Bars.   The one lingering perk of turning 21 left to American youths.   They’re the last legal distinction of maturity.

As many of us spend the bulk of our earliest bar-trolling years in Walla Walla, the bar culture here provides a sort of template for many students’ first experiences with adulthood.

Senior Rosa Brey summed up her coming of age experience in Walla Walla with one simple exclamation:   “It was awesome!   The Green!”

According to Jennifer Ellison, a bartender at the bar, The Green loves Whitman students back.

“I think that Whitman students mingle quite well with everybody,” said Ellison.   “Most of the time I don’t even know that they’re Whitman students.   Until they come in on a 50 days until graduation night and I’m like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that you went to Whitman.'”

The low key, conversational atmosphere of The Green often draws students looking to get away from campus and have the opportunity to “meet non-Whitties.”

“It feels like you’re getting off campus even though it’s really nearby. You can go for thirty minutes or two hours,” said senior Celi Schoenike.

While The Green is known as the “Whitman bar,” there are other establishments in Walla Walla which offer a different atmosphere with different perks.

“The Green is the hot spot for Whitman and townie hookups, but the Blue is a lot more fun. It has better drinks and better prices. The Golden Horse karaoke, it’s not a bar but the alcohol that they serve there is really strong […] I’d say the Blue is the best place to get drunk. At the Green you can socialize,” said senior Charlotte “Charlie” McKiver.

But for McKiver, the best bar in Walla Walla is Barnaby’s. McKiver said that the bar is generous in their shot sizes.

Socialization seems to be the driving force that gets Whitman students out on the town.

“One of the cool parts about the bars here is that there’s a decent mix of people,” said junior Joe Gustav. “You don’t have to party with the same people you always see, you can just go to a bar and run into townies and that’s kind of fun.”

Students’ best times at bars are often inspired by interactions with the people of Walla Walla.

Schoenike gleefully recalled a wedding she witnessed at Barnaby’s where everyone from the mini-skirted bride to the heavily inked groom and guests were downing drink after drink and becoming rowdy.

Other students enjoy their encounters with generous and friendly folks.

“In the bar this one guy mistook one of my friends for Townes van Zandt, the deceased songwriter, and started buying him drink after drink. That was at The Green,” said senior Danny Crytser.

One student, who wishes to remain anonymous, goes out to bars to meet people from Walla Walla to broaden her social repertoire.

“My bar nights are by far my favorites because they always end in encounters with awesome townies,” she said. “I once bought three games of Beirut in order to impress this townie I was trying to hookup with […]we all got too drunk to play but wanted to take the pitchers with us so we ended up going around the back way and handing them over the fence and we took them with us.”

Though some debauchery is bound to ensue while out drinking in Walla Walla, Ellison at The Green insists that Whitman students are some of her most polite patrons.

“Whitman students don’t stay really late.   They generally come in around 9 and leave by midnight. If anything they are the mellow kids in the bar here,” she said.

But Emily Stone, a bartender at Fat Cat’s, a bar with a typically older crowd than The Green’s, had a different opinion of Whitman students.

“I’ve lived here my whole life and you can just tell when Whitman students come in. They’re rowdier,” said Stone.