London is home to Western and the longest bar lines in Ontario — quite possibly even Canada.

I think anyone who has frequented the bar scene in London can attest to this fact. On a Saturday night, if you want to get into a bar without waiting in line, it’s in your best interest to leave by 9:30 p.m. If you’re headed to Jim Bob’s or The Ceeps, your departure time is bumped up by at least an hour. Leaving for the bar essentially right after dinner and forfeiting quality pre-drinking time is obviously not a very enjoyable practice.

In an ideal world, we would all just leave later for the bar and not feel like we’re trying to win an Olympic gold medal over who can make it to Jim Bob’s first but alas, this is not realistic. With the current surplus of Western students, attending any popular event in London usually means waiting in line. Considering this, I think a more pertinent question concerning the London bar scene is why don’t we expand our bar options and go to The Wave on Saturday nights?

Having recently returned from a trip to Kingston where I was taken to The QP — the campus bar at Queen’s — I began to wonder why, as Western students, we don’t frequent The Wave on Saturday nights. Is it because The Wave is just not as enticing as Jim Bob’s, or is there another hidden reason?

I have barely been to my own school’s campus bar, and yet I have visited The Turret, Laurier’s campus bar, more times than I can count and I have even been to Oliver’s, the campus bar at Carleton. So judging by this evidence, it seems as though we are the only school where it is not “cool” to go to the campus bar on a Saturday night.

It escapes me why The Wave seems to lack the approval of the Saturday night crowd. It’s nicer than many of the other campus bars I’ve been to and yet we still seem to turn up our noses. In any event, increasing attendance at The Wave may not be the steadfast solution to the line problem in London, but it would at least show a little more school pride.