Public House or Evening Bar?

After less than a semester, the Cambridge Queen’s Head Pub has found its place in the Harvard social calendar: Need a place to start off a sodden evening of drinking? Your rowdy, cheap-drink paradise is just a 10-minute line and several days (until the weekend) away.

The pub ought to have heralded a new era for Loker Commons, the formerly little-used space under Annenberg. The Pub designers certainly perfected the rustic ambiance, the historical allusions, and the menu, with prices that are quite right.

Only its implementation has been seriously flawed. The Queen’s Head, which calls itself a “public house,” instead of providing a common space for students to relax and hang out, study or socialize, is a strict booze-up venue. Its limited opening hours—only Friday and Saturday evenings this semester (and Wednesday through Sunday evenings next fall)—mean that the “Pub” inevitably only ever attracts the rowdy late-night drinking crowd, as opposed to the stressed student, (probably under the drinking age), looking for a place to study or relax with friends. Fortunately there’s an easy fix: open its doors during the day, and let it become a common space that also serves alcohol, instead of a space solely aimed at noisy beer-guzzling.

The current plan was modeled too heavily on Loker’s old 2005 “Pub Nights,” which featured live music, cheap food and drink, and was a fun place to party. Those events are valuable, but they shouldn’t be the pub’s raison d’être. The Queen’s Head has simply become the backdrop for such nights, albeit more frequently than in 2005. It remains mostly empty the rest of the time because of this party-night image. It’s true that there may be an additional costs associated with longer hours, but the additional revenues would cover some of those costs, and the added benefit to students is worth the slight cost that may be incurred.

With a warm and comfortable environment, the Pub could become a fixture more akin to the Lamont Café than a final club with strict rules. This area currently fosters a rather unique café culture at Harvard, where one can go to people-watch, commiserate over papers, and encounter long-lost friends.

If the pub were open, students could head over to the Queen’s Head after class, catch up on reading, meet up with some friends, grab some dinner and a pint of 1636, and chat the night away.

The Queen’s Head is not only one of the largest common spaces on campus, it is centrally located with regard to academic buildings, and offers a host of specifically designed amenities to attract students throughout the day. With the College’s great need for common social spaces, The Queen’s Head could serve as the hub for student life.

The administration and students involved in the pub’s conception should be praised. It’s certainly an excellent addition to Harvard night life. But students—especially upperclassmen—have many places to relax in the evenings. Libraries are some of the only common spaces for students on campus, during the day. The Cambridge Queen’s Head Pub is an opportunity to change the entire culture at Harvard for the better, and it should be used.

Joshua R. Stein ’09-’10, a Crimson editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Adams House.