CINCINNATI — Josh Clyde is not comfortable with 400 Jell-O shots. At $1 apiece, the pre-prepared stockpile here at Mount Lookout Tavern stands little chance up against a Bengals fan base that, over the last month, has waited outside this establishment for hours just trying to get in. Some have tried to climb through side doors and other openings before being dutifully brushed back by Clyde’s assistant manager, Lauren Jenney. Others drank well into the night on Saturday hoping they could extend their tab into Sunday as a shortcut to valuable bar space during a Bengals game. Clyde has received $1,000 offers for table space during Sunday’s Super Bowl matchup against the Rams (he declined, siding with the neighborhood regulars who have ridden with the bar all along).
A few weeks ago, this place became the accidental epicenter of the Bengals' magical run. Just a few minutes from head coach Zac Taylor’s home, Mount Lookout Tavern was just edging toward sanity on Jan. 15, wiping the lite beer tidal wave off its floor and settling in for the Bills game after the franchise’s first playoff win in decades. “Welcome To The Jungle” was mercifully out of plays on TouchTunes and then … Clyde received a phone call from the door man while he was running out to get ice because their machine couldn’t keep up.
“He said umm…there are some people here to see you,” Clyde, the tavern’s manager, says.
The Bengals’ head football coach was there along with punter Kevin Huber. Taylor wanted to know if they had a microphone because he was ready to make a speech.
“Josh literally left $40 worth of ice in the United Dairy Farmers parking lot,” Jenney says.
Taylor handed a game ball to the fans there, which now sits perched on top of a wall facing the tavern’s bar. The encased football sits between a pair of neon beer signs and a Xavier basketball promo, and just above a poster board with Super Bowl betting squares for the regulars. In the absence of a microphone, he hollered above a crowd that’d whipped itself back into a frenzy, promising many more to come.
In the moment, it was a gesture of love from a coach and his family who legitimately love the city. Taylor’s wife, Sarah, described finding a home near their favorite neighborhood (the Taylors lived nearby when Zac was coaching at the University of Cincinnati) as pure kismet. She has called it the perfect house on the perfect street. It was where she’d always hoped they’d end up. She describes southwestern Ohio the way many of us might talk about a fictional oasis we’re asked to picture while listening to stress-reduction cassettes.
But in the weeks since Taylor stormed Mount Lookout, it has also spotlighted just how meaningful this playoff run has been not only for the Bengals, but every entity that operates in a football team’s reach and depends, somewhat, on their success. For years, the Bengals bar scene has creeped closer and closer to Paul Brown stadium as the team floundered and interest waned. By most Decembers, Clyde says, the Tavern crowd was small and more brunch-oriented. Some of the bars further out in the suburbs were deprived of valuable game-day business.
This year, as they bounce back from a pandemic that kneecapped almost every dining and drinking establishment in the country, Mount Lookout Tavern (about a 10 minute drive from the stadium downtown) is in better shape than ever. They are turning down business at the door, having called full capacity before the team kicked off Sunday’s AFC championship game against the Chiefs. It was the first time anyone on staff can remember shutting their doors while the sun was still up and kicking people out. A 49ers overtime game just before Christmas was so raucous that they had to prevent a group of roaming holiday carolers from singing at the door.
The extra tip money, bar revenue and media attention have been life-changing, especially for staffers who usually anticipate a depression through January and February, often stashing away tips from football season to get them through the leaner months before St. Patrick’s Day.
“We’re running out of beer,” says Jenney, a Bills fan, as her JB9 (Joe Burrow, No. 9) necklace dangles.
“I’m telling you, if you walk in here on Sundays, you just couldn’t believe it. It’s wild,” Clyde says.
Quiet on a pre-game Tuesday, the managers were here to collect themselves before a night that will be both beautiful and exhausting. They are the quintessential Bengals bar now, which brings a flood of responsibilities. After Taylor left, Clyde and Jenney painted the stage in an effort to brand the bar. One night, Jenney says she wasn’t able to leave the bar until 4:30 in the morning and had to be back at 10:30 to open.
The bar specializes in smoked wings, which means constant meetings with the kitchen staff to ensure they have enough supplies to handle both a swath of takeout orders and a packed house. In the past, their Super Bowl experience has mostly been as a hub for chicken wing takeout. Now, they’ll have a slew of dine-in customers. Clyde says he’s coordinating with security, working with an eager staff all jockeying to work on Sunday, pre-packaging ice and mopping floors. Bands are calling him constantly begging him to play there. Companies have sent them signs in hopes that they’d hang them up in case Taylor comes back. Clyde says he’s doing more interviews, too.
“I never thought I’d have so many serious conversations about like, condiment packets,” he says.
At the end of the night, the preferred drink of choice is a shot of Jameson Irish Whiskey as the bar closes down and the crowd files out. They will do so celebrating what has been a transformational period in their own lives. Jenney, transplanted from New York, feels at home here. Her family flies into town and comingles with the regulars. During one of the playoff games, when their digital jukebox went down, she simply passed her phone around the bar, inviting everyone to add their favorite songs to a playlist. Clyde, who was laid off from a job in environmental science during the pandemic, is in love with the energy his new work demands of him right now.
They are evidence of the good that happens when a football team reaches out to personally touch some of what is in their gargantuan shadow. They find themselves misty-eyed over highlight videos. These are the good vibes that will sustain them through the process of mixing more Vodka and Jell-O, capping them off with the tiny plastic lids before they’re purchased 40 at a time on Sunday.
