It’s bar tour season! You know what that means: you need to pick that perfect list of bars for the big day! But there are SO MANY BARS here. How will you ever choose? Onward State decided to deliver our two cents with a series of posts entitled “Bar Wars” where we go to several bars downtown and rank them head-to-head to give you a feel for what bars will fit your bar tour needs. Take our reviews at your own risk — and remember to always stay away from “that stupid drink!”

Okay, so we’re starting off our “Bar Wars” series backwards here…but let’s be honest: you have to end up at a club at the end of the night. It’s important to conclude any night in a fun atmosphere, especially a bar tour. After drinking all day, you’ll want an exciting environment. The club selection at PSU is… let’s go with, limited, so we took the two clubs downtown and put them head-to-head in this week’s Bar Wars challenge. So what’s it gonna be?  Indigo or Levels? Andrew Tarr took the task of going to both Indigo and Levels to rank the two via several categories. The results are below.

Downtown State College Nightclubs

Indigo

First, make sure you know How to Get Kicked Out of Indigo. It may provide some extra insight on the club, especially if you have not been there before. Andrew, a first-timer to any club at Penn State and a completely unbiased party, sent me a text message the night he attended Indigo. It read: “I shouldn’t even go to Levels. No way it’ll compare to this place. $3 gin and tonics and an all guy cover band successfully playing ‘Rolling in the Deep.’ I didn’t know it existed.” IndiGoGo is one of State College’s best offerings in the party scene; it’s hard not to have a good time at Indigo on Wednesdays.

The stellar drink prices and casual atmosphere bumped Andrew’s ratings of the club up. The only thing that hindered Andrew’s overall experience was that he felt a little over-dressed — that, or everyone else was under-dressed (Philadelphia AND Pittsburgh have been known as some of the worst dressed cities in the country). Oh, that, and the bathroom lines get OUT OF CONTROL. I’ll give some insight on how to make the bathroom process easier via a post in the near future… but until then: you will have to wait in line. Sorry!

The official Onward State ratings of Indigo are below:

Service: 4/5  
Music: 5/5   
Environment: 4/5
Drinks: 4/5
Fun: 4/5

Levels

Now, I know we have written some pretty controversial things about Levels before, and I really wanted our impression of the club to be good. But, unfortunately, it was not. We put Andrew in the club, because [once again] he had the least downtown club experience.

Levels was not a good experience for our correspondent. The bars were too dark and came off unfriendly to him. The music was nothing special; it sounded like the DJ was just learning to use iTunes. It looked like shower curtains were hanging from the ceiling. As should probably be expected for any club, there was a line for the bathroom. Feet seemed to stick to the floor and there wasn’t much seating to break from dancing. To quote Andrew, “I couldn’t get the f*** out [of the club].” The final straw for Andrew was ordering a gin and tonic at Levels and getting what he described  as “just tonic.”

The official Onward State ratings of Levels are below:

Environment: 2/5
Music: 2/5
Service: 2/5
Drinks: 3/5
Fun: didn’t have it

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen! Indigo has won this round of Bar Wars. Make sure to throw them on your Bar Tour list for the last stop of the evening. Happy bar hopping!