Are Bars the New Universities?

Molly Wellmann owns two bars in Cincinnati—Myrtle’s Punch House and Japp’s Since 1879. Besides being a bartender and bar owner, Wellmann is a history obsessive. Much of her free time is spent researching, sometimes at the Cincinnati Mercantile Library, sometimes at the public library, learning what she can about the city’s ancient bars and barkeepers. She has a special fondness for the writer Lafcadio Hearn (who wrote for the Cincinnati paper, and whom Wellmann refers to as “a punk rocker of the 1870s”). She also admits to being something of a National Police Gazette junkie.

“I find stories about the liquor as intoxicating as the drinks themselves,” she wrote in her 2013 guide, Handcrafted Cocktails. “I love to learn the stories about where everything comes from. I always have.”

Last spring, she found a new way to share her passion. With local history buff and writer Greg Hand, and University of Cincinnati archivist Kevin Grace, the trio launched Stand-Up History, a series of short talks about local history—often revolving around the history of drink. The third event was held in late November. All have taken place at Myrtle’s Punch House. ...

Wellmann is by no means the first to bring mental elevation to the taproom. In 2014, a few New York University and Columbia students had a similar idea. “We wanted to share the knowledge and access to professors we’ve got in New York,” says Inbar Dankner, who was then a business student at NYU. “And we came up with this idea of doing it at local bars.”

They aimed high: their first event was to stage 50 hour-long lectures in 50 bars, all on one night, with topics ranging from neuroscience to music history to philosophy. Neither professor nor bar embraced the idea at first, she says. They had to convince the professors that people would show up and be attentive, and convince bars to close their doors to regular customers for a few hours one evening, with the vague promise that a cadre of new drink-buying customers would stream in.

Neither professor nor bar needed to worry. All 50 venues sold out within 48 hours of the event’s announcement; 5,000 curious drinkers filled the bars around the city that one night. (Tickets were free, but were reserved online in advance.) Afterwards, the organizers were deluged with emails from other universities and students wishing to stage similar events in their cities. ...