Taylor’s Bar & Grill’s liquor license expired early Tuesday morning after the Oregon Liquor Control Commission voted not to renew it. The establishment left two messages for its former patrons: “Thanks for the memories” and “Go Ducks!” on the marquee and “Closed Forever. No Trespassing,” in a note on the door. 

OLCC’s ruling meant Taylor’s could still serve food, but Google currently lists the establishment as “permanently closed.”

The Emerald spoke with students who visited Taylor’s on its last night in businesses.

Curtis Fountain, 5th year student at UO

“Everyone’s kind of in a good mood,” Fountain said. “I’ve never really had, like, a great night at Taylor’s. The day times are fun but the nights are always — something off is happening.”

“It’s the last night, you know, people are a little more respectful tonight. But it’s early, we’ll see. We’ll see.”

Fountain said that Taylor’s losing its liquor license has “been a long time coming.”

“People don’t like change. You maintain the status quo, you know, you look the other way when something off happens, you brush it under the carpet,” he said.
Ethan Moser, 2019 UO graduate

“Everyone seems to be just having a good time,” Moser said. He described “a feeling of hurriedness” and “haziness behind the bar.” 

”There’s a downer mood. I feel like they’re upholding the rules when they want,” he said.  “Like we didn’t get student ID’d to come in here even though we are students, but someone else did.” 

Moser said he thought Taylor’s was popular for students because of its location and size.  “It’s, like, literally the only place within half a mile, mile walking distance from the average person here that has a dance floor and enough capacity to hold more than 100 people,” he said.

“I 100% think they should have lost their liquor license, like that shit’s been going on for a long time,” he said. “I remember hearing about that back in 2015 when I first came here, and I mean, the fact that it’s patrons that run the bar that’s involved in that is just, that’s messed up and they should have lost it a while ago. I mean, they were on a suspended license this whole time anyway, and it just shows you the process that you actually have to go through to completely lose a license.”

“Someone needs to come in here — because it’s going to be a bar again — and open up an establishment that has a different culture behind that,” he said. “It can still be a fun, like, night, club-ish party scene, but I mean, it needs to be run by people who are more involved in a culture of not tolerating that stuff.”

William Ballentine, UO student

“I think there’s just a lot of traditions and memories to it. Like seniors, when they graduate, they go out to the porch they hang out on the deck and there’s no other bar in Eugene that has a deck outside,” Ballentine said.

“I think that’s just like the place to go,” he said. “It’s been around for so long, so I think there’s just a lot of history to it, rather than the bar itself.”