When I was a first year enrolled in the Great Conversation program, our class read Leonardo Bruni's "A Panegyric to the City of Florence." Bruni gave such effusive praise to the city's beauty and bravery that I found myself rolling my eyes after several paragraphs. However, my past three years at St. Olaf have made me realize that, well, the old Italian guy had a point.
When one truly loves something, they will sing its praises to anyone who is unfortunate enough to listen. And although I've never been to Florence and am not particularly fond of Leonardo Bruni, I feel as though I should imitate his efforts and write a paean to the cornerstone of every Ole's over-21 existence: the glorious dive bar that is Froggy Bottoms.
Oh, wonderful bar named after an amphibian! Your floor is sticky from spilled beer, dirty sneakers and popcorn, your tables are littered with crumbs and soggy napkins and you've probably had the same pieces of dried gum stuck to your chairs' bottoms since 1969. Speaking of the sixties, when's the last time your owners renovated you? You inexplicably have tie-dyed patches of cloth tacked onto your ceiling tiles – tie-dyed patches which my mother, a former Ole, probably stared at dizzily after a few too many and thought she had been transported to Woodstock.
I myself sometimes feel as though I am in a swamp. When the establishment gets crowded and sweaty and I am sandwiched between dancing girls and shuffling boys mouthing the words to "We Didn't Start the Fire," my peripheral vision catches sight of numerous cracked china frog effigies staring back at me with goggle-eyes, and I feel as though I'm part of nature's food chain. I am brought back to earth when someone passes me and trips, spilling their drink down the front of my shirt. Suddenly, a swamp seems much less messy than my current surroundings.
Oh, magically expanding bar! Although you are easily filled to capacity, chances are that a friendly security guard will open a back door to a hidden room or a balcony, allowing admission to the ever-increasing line of patrons – all who have homework or an 8 a.m. class the next day are lined up on the street like lemmings. Although these students do not want to run off a cliff like their rodent counterparts, they do share a similar group-think mentality: to get ridiculously drunk on a school night.
Oh, Froggy Bottoms, where the alcohol is flowing and the karaoke is horrible! Every Thursday night, I can be sure of several things. First, your dank depths will be crowded with drunken Ole seniors. Second, I will recognize almost every person in the room.
Week after week, it's the same crowd – the inebriated girl spilling cleavage from her low-cut dress and Miller Lite from her plastic cup onto the shoes of the eager lacrosse player who wants to take her home, the juniors nursing their first beers and the squirrelly gang of Carleton boys thrashing their lanky bodies to "Fergalicious" while slyly eyeing the St. Olaf girls shimmying at their sides.
The male athletes in the room – football players, lacrosse players, etc. – never use cups. Instead, they sip from the sides of their pitchers like I do when I'm drinking my morning mug of coffee. (Except I sure don't drink that much coffee, nor could I ever swallow such large gulps.)
What wonderful friends I have made at Froggy Bottoms, nearly every one as disposable as a plastic Solo cup and forgotten soon after I finish my second gin and tonic! Single-serving Froggy's friends are easy to make and can be found in a variety of locations – mostly lines. The line to the popcorn machine, the line to the girls' restroom and the line to the bar are all great places to strike up conversations with strangers.
Numerous times, I have received warm, dizzy thanks from a girl after offering to hold her half-full pitcher of beer while she goes to the bathroom. She almost always refuses and will stumble into the stall, coming out five minutes later with an empty vessel in tow. (I have never understood this phenomenon – either this type of girl is very paranoid that I will drink her beer, or she is very, very thirsty. Or very, very intoxicated.)
Other times, casual chatter praising the buttery crunch of Froggy's popcorn will lead to a meandering conversation exploring the meaning of life. At the end, my new friends and I will hug and promise each other that we'll hang out in the near future. We'll never speak again.
Oh Froggy Bottoms, you are so comfortingly predictable! Every Thursday night, I am sure that I'll be handed two things by a friend: a sloshing pitcher and a microphone. I will most likely sing one of the ten (and only) songs that are sung at Froggy's every week, among them, Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer," Journey's "Don't Stop Believing," Spice Girls' "Wannabe," "Friends in Low Places" by Garth Brooks, "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond and anything by a boy band or Guns ‘n' Roses.
Occasionally, a testosterone-fueled bunch of boys will select a tune more fitting for a mosh pit than a crowd of drunken college students – something by Limp Bizkit or another unfashionably angry ‘90s group that faded into obscurity once the karaoke singers hit puberty. The crowd will groan, the bartenders will moan, but the solution will come five minutes later in the form of *NSYNC. Girls will cheer, guys will take larger gulps of their beer and all will be well once more in the world of Froggy's.
Oh Froggy Bottoms, you have treated me so well over the last two years! From you, I have gained the following: countless blurry evenings, tons of dirty laundry, an empty bank account, hung-over Friday mornings, 2 a.m. munchies and incoherent cab rides back to Ytterboe Hall.
My favorite memory, however, has to be that one perfect moment that every Froggy's patron experiences at least once: standing onstage with a microphone and 30 of the night's closest friends, squinting from the bright overhead lights while belting "Don't Stop Believing," and despite a looming paper deadline and ten chapters of "The Brothers Karamazov" to go by Monday, wishing with all your heart, mind and soul that graduation will never come.
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