Have you ever wished you could see all the bar deals and live bands playing in State College all at once? Isaac Gerg had that wish, too.

As a Penn State alumnus, his goal was to create a platform that exposed live music and local bars to students looking for more than downtown. From Elk Creek Cafe to Pine Grove Hall, Gerg wanted to show students what nightlife was like before electronic music took over.

Live music used to thrive in State College, but after COVID-19, things changed. Now, Gerg is looking to inspire past, present, and future Penn Staters to delve deeper into live music with his website, Nittany Nights.

Onward State: What inspired you to create Nittany Nights?

Isaac Gerg: Up until about COVID, there was a website called StateCollege.com. I probably used it from the time I was 21 until about 35. It was fantastic. I play drums, I play guitar, and I love checking out local bands downtown. I noticed that during COVID, the site just stopped updating.

About a year or two ago, I was thinking it would be nice to have something like this again to let people who are into bands go on at any given night and just check out different bands.

OS: What skills did you learn at Penn State that helped you build this platform?

Gerg: I was a computer engineer for undergrad at Penn State, so there was a lot of computer science involved in that.

Artificial intelligence also has the ability to go out onto different websites and pull graphics and automatically navigate through them. There’s also a machine learning part, which is what I did in my Ph.D work.

OS: Was there a specific story/event that led you to want to create this platform?

Gerg: There used to be a big music scene here in the early 2000s; there were a lot more ground-up bands that would produce CDs, and there was like a buzz about it.

I felt like, after COVID, a lot of that had gone away, and there still is a lot of cool music here in town, and I wanted folks to have a place to find out what was happening.

OS: What type of content or events get the most engagement from students?

Gerg: My thought was that it would be more oriented toward 20-somethings who would look for bar specials, but I’d love to get more feedback on this.

People say, “Hey, we’ve needed something like this for a long time,” but we don’t have a lot of details yet on when people are using it the most.

OS: How did you make Nittany Nights feel inclusive and appealing to a wide range of students?

Gerg: Yeah, my thought was it’s for Penn Staters. Whether that means past, present, or future.

This town serves all these different people, so I really wanted to balance that. There are some really cool hidden gems around here, like Elk Creek Cafe and Hublersburg Inn, that students may not know about. Those kinds of venues deserve a fair share and to get some visibility in town. I think they are very cool venues, and I want people to know about them and enjoy them.

OS: What do you hope students gain the most from Nittany Nights?

Gerg: I hope someone finds a cool venue that they may not have known before. “Hey, let’s go check out dinner here. Let’s go check out a band there.”

I think it’s just like getting out of your typical zone. There are so many venues now, especially with microbreweries and stuff in town, and being able to check that stuff out might not be on your radar, but now it’s on the website.

OS: Do you think current Penn State students approach social life differently than before?

Gerg: I mean, yes and no. I follow the bands here and what’s happening, and I think the DJ thing is a lot more popular now. I don’t know how much of that was just from the pandemic or how much of that was just that the time has changed. But I think in general people like to go out and have a good time and drink some beers with their friends, and fundamentally, I don’t think that has changed.

OS: How can other alumni, like yourself, continue to make campus life better for future students?

Gerg: I think, like my perspective from a student 20 years ago was, you just were not aware of stuff because it wasn’t put in front of you. So I think for those venues, advertising and putting the word out certainly helps.

There’s a lot of opportunity in the area. Just because you graduate doesn’t mean that you have to leave. I think that helps students branch out to be like, “What could my life look like if I live here after school?”

OS: What is your favorite memory at Penn State?

Gerg: I have a lot of friends from college that I’ve made. My wife included. Some folks I’ve literally met in the first week of school here and I’ve been in their weddings. We spent many nights downtown, and we were big into the Rathskeller and the Saloon.

OS: What advice would you give to students interested in creating their own platform like this?

Gerg: I think you should do it.

Right now, with AI, it is crazy how much stuff you can accomplish. It used to be that you’d have to have a lot of expertise in a bunch of areas, and the reality is, now you don’t. Like, it doesn’t have to be fancy, just get something out there and get feedback on it.

For more information and to use the site, check out Gerg’s website and Instagram!