A drunken Saturday night at Koronet

I arrive at Koronet just after 12.30am on Saturday night.

I order a slice and sit at the bar along the wall.

A group of freshmen come in for a mid-game refuel. One girl is wearing the ever-classy yoga pants with tight crop top as going-out attire.

They eat their slices quickly and passionately, then talk among themselves. As they walk out the door, I hear a loud exclamation: “All right – we can go! But we need to get hammered first.”

A group of male and female freshman rowers meet outside the door and lovingly share the pizza slices a compatriot brings out to them. They drunkenly sway as they eat: one falls into the door as he tries to take a bite.

I hear my friend’s voice from outside the door: “Oh my god, you are SO blackout.”

A group of two women and one man sit seriously at a table near me and are deep in discussion. Bad boyfriends, seemingly dead-end jobs and hopeful futures are the topics of conversation.

It’s surprising how many non-Columbia people are here. I would expect far fewer normal people and far more students.

The woman next to me is now drunkenly ranting, with slightly slurred words, to her friend about her current boyfriend. Apparently he recently revealed to her that in the past, he did things with people of his own gender. After a while she calms down. “He says over there it’s not weird.”

Two friends I earlier saw standing outside the door come in and see me. One is drunk, the other sober. The drunk one grabs my pizza and starts devouring it. “I am a mean drunk,” she says.

I tell them that I’m writing a story for The Tab, and they, intrigued, sit down to join. The sober one wants to be my scribe.

Two gay men excitedly tell each other stories — hand gestures are flying. Mid-story, one paws at the buttons of the other’s jacket as if trying to take them off.

Now, two sober jazz musicians sit next to me and my two friends, discussing the sketches they have been practicing all night.

It’s interesting to notice how savage people’s faces become in the moment before they bite their pizza. The animal in all of us, I suppose.

At this point the drunken friend chimes in. She has now finished my/her pizza and is making plans. “We should go to Mel’s, get hammered and then come back for you to write this!”

I seize the notebook at this point, for I can’t trust my scribe to accurately capture the glory I’m witnessing.

A group of three women, all suspiciously blonde, rush in together and brush past me and the line. One goes into the bathroom. Another grimaces and crouches with crossed legs and exclaims loudly because she has to pee very badly. My friends and I burst with laughter.

1.21am update — A new, younger, more Columbian crowd has replaced the older residents. The vibe is much livelier, happier and perhaps (in retrospect, undoubtedly) drunker.

A sad freshman girl with too much bra showing beneath what is honestly a summery dress uses a picture as excuse to talk to a tall, bearded guy, who is presumably a basketball player. I’m embarrassed on her behalf.

Now there is a detailed and impassioned conversation about Instagram possibilities happening between a group of girls just in front of me.

More of my friends now come in and join the group already seated. They are, indecipherably, wearing makeup and pajamas.

“If you wear the trench coat, you can only see like seventeen dinosaurs.” – frosh rower trying to make one of my friends feel better about wearing pajamas to the bar.

“I literally have the urge to rip all her hair out.” – dinosaur pajama girl after a drunken female (who I do not know) walked up and asked me if I had an ID she could borrow for a friend. Her friend did not look a thing like me.

My friends at this point decide to leave and head next door to Mel’s.

At the next table a group screams “SHAKE WEIGHT!” as one of them puts parmesan on her slice.

Drunken women, giggling and hiccupping, have a pizza-eating photo shoot.

Guy at next table calls friend on his phone. “Yo, I have something funny to tell you but I can’t tell you until you are high…(pause)… okay, I’ll text you.”

I am getting ready to leave, but am stopped as I walk out the door by another group of friends. I wander back in to hear one last, phenomenal quote.

One girl with the group tells me that in the past, she has brought strangers from bars to Koronet so they would buy her pizza before they hooked up, and then left them there, sneaking out while they were distracted.

“I’ve done some stupid shit at Koronet,” she says in summation.

I think that nicely summarizes the night.