Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: board games, Comics, dungeons and dragons, entertainment, geek bars, geek culture, Sam Bridgeman, The Side Quest

The Side Quest Geek Bar In Cleveland Is A Home Away From Home

Published Wed, 22 Oct 2014 18:00:00 -0500

by Hannah Means Shannon

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By Dylan Gonzalez

Cleveland already has some history with nerd culture, it being the home of a little known superhero named Clark Kent. In addition to being the origin of Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster, Cleveland (rather Lakewood, part of the Greater Cleveland Metropolitan Area) is now home to The Side Quest, a bar specifically aimed for a geek and nerd audience.

Located near the intersection of Wayne and Detroit Avenue in Lakewood, Ohio, The Side Quest is housed in the old Iggy & Eddy's location. The bar itself is small, shaped like a U to allow more space for tables. A number of TVs hang from the walls, usually set to a superhero movie or the Science Channel. A large shelving unit of board games is nestled in a corner.

Sam Bridgeman is one of the owners of the bar and, as I was in town, I got to sit down and speak with him about the Side Quest.

Dylan Gonzales: Tell us a little bit about yourself. What were you doing before Side Quest, where were you, etc.?

Sam Bridgeman: Well, as a person with a history degree that currently owns a geek bar, obviously my previous job was running a dog daycare. During the time that I owned the dog daycare, which was called Pawsitive Influence, I also wrote the blog called Every Bar In Lakewood. I went to every bar in Lakewood, had a beer and wrote about what happened there. I finished going to what was then every bar (there's now more including my own) in the beginning of June. I hit 60 of them. And as the blog, we helped sponsor a Doctor Who viewing party for the 50^th Anniversary last year, which is one of the founding points of when we decided to open a bar for geeks.

DG: So I guess that kind of answers my other question of what inspired the idea behind Side Quest?

SB: Well, that inspired us to know it could be a working thing. The bar happened because I wanted to go to it and it wasn't happening within 250 miles of here. We put it together a couple weeks in advance and we had 250 people show up. We sold out the Mahall's, a music venue and bar, and we also filled their bar to capacity with extra people who had come to see it. We even sold out all the food. But the geek bar idea really came as I was going to bar after bar after bar and I was never finding that bar that I could call
"my bar."

So eventually, I started thinking "Oh, we could have a hipster geek bar type of thing." Basically, the things that both my wife and I like. A place where you can actually talk to each other, where the music they are planning isn't that generic, where you can watch things on TV that aren't sports. A bar you can do things at you would normally be stuck doing just at home or going to a bar that has a specific geeky night on a Monday because they're just trying to fill the space instead of caring about the population.

DG: What was it like getting the bar up and running?

SB: Time consuming. I guess that's the big one. They always say, "It takes a lot of work to open a bar. It's going to take a lot of time." But now that I own a bar, I can say, you know what, it takes a lot of time. And it does take up all of your life. You just have to be okay with the bar being a key part of your existence. Then it's fantastic. But it was a lot of work.

Also, there was an extra amount of reward in the beginning that I don't think you get from opening other types of bars. That is, there was a public excitement. All my friends and their friends who are geeky people, or at least like certain things that I was going to offer, were so excited, like "How can I help?!" "I wanna come and paint!" And painting here was not fun. We got those textured walls, which means everything takes two coats, and it's not just like the normal paint two coats. We got the paint that's the primer and the paint for one and it was like, "Oh, that'll take no time." No, everything took at least two coats and getting into every nook and cranny. But they all just kept working hour after hour. Even after opening, it is rare that I don't have at least one person going "Thank you for opening a place where I can feel comfortable."

DG: Aside from being a hangout for geeks and a cool bar regardless, what's your ultimate goal for Side Quest?

SB: The Ultimate Goal?

DG: The Final Quest.

SB: You can't have a final quest! You don't have people who play Dungeons & Dragons and go, "That was the best quest I've done! It's over, we're not playing ever again!" No, you keep finding new things! But, I guess the answer you are looking for is that we are trying to expand. We want to own the building. Right now, we're leasing. We're going to add a private room to it. If we could take over this entire building, that would be great. If the time comes, where we can open new locations where we can have the right people so it's still a bar that cares for what it stands for and what we're doing, then we would do that. And if that didn't look like an option, then we wouldn't do that because the bar is more than just a place with alcohol and board games and food. I mean…great games, fantastic beer and amazing food. [Laughs] But it means a lot to people and I would only expand if it could mean a bigger audience.

DG: Essentially, you are offering a home away from home.

SB: Yeah.

DG: What's an average day like here at Side Quest, since you're not an average bar?

SB: People don't come in and ask to turn on the game. Everybody is always friendly. I think that's a big part of this place. Everybody, no matter what is going on, is always friendly to each other and us. When we open, I find cool stuff that's on TV, ranging from cartoons to whatever movies happen to be on at the time to anything else that interests me or whoever else is here. We get whatever new beers I found delivered and go over it with the bartenders that are working that day. Check in with the chef, who probably has some new food that he's concocted maybe just for that day. For example, the last couple days we've had Slurp 'N Burp, which is our Hamelot, which is ham, cheese and apple in an Asian steam bun and a cup of soup.

DG: That sounds awesome. I want one of those right now.

SB: I know! That is our food in a nutshell. You look at it, it has a funny name and luckily we get to keep those because they're fun to make. And then you go, "That looks good!" Then people try it and they're like, "That's amazing!" And that's the only thing our chef allows out of the kitchen. If it's not great, it has to disappear.

DG: Your chef, Bill Fitz, formerly worked with Michael Symon?

SB: Right. Bill formerly worked at Lola, Michael Symon's restaurant, and eventually decided that he wanted to venture out to leave that normal, fancy restaurant box and have a little more fun and a little more freedom to make whatever he wants.

DG: And you can call it whatever you want.

SB: Yeah.

DG: Like, this one's yellow so we can call it…I don't know, something that's yellow.

SB: The…Pea-Cut-Chu.

DG: Yeah, there you go.

SB: Nobody wants to eat yellow things, what were you thinking?

DG: [Laughs] I wasn't. You also have a pretty sweet lineup of beer here.

SB: We have an extensive craft beer list. Our patrons, it turns out, enjoy more interesting beers than just your run-of-the-mill things. Obviously, you know Game of Thrones and Hulk Smash are going to be favorites, but it's even beers that you may not find anywhere else. Dragonhosen isn't just a beer that we stuck a rubber dragon onto the tap for a while. It's also an Imperial Oktoberfest and has been our best-selling Oktoberfest thus far, even though it comes in a smaller glass and it's a little pricier. It comes out of a little brewery from Colorado called Boulder Beer Company. We are also working with a local brewery out of Mentor who will be making some beer specifically for us. Right now, we are looking at the release of 20 DiePA sometime this fall to early winter. We are even going to be the Arcadia location for Cleveland Beer Week next week.

DG: Very cool. I wish I came next week. I should probably just move like I was supposed to.

SB: Now you have a whole new reason! The Side Quest, we have everything you want and if we don't, tell us and we may.

DG: That's a good tagline. Your cocktail list is awesome too.

SG: Our cocktails are all geek oriented. Our Butter Beer is our best selling anything that people are ordering. We have the Sonic Screwdriver, which is our take on a normal Screwdriver but it's green and fizzy. And lots of shots, like the Dagobah, Spider-Man, Deadpool.

DG: So I have to ask, is there a Fastball Special?

SB: Not yet.

DG: There should be.

SB: There will be! We can't throw it all out at once!

DG: Well, yeah.

SB: We have this ridiculous, overwhelming cocktail list and we're going to be coming out with new stuff. And you ask, "Oh, why'd it take you so long to do that?" Because we like to make you wait and we're going to have cool, new stuff every single week.

DG: And your menus are served on comic books.

SB: Yeah.

DG: But old ones that people no longer wanted.

SB: Right, for the most part, our comics that are the menus came from Carol & Johns [the comic book store in Cleveland]. They had their sale in which they get all their old comic books out and they just keep getting cheaper and cheaper. We went on the cheapest day and bought like $40 worth of comic books for a quarter a piece, so we have a nice back log of comics that we can shove into menus.

DG: They gave you stuff like Starhawk and…

SB: Starhawk. Mr. T. Alpha Fill-In-The-Blank because it turns out there's a lot more teams called Alpha Something-Or-Other than you expect.

DG: You also do day-to-day activities, so you have a theme for each night. What was the idea behind that?

SB: Part of it is we want people to come every day. But a step further than that is, in order to fill a need at a geek bar, there's not just one type of geek. There are all sorts of interests and stuff like that. A geek is not just a person who likes A, B and C. There's lots of stuff. Some people like videogames, so Mario Mondays are good for them. We have trivia on Thursdays. People that come in on Wednesdays who bought comics on New Book Day can bring in their receipt and they get cheaper pricing on draft beer all day long. We just started doing Bar Against Humanity, which is the entire bar playing Cards Against Humanity.

DG: Which sounds amazing.

SB: It's lots of fun. And, of course, everyone prefers the raunchier, more awful things that people would put onto a card.

DG: After the fourth or fifth beer, you're feeling brave enough to spew out something like that.

SB: Oh yeah, those are the ones you want to come out. We have Doctor Who viewing parties on Saturdays. On Sundays, we have a couple tables of both women and men who are crocheting for Stitch 'N Bitch and we also are now hosting a beginners D&D.

DG: You have a big wall of board games and such. This is the first bar I've seen with something like that, outside of maybe Chinese Checkers or something along those lines.

SB: We do own an extensive game library and it is a mixture of games that have been bought and some that have been donated from different game stores in exchange for letting people know they came from. Our patrons who weren't playing some of their games much also donated almost a third. They wanted it to get played and they love our bar. The games keep increasing even when we aren't playing them or even when we aren't buying them.

DG: You even have the Starsky and Hutch board game.

SB: Well of course. Who doesn't?!

DG: [Laughs] I don't, but I guess that's my problem.

SB: [Also laughs] Yeah, we have a nice selection ranging from Monopoly and Parcheesi to Settlers of Catan, Dominion, Munchkins of various varieties. If you don't want to bring your own game with you, you'll find a game that you are going to enjoy playing.

DG: You have consoles set up here too?

SB: Right now, only on Mondays. In the future, we'll probably have games that we can set up through wireless controllers. Maybe some emulators, a Wii-U. We'll see.

DG: One of your more recent big events was that you hosted Tess Munster, who is a plus-sized model. What was the event like?

SB: We organized a meet-and-greet. You got to meet her and she talked in various groups, so it was a more intimate setting. It was at Redress, a local clothing shop. We were the after party for the event. We even had a Tess Munster cocktail named just for her that was a fun mixture of pineapple, cranberry and pinkness.

DG: You also did an event called Barcraft?

SB: We hosted the first Cleveland Starcraft tournament and championship. We had people competing against each other from ten in the morning until four or five o'clock in the afternoon. It was up on most of the TV sets and a lot of people that came were spectators that wanted to see it happen. The funny thing about the new Barcraft movement is that it became more exciting when we had announcers. People want to watch people who play computer games! So you could get into it and keep track of what was going on and enjoy it more. And that was through Cleveland ESports.

DG: Now that you've got your foot firmly planted, what are your future plans for Side Quest?

SB: More fun? [Laughs] More theme nights, better events. We're going to have lecture series, different types of people from robotics and solar panel engineers to brewery owners to comic book artists. If you can name it and you'd like to hear somebody talk about it, we're probably going to have somebody come in. Working with different businesses around town. Really, we just want to become a go-to place for all things geeky.

DG: Can you say anything at all about the rumored TV show about Side Quest?

SB: Last week, it was pitched to the person we'd been talking to. And that includes interviews with us and a couple other geek bars around the country. If it happens, we are hoping for at least a season long thing in which they're going to be filming in here and seeing different stuff that happens at a geek bar. It's supposed to be kind of funny, but I believe closer to a Mythbusters or Pawn Stars kind of thing. Same producers as Mythbusters. That more so than the Blank Wives of Blank Blank.

DG: I think that about wraps this up.

SB: No more questions?! But we make our own cheese. You didn't even ask about the cheese! We make cheese!

DG: Okay, I'll ask about the cheese! Tell me about the cheese.

SB: We make our own American cheese.

DG: Your own American cheese.

SB: Yeah, how American is that?

DG: That's pretty American.

SB: 'Murica.

DG: Does it come in two colors?

SB: It comes in multicolor. We have some mixtures with Parmesan or smoked cheddars. Depending on what best fits our little sandwiches.

DG: That's very cool.

[*Note: This interview was held on Wednesday, October 8th]

Dylan Gonzalez happens to love beer and comic books and luckily found a place to write about both because he has no idea how to actually make money in the real world. He lives in a cave in New Jersey. Tweet him at @BeardedPickle, follow his own beer blog at http://boozegeek.tumblr.com/or email him at dylan.gonzalez1990@gmail.com.

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