Columbus Monthly / September 2011 / It's a bike! It's a trolley! It's Cycle Tavern!

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It's a bike! It's a trolley! It's Cycle Tavern!

 

Bar-hop cycling

While visiting family in Minneapolis, Dusty and Dayna Wymer heard about a bachelorette party that involved bar-hopping via a trolley-looking vehicle that actually rides like a bicycle.

Intrigued, they looked it up online and decided right then it was one of the coolest things they’d ever seen. So, the Lewis Center residents brought the same concept—called Pedal Pub in Minneapolis—to Columbus. Soon after, Cycle Tavern was born (cycletavern.com).

Here’s how it works: A Cycle Tavern driver steers while riders pedal, and although a handful of similar enterprises in other states permit passengers to drink onboard, Ohio law does not allow for such mobile imbibing.

The 16-seat cart, we guess you can call it, is 17 feet long, just over nine feet tall and eight feet wide. “It’s big,” says Dayna, whom we chatted with about the new business that recently debuted in the Short North and Arena District.

Where was this thing built? A company in the Netherlands built it. It was put onto a shipping container and came in through New Jersey. Then, it went onto a rail car to the south side of Columbus. We had to go and get it with a big tow truck.

How much did it cost to build? $40,000.

Is it a lot of work or is it fairly easy if the cycle is at full capacity? It’s easy to pedal. We recommend eight to 10 people. You can do it with six, but we don’t recommend it.

How much is it per person? About $25 per person for a two-hour tour and that’s with 16 people.

Do riders decide where they want to go and to how many destinations? Yeah, absolutely. We recommend three to five [destinations]. The group we had last weekend stayed about 15 to 20 minutes at each bar. If they want to spend more time at a bar, they would maybe hit three.

How far in advance is it to book? Twenty-four hours. It’s on our website, our online booking system. That’s just so we can tell our driver and make sure that he or she is available to work.

What happens if someone is too drunk onboard? We will actually talk to the person who reserved the bike and say, “Look, this person is not good to ride.” We might call a cab. We have a liability waiver, and part of it is a code of conduct. Your credit card will get charged a fee. Or for someone yelling swear words off the bike. We’ll say to the person, “I’ve given you a fair amount of warning.” There will be a fee and we’ll pedal back. We don’t want to create enemies [in the Short North and the Arena District], so we want to be a good neighbor.

 

Sports meets rock-and-roll

BBR, which stands for “Beer, Burgers and Rock,” filled in the spot vacated by Tyfoon (106 Vine St.) in early August. The new joint, described by co-owner Christopher “Chico” Garcia as a “high-end sports bar,” was gutted and features more than 20 oversized flat-screen TVs and a projector screen.

The interior has been transformed into a sort of byproduct of rock-and-roll and Ohio sports, with oversized black-and-white posters of Kurt Cobain and Madonna near giant logos of the Buckeyes, Browns, Crew etc. (Adds Garcia, “We also have Michigan stickers in all the toilets and urinals.”)

Additionally, the space, situated around a center island bar with a baby blue countertop, includes a deejay booth, a dance floor and an outdoor patio, which the owners plan to expand before the end of fall. As of now, no cover is charged at the 5,000-square-foot, 21-and-over establishment, but Garcia says that could change, and likely will for special events.

Twenty beers are on tap, such as Blue Moon and Goose Island’s 312, as well as the bar’s own specialty brew, which Garcia likens to Killian’s Irish Red. Happy hour is Monday through Friday from 3 to 8 pm, offering $2 domestics, $3 wells and imports, $4 wines by the glass and $5 specialty drinks.

 

News

Like a twirling wad of uncooked pizza dough, Mikey’s Late Night Slice is ever expanding. What started as a nondescript shack on High Street in the Short North has branched out to include North Campus, Grandview and even its own food truck. Starting Sept. 1, the enterprise, headed by Mikey Sorboro, will serve as the exclusive food vendor inside the Newport Music Hall, offering its menu of pizzas and original sauces. Sorboro and company also struck a partnership in August with the folks at Mozaik Lounge in the Arena District.

 

If Columbus Crew fanatics are good at one thing, it’s being loud. If they’re good at another, it’s their ability to organize. And that’s precisely what one supporters’ group, the Hudson Street Hooligans, is doing to try to save their bar, Hooligans (at the corner of Oakland Avenue and Summit Street), which, in late July, had its occupancy permit revoked by the city.

Co-owner Jon Winland says there seems to have been a mix-up. The state of Ohio originally granted the bar its liquor license, however, the city of Columbus recently deemed it to be in violation of certain codes. “We thought we were operating in accordance when apparently we weren’t,” Winland says.

In the meantime, he and his colleagues spent “a pretty penny” on a temporary license that allows them to operate on Crew game days while they wait to hear from the city what changes need to be made to their bar. “We’ll work through it,” he adds. “It ain’t the end of the world.”

—Ben Zenitsky