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St. Cloud State University
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Commentary
Homecoming not as wild as usual
By Leslie Andres
Published:
Monday, October 14, 2002
Leslie Andres -- Staff Essay
Ahhhh! Homecoming!
Kings, queens, princes and pincesses. Candidate games, football games, hockey games, volleyball games and soccer games.
Parades, entertainment and debates.
But above all, it seems like homecoming is about drinking. A sad, but true fact.
I am not a prude, of course. People who know me know that I do drink. People who know me also know that I can hold my liquor.
Ask Blair Schlichte, the assistant visuals editor of this paper, and she'll tell you I can drink "like a fish."
But it all seems a little excessive at times downtown during homecoming weekend.
If you are a regular downtown, you would know what I mean. Thursday nights, Friday nights and Saturday nights are usually the nights that downtown St. Cloud bars get their most customers.
Go down any of these nights and you are bound to bump into people you know. It almost seems like everybody and their cousins are out there.
Then there's also the flashing going on after bar hours on homecoming weekend.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of beads change hands in the course of a night, as women willingly expose themselves to get a hold of this "precious" commodity. Scenes reminiscent of Mardi Gras and Bourbon Street in New Orleans, La., are the norm downtown, especially on Saturday night of homecoming.
But a funny thing happened this weekend. There was almost nothing of the sort this weekend.
I was out just before midnight on Thursday night, scoping out the scene, making sure that there was nothing happening downtown that the University Chronicle should cover.
But the place was more like a ghost town than anything. It was not the usual Thursday night scene I am used to in St. Cloud.
For a while, I wondered whether I had stepped into a time warp and somehow got transported back in time. Or perhaps I was stuck in a parallel dimension, hitherto unknown to me.
Don't get me wrong, there were people out. But I've seen more people downtown on a regular Thursday night, much less homecoming Thursday.
Friday night was only marginally more crowded than Thursday. This time, I was out drinking with friends, so I guess we contributed to the numbers. But still, so few people on a weekend? It was incomprehensible to me that a weekend night on homecoming week could see so few people out in the bars.
It all came back to normal, or almost normal, on Saturday night. People were packed into the bars like sardines in a can. I was at the Red Carpet and there were times when I thought I would be crushed to death.
And there were long lines of people waiting outside every bar, hoping to get in before last call.
But still, it wasn't as crazy as it has been in the past.
I left a little after midnight, but from what I gathered from my friends, there wasn't the usual madness anywhere downtown that night.
For instance, there was no flashing. Not that they noticed anyway. Of course, they could be wrong and just missed it altogether.
But homecoming was still a blast. I enjoyed the week, despite the fact that the football team and the men's and women's hockey teams lost their games Saturday. (Saturday was not a good day for me.)
Sadly, though, this will be the last homecoming for me. I graduate at the end of the semester and will be heading home almost immediately.
And being from a country that is literally on the other side of the world, I don't think I will be coming back here soon. Maybe later on in my life, after I make my millions. Whether my visit will coincide with homecoming remains to be seen.
Maybe I will, though, if only to see whether people are as crazy as usual.
