Photo by Patrick Dolan Gene’s has been a Morgantown staple for many years.

If there’s one place I can think of where I can go when every other bar is packed to the brim with freshman or frat boys, it’s Gene’s in South Park. It’s a simple beer joint with a simple premise: come to get drunk with friends and watch sports. And what’s great about it is that it never gets loud, even during those crucial NCAA games, or the worse WVU football tragedies known to man (can anyone say Pitt?).

It started out as a local hangout spot for college students in the ’40s and ’50s. On the wall hangs dozens of sports related photos and memorabilia, along with a couple black-and-white photos of straight-laced guys in white T-shirts and jeans, sipping beer and studying.

All these grainy figures in the photos seem to have very sharp crew cuts. Almost freshly cut, you could say. You know why? There used to be a barbershop in the back. What kind of a world would we live in if I could walk in to a bar, get drunk enough to forget about my image problem, and take t