Walk down South 40th Street almost any weekend night and you\u2019ll likely see a growing queue of athletes, fraternity date night post\u2013gamers, and Kenn Kweder fans wrapping around the block. The light at the end of their tunnel is Penn\u2019s infamous watering hole Smokey Joe\u2019s. If you make it through the doors without getting a \u201cNot tonight\u201d from the bouncers, a small wooden staircase brings you up to a small wooden bar, with almost every available surface bearing scratched\u2013in messages and initials left behind by countless generations of Penn students. Smokes\u2019 has cemented itself as part of Penn\u2019s history as much as any on\u2013campus building, learning to change as students do without losing its familiar charm.<\/p>\n
Smokes\u2019 opened in 1933, but it was bought by Paul Ryan in 1952 upon his return from World War II. Since then, it\u2019s been kept in the Ryan family. Ryan\u2019s first move was hiring ten Penn football players as staff, a decision that has since grown into a tradition. Smokes\u2019 continues to employ ten Penn students as bouncers and bartenders\u2014a crucial aspect of its culture has become visiting your bartender friend or befriending the bouncers to avoid paying cover. Its close ties to the student body has earned it the nickname \u201cPennstitution,\u201d and its walls are covered with Penn images and memorabilia.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Penn alum Paul Ryan III has been working there since his freshman move\u2013in day at Penn. Ever since the bar was acquired by his grandfather, working to keep it alive is nothing short of a family tradition. He\u2019s had a bartender\u2019s\u2013eye view of the establishment since the 2000s, making him keenly aware of the era\u2019s social culture. Since then, he\u2019s helped the bar adapt to the ups and downs of the modern age. \u201cIt\u2019s a family business, so I\u2019ve been in one way or another since I was a teenager,\u201d\u00a0Ryan says. \u201cWhat\u2019s interesting is it\u2019s your neighborhood bar, but the neighborhood changes every four years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smokes\u2019 biggest setback this century was COVID\u201319, which caused the shutdown of many public spaces, including bars. The Ryans pinched pennies and scraped by, given a slight advantage due to the other local bars they own. But not all of University City\u2019s college bars were so lucky\u2014Cavanaugh\u2019s, Blarney Stone, and City Tap House all closed their doors permanently due to the pandemic, leaving Smokes\u2019 standing solo on South 40th. It would seems natural that Smokes\u2019 would be grateful for the dwindling competition, but according to Ryan, it harms both Smokes\u2019 and the neighborhood.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re the only bar left, people get really bored of you really quickly, and they\u2019ll go downtown or go to house parties,\u201d Ryan says. \u201cWhen you have a number of bars in the area, you can walk to different spots and go see people at different places.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smokes\u2019 post\u2013pandemic struggles have largely been social. Both new technologies and new regulations have changed Penn nightlife greatly over the years\u2014social media has made it easier to communicate where and when events are happening, but the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life now turns those groups away to meet the 100\u2013person cap. When asked about those changes, Ryan gives me the verbal equivalent of a shrug. What changed, he says, was not the number or the kind of students going out, but their behavior.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now bearing the burden of being Penn\u2019s only college bar, Smokes\u2019 has had to adapt as students\u2019 preferences change. The first large shift Ryan noticed was in drinking habits. \u201cDrinking has gone down a lot, and people won\u2019t go out as much during the weeknights,\u201d Ryan says. \u201cNational alcohol brands have seen sales dip big time. I think your generation is much more health conscious than past generations, especially in terms of drinking culture.\u201d Recent studies<\/a> have shown that not only are more college students abstaining from drinking (28%, up from 20% in the 2000s), but those who chose to drink consume less. Binge drinking among college students has decreased from 40% to 20% in that same period. While everyone has a few friends that seem to disprove these trends, this decline spells bad news for a bar. When faced with this issue, Ryan\u2019s solution was to find other reasons to get people in the door. They introduced specials like Quizzo and karaoke nights, which have now become Penn staples, and they also brought in student groups, like Penn\u2019s stand\u2013up comedy club Simply Chaos, to perform some nights. \u201cWe\u2019re pushing people to come out for an experience, not just to come out for booze,\u201d Ryan says.<\/p>\n The newest struggle Smokes\u2019 is facing is technological. Having attended Penn in the 2000s, Ryan III is internet\u2013age, getting the first glimpses of how modern\u2013day staples like cell phones and social media affect students\u2019 social lives. The biggest change is that of the \u201cvirtual third space,\u201d where people now have a way to see, talk to, and spend time with other people without leaving the comfort of their dorms. \u201cNow you can be in your room, technically alone, but instantly be attached and be a part of anything social going on,\u201d Ryan says. \u201cI gotta make it worth their while to get out of their room and go do something.\u201d<\/p>\n Ryan acknowledges that his statement comes from \u201cthe old curmudgeon\u201d in him and accepts that phones do come with social positives. They enable people to connect with others outside of their immediate vicinity, or turn one\u2013off bar conversations into lasting connections. But perhaps the most noticeable consequence of online social culture is the possibility of being recorded.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI was raised in the age of \u2018What happened at the bar, stays at the bar,\u2019 and you never talked about what happened at the bar the night before,\u201d\u00a0Ryan says. \u201c[If] I were your age, I\u2019d be worried that, at any moment, someone\u2019s gonna take a picture or video of me doing something stupid, and ruin my life.\u201d<\/p>\n While there are no easy answers to these changes, these shifts are also not necessarily things to be \u201csolved.\u201d For now, Smokes\u2019 will simply continue doing what it does best: providing a physical third space where students feel comfortable spending time and making new memories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Walk down South 40th Street almost any weekend night and you\u2019ll likely see a growing queue of athletes,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":["post-288701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}