The alcohol was flowing for one last night at the Royal Palm Tavern, but the crowd — which filled the bar to capacity — wasn’t just there to take Wednesday night shots.

The Royal Palm Tavern and two other properties on Dryden Road were sold to Collegetown landowner John Novarr for $3,750,000 about a year before management announced the bar would close, according to documents obtained by The Sun.

The Common Council granted eight alcohol permits to restaurants in Ithaca.  

Corey Brezak '11 eagerly anticipated the day when he turned 21 so he could enter the Collegetown bar scene. He was sorely disappointed.

This week's Outer Limits explores the unspoken social contract  between Cornellians that separates bar behavior and library behavior — and what happens when the line between the two is blurred.

These days always end up being particularly nuts for me. There are just a lot of things going on at once. Prelims, papers and the like are usually always there, though they pile up particularly high in mid-February, usually without fail, year after year. Other things are particularly February-specific. Like the height of Ithacan winter, free with a sky that is already dark by five, giving the impression that the day is considerably shorter. Or receiving your tax return forms in the mail, so you have to think about that, too. Many people get to know where they’ll be going to grad school, and, if having both the blessing and curse to be admitted to several places, the necessity to choose where to go to is also a burden shared in the very long February nights.

All I wanted Saturday night was to get funked, and The Rozatones made sure that I did. With an energetic set that ranged from brass-balled bravado to Latin-laced electricity, their show at Castaways demonstrated once more why The Rozatones sit at the top of Ithaca’s funk-rock feeding chain, and just what it takes to get a mass of college-age bodies moving.

The night began with a set from Nat Osborn and The Free Radicals, a large and conspicuously all-male band that plays with reggae riffs and the odd hard rock motif. There were occasional highlights hidden among the Dispatch-derived vocal harmonies and off-beat guitar chords, but for the most part their sound featured nothing new for the roots-heavy Ithaca music scene.

“The job market sucks, my man,” a real estate consultant regrettably acknowledged at an investment conference this past week. “But look at the bright side,” motioning an erect pointer finger toward the fully stocked open bar, “There’s free booze!”

Continuing, he lectured that I really ought to blame my parents for “having me when they did. You could have avoided the economic climate,” the consultant concluded, “and would have had a much easier time when job hunting.”

I thought about his cheeky observation for a while and then realized that graduating this year isn’t that bad. Sure, our economy is in the toilet, job offers are being rescinded left and right and the thought of paying back my student loans makes me grimace.

Vegas, Baby

by Rebecca Shoval, Sun Senior Writer

It took us until we got about five minutes outside of Los Angeles to bring up the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas reference. Of course, Las Vegas looks nothing like it did when Hunter S. Thompson visited there in 1971. Following an almost five-hour drive past the occasional cluster of homes, a solar powered-energy plant and one large rest stop occupied almost entirely with fast food chains, arriving in Las Vegas gave mirage a new meaning.