as of January for mice, flying insects and improper food surface cleaning.
• Kitchenette got 23 last December for roaches and improper cold food storage.
• Some actually shocking news: Hewitt has 5 more points than John Jay, clocking in at 23 as of March, for food unprotected from contamination, improper thawing procedures, and improper lighting.
• Roti Roll, or “Roti Rill” according to the Department, gets a 25 (still not a C, right!) for flying insects and improper cold food storage. Inspected in July.
• Tom’s, last inspected in September 2009, gets 21 for the weird thermometer problem and improper cold food storage.
• Vine, inspected in March, stores neither hot nor cold food correctly, and gets a 22.
• As of March, Nussbaum has 23: evidence of mice.
• Faculty House, fanciest place in the 100-27, gets 25 for evidence of mice and improper storage or usage of sanitized equipment as of March.
• Havana Central has evidence of mice and spoiled food as of March; 24 points.
• Inspected in January, 1020 shocks and awes with 22 points for improper handwashing facility/toilet area.
• Hungarian: 22 points for evidence of mice and rats as of January.
• We knew Pinkberry was made of weird animals. Well, psych, but it is apparently made of unpasteurized milk, earning it a whopping 30 points.

More listings, while we’re at it: in the Princeton Review 2011 college listings, Columbia was listed as being in a “great college town.” Unclear if that’s Morningside Heights or New York, but you make your own guesstimate. The Princeton Review also ranked the Top 20 best college newspapers. Guess who’s missing?

Update: And we almost forgot Pinnacle—21 points as of February, for evidence of mice, milk improperly dated/expired.

The Blue and White investigates everything you left at the bar last weekend.

“It’s just like an Ivy League Eugene O’Neill play,” says Tim Monaghan of the trails of lost luxuries left behind weekly by Columbia students. While bartending 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., Monday to Thursday, Monaghan witnesses students leave behind everything from keys to computers after their “weekly performances of privilege and waste” at 1020.

“They leave some really nice stuff here,” explains Monaghan. “London Fog leather jackets, umbrellas you buy at Saks Fifth Avenue, expensive jewelry, oh you name it.” He spills a beer cup of keys onto the bar. “Where are they going without these?” he asks, holding up an electric car key. “And these, these are the best,” hey says, as he pulls out a stack of credit cards accumulated since New Year’s. A ring bejeweled with a diamond rose slips into his hand when he removes the rubber band-bound wad of plastic.

One of the most recurring left-behinds is the laptop — a sure sign a Columbian was here. “They never claim them,” sighs Monaghan, “they just don’t give a shit. We just send ‘em to the Salvation Army.” If the study aids seem out of place, they are aren’t the only necessities students leave behind. Bras, panties, prescription drugs, and birth control pills found in and outside the bar’s bathrooms form a collection of forbidden fruits hinting at the more passionate side of Columbia students’ weekends.

Monaghan leads the way into the back room, a veritable vault of the most treasured props left behind: a violin, a navy jacket that he insists is the sign of “a real military man,” and a pair of tennis shoes, among others. But even those pale in comparison to the back room’s pièce de résistance: “Someone forgot a friend once,” he claims. “We were cleaning up and he was asleep in the back couch. We didn’t even see him there.”

–Sarah Camiscoli
Interview by Daniella Urrutia

A film crew for a movie called “Homework” was spotted outside of 1020 today, scheduled to shoot from 6am to 11pm. You still have time to go see some movie magic being made and join the ranks of Will Ferrell and Marky Mark!

Photo by AK

The Morningside minutiae in our little Bubble Above 110th Street is what keeps us together. The tiny parts of our neighborhood that make it both boring and wonderful would seem trivial to anyone on the outside. Occasionally, we’ll be taking the time to share the minor details with you.

• The Entitled Sophomores indignantly note that the price of a Brooklyn Lager at 1020 has increased from $3 to $4, and blame it on imagined gentrification.
• Those Perpetually in Fear of Slipping need fear no more. The mats outside Butler have been upgraded to rubber ones with exquisite traction.
• The upgrades continue inside with Blue Java now filling your cup of coffee for you, while Butler Café hosts its own new vending machine.

You’ll have to find your $3 beer elsewhere, since our own 1020 is the set of the new Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg film, The Other Guys.  We expect that many fart jokes and and much “bromance” will grace the very boothes you’ll be lucky enough to sit in during the next twelve weeks; until then, 1020 is closed until Thursday.

More photos after the jump.

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