It’s a Friday night and you want to go out, so you start at a fraternity house to pre-game and then head downtown for an evening filled with drunken shenanigans.You jump from bar to bar to find friends who conveniently move to a different bar once you get there. While you walk up and down the streets, you see people you never even knew went to UGA, but that’s half the fun of going downtown. It’s hard to believe that downtown hasn’t always been this way.

Back in 1992, “Downtown was usually popular from around 8 or 9 to 11:30 p.m. Then, everyone would go to the band parties at the fraternity houses. We were able to have big fraternity parties back then, and that was a big part of the social scene,” states alumni Kevin Shires.

Downtown Athens has changed immensely in the past twenty years, but what was the bar scene like when our parents went to the University of Georgia?

Were there lines of people waiting to get into Whiskey Bent? Or people late night eating at Eat Hibachi or little Italy? Not exactly.

Back in the early 1980’s, there were only about five main bars (excluding restaurants that did more in food).

When asked what the downtown scene was like twenty years ago, Robert Stroup, who graduated in 1985, recalls, “We did most of our drinking at frat parties, socials, and football games.”

However, Stroup comes back to Athens regularly and stated that “Yes, downtown Athens has changed extensively. Now there are crowds on the streets and in the bars.”

Unless you hit up power hour to get your $1 drinks, a well drink is usually $4. Back in 1983, it cost $1.50 for a mixed drink and only $1.25 to $2.75 for a pitcher of beer.

For college students in the 80s there may not have been “power hour,” but they did have other promotions such as “bars serving penny beers and drinks starting at a certain hour. It lasted until someone went to use the bathroom.” Shire commented, “It was disgusting.”

Nowadays, UGA students spread out to all different bars like Double Barrel, On The Rocks, or Generals, but back in the day, people usually had a certain bar they would go to each night of the week they went out.

While the bars may not still be the same as they were back in 1980 or 1990, Athens has kept a little piece of home for the alums by creating 8e’s bar and 9d’s bar.

Times are changing, but who says we can’t have a throwback night. Maybe pre-gaming at a bar and then going to a fraternity house until the wee hours of the morning isn’t such a bad idea.