When demand dries up, changing what you supply is smarter than, say, convincing customers they can just ram their VHSs into their DVD player, or their DVDs into their neighbor's unprotected wireless network. Now, a dance-club man's giving downtown a dive: O.E. Penguin, soft-open now, grand-opening this weekend
Sequestered right above Dr. Bell's, Penguin's from an ex-Seven partner, an attorney who felt that while the nightclub scene was dying, the cozy boozing scene was masturbating its way into puberty; the spot's accessed via a hardly marked beveled glass door and 29 subsequent steps, after which you'll enter a space efficiently decorated with neon sign-peppered corrugated steel paneling, eight flat-panels, a game room (pool table/Boxer/Golden Tee), and a patio-style room where chairs face windows overlooking Main. The bar's stocked with mission-fulfilling standbys (six taps/12+ bottles from Shiner to YellowBelly), and prices are lower than fair, with $3 drafts/wells/rotating shots from opening-11pm; for bonus inebriation, 10 arctic-bird-themed table taps will pour 64oz servings of a rum/vodka punch, possibly to be called "Penguin Puke" -- also the audience reaction to Danny DeVito in Batman Returns. The dive-apropos menu (cheese sticks, chicken wings/tenders, burgers...) will feature a buffalo chicken hoagie and a pepperjack-meatloaf sandwich dubbed "Jo Mama's" (hopefully it's fat, not ugly)
As for the "O.E.": it actually stands for "One Eyed", and in keeping with that, there's a foam penguin suit with one peeper ripped out, on hand for anyone to don during the course of the evening -- prompting routines for which demand will dry up very, very quickly.
