A spot for late-night eats. The place to be on Taco Tuesday. The best jukebox in town. A snobby hipster bar of the mid 2000s.
The Whig, a beloved underground dive bar on Columbia’s Main Street, has been all of these things, and more, over the last 17 years of operation. That comes to an end by the end of this year, when the bar will lose its longtime location just steps from the state’s Capitol — after the building’s owners didn't renew the Whig's lease as renovation plans for a hotel ramp up.
“Seventeen years is a long time," said owner Phill Blair, adding that the Whig would probably be there another 17 years if the situation was different. Blair took over the spot from the original owners, Constantine Pournaras and Jonathan Robinson, in 2006 after working there since the bar’s opening a year prior.
The longtime establishment was on Main Street before the area was what it is today.
When Blair started working at the dive bar in 2005 as it first opened, he lived above The Nickelodeon movie theater on Main Street in a two-bedroom apartment that cost him $500 a month.
Now, rent and business on Main Street look much different. When The Whig opened, it was one of the few things open in the area, which consistently became a ghost town after offices closed for the day.
“Main Street was sort of deserted after 5 p.m. until recent years,” said City Councilman Howard Duvall, who’s lived in the city since the early ‘80s. “The nightlife has increased a lot with good restaurants and good places for partying. The Whig was usually the last stop before you went home.”
When Blair and his business partner, Will Green, announced on The Whig’s Facebook page that they’d soon be shutting their doors after almost two decades in business, the community was devastated, but has responded by flocking to the bar in support. Blair said the bar has had about 50 percent more business since making the announcement that it would close.
The Whig wasn’t always the institution it is today nor the inviting place that it is today. So just how did the spot that was once known to be a little intimidating and cliquish become so well-known and loved among so many in Columbia?
Mid 2000s hipster dive bar
Through an ordinary stairwell, one emerges into the dimly lit, cramped bar that is The Whig.
In its infancy, cigarettes were smoked inside the downstairs bar and musicians frequented the spot. The spot was much more “dive” than it is now — drawing a smaller, more eclectic crowd.
Throughout its nearly two-decade run, the spot has played host to local musicians, held hundreds of Taco Tuesday nights (for many years, tacos were 50 cents on Tuesdays) and served favorite menu items like pizza, veggie burgers and more.
Even though many love the bar’s menu, it took a couple of years for the spot to find its groove in the kitchen — now featuring well-known menu items like their smoked gouda mac n’ cheese and tater tots.
“It was like, you know, if you got more than five tickets up at once you're gonna ... get slowed down, but once (Blair and Green said), 'We need to streamline how the kitchen works and … (that made) their jobs less of an unbearable task at times,’” said Matty Brouwer, a longtime bartender at the spot.
Changes to the menu and kitchen weren’t the only shifts for the spot. During its first couple of years, Blair said some people perceived it as a “snobby hipster bar” and that he’s worked over the years to change that notion.
A few years ago, Blair and Green started to put an emphasis on greeting people at the door and guiding them to the bar or showing them a table, a move they said helped make the atmosphere less intimidating.
"You don't want to cater just to one person and you don't want to do stuff that's off-putting," Blair said. "We would do live shows and people would be like 'Oh, that was the best.' It's like that was the best — if you feel comfortable being in an extremely cramped basement with music you might not understand."
Before the bar was popular among locals and downtowns politicians and white collared workers, it quickly became a haven for restaurant workers in the city looking to wind down with a drink after a late shift.
The bar at the end of Main Street offered late-night drinks and eats along with familiar faces like bartenders and cooks who had worked at various other Columbia institutions like New Brookland Tavern and Art Bar.
Blair worked at Art Bar before moving over to The Whig after his roommate, who also worked at Art Bar, invited him to come work there. And Brouwer worked at New Brookland before coming to the Main Street dive.
It’s part of the reason why the closure is so difficult, multiple former and current staff members said.
Lauren England, a bartender at The Whig, started out as a regular at the spot. She was one of the many service workers who often stopped by the spot after her late-night shifts at Hickory Tavern. Eventually, Green invited her to join their staff one night.
“I was sitting at the bar and (Green) was like 'Do you want to maybe work here part time?' and I shrieked and I was like 'Yeah, absolutely,’” England said.
Becoming an institution
But as Main Street continued to grow, with businesses like Halls Chophouse opening across the street and Bourbon next door, The Whig’s popularity with those both in the service industry, and outside of it, began to grow.
Blair’s involvement in the creation and ongoing success of two popular Main Street events — Arts and Draughts, a quarterly downtown party that began in 2011 with live music and activities from the Columbia Museum of Arts, and First Thursdays on Main, a monthly late-night restaurant event — were part of what made The Whig a place for the broader community.
Emily Wilson, a longtime regular, has been visiting the subterranean spot since the late 2000s and celebrated the night of her wedding at the bar. She said the bar’s commitment to supporting cultural and community events in the city is what makes it special.
“The Whig is more than a bar," Wilson said. "It's an institution. ... It's a gathering place for friends, but what it's done for the community around it, to me, is the most important thing."
Even as the bar prepares to close, owners have pushed community events like First Thursday on Main on their social media writing, “We've always strived (to) be bigger than the basement, get out (and) enjoy your City.”
Leaving a legacy
Despite the changes and growth in popularity of the bar, Blair said people often remember the version of the spot that existed when they first visited.
“To a lot of people, they think nothing has ever changed in there and even like seeing some of the reactions since the news has come out, people are like, 'Oh man, the best jukebox in town.' It's like, we carried that jukebox out of there almost two years ago,” Blair said.
Green said the bar had many different phrases — from the early days of figuring out a menu and struggling with finding a rhythm to the Taco Tuesday tradition to devising an actual cocktail menu. The most recent phase, following being shut down for over nine months because of the COVID-19 pandemic, has been the busiest and most successful, according to owners.
As The Whig has grown, so have the number of memories associated with the spot — from first dates to wedding parties crashing the spot (like Wilson’s) to celebrating holidays and community events at the bar.
Green, who has co-owned the spot since 2018, met his wife Eva Moore, former editor and writer for Free Times, when she came to the spot to interview him for the paper. Transmission Arcade Bar’s Joe Thacker, who previously worked at The Whig, celebrated his 21st birthday at the spot.
Brouwer remembers fondly dressing up for Halloween and decorating the bar for the holiday.
All these memories, and more, make the place so loved among locals and make it so much harder to say goodbye to.
“It's tough to lose a place that has sort of those cool memories for you, but you also get to savor those memories as well, right?" Green said. "A loss implies that there was something wonderful there that existed and you can't have the loss without having had that thing that you first loved.”
