Here’s to The Whig: More than a bar, it’s a symbol of a better Columbia

The Whig made Columbia cool.

The underground bar at the corner of Main and Gervais pulses with an intangible essence like a Miles Davis song manifest.

But soon it will close on as the building above the bar is renovated. Columbia: let’s enjoy it while we can.

The Whig has bartenders who seem more like friends. The spirits are reliable, and the dishes are the chef’s kiss. The chipotle pimento cheese fries are unmatched in Columbia.

Over its lifetime, The Whig has had music, comedy, trivia, late nights, New Year’s Eve parties, Christmas in July, wise wall graffiti, 50-cent tacos, dollar pizza slices and all manner of reasons to get friends to gather.

The jukebox is from another time when such a machine was an attraction to the brokenhearted and the ecstatic.

The jukebox might have tested the bartenders’ patience at times — people really dig playing The Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer” — but it rocked. That’s all that needs to be said.

The fumes from bar-goers smoking cigarettes along the stairs going down to The Whig tested one’s lungs, and more than any bar in Columbia, it has always been worth it to pierce through that toxic cloud.

The Whig’s location in the heart of Columbia and the heart of the state added to its allure. The location is more than primo real estate for a business.

It’s symbolic.

Across the street from The Whig, the S.C. State House dome rises from the ground, guarded by a Confederate solider atop an obelisk. Strom Thurmond strides in bronze above the name of a Black child he hid away, and Ben Tillman stands on a pedestal of every terrible quality connected to South Carolina. For decades, the Confederate flag poked into the sky, hanging like a rag someone forgot to throw away.

All of these hideous symbols rose from the ground. But go across the street and enter the subterranean level of Columbia, and here is this bar that has gathered folks, from the owners to the crowd, who want Columbia and South Carolina to be awesome, to rid this place so many call home of all that baggage over Gervais with whatever talents they had, or even just by showing someone from out of town a good part of a state that they only knew about from the bad parts.

The Whig is where those folks met up and communed as well as got plain drunk.

A hotel is going in the building above The Whig. That’s a fine use for it. Nothing wrong with that. The renovations needed to get the building into shape meant The Whig was doomed. It would be great if it could stay. But it might have lost something as a hotel bar rather than a locals’ spot.

Here’s an idea for those in control of the bar’s fate: Leave The Whig as is. Leave all the taxidermy up. Don’t move a table. Let the jukebox stay next to the spiral stairs, and keep the bank vault open. The fish stays up in that corner over there, and the saber-tooth skull remains behind the bar. Build walls over any entrances that lead into The Whig from above. Then seal the front door.

When the final day comes, fill up the corridor leading to the front door with concrete. Just bury the place.

Maybe 150 years from now, some spirited Columbian wanting something different than all the grossness that will no doubt still be on the State House grounds will read this article. That person will get jack hammers and heavy digging equipment, and when they’re done dredging the rock, they’ll see the writing on the brick wall, and then the door, and they’ll open it.

They’ll breath the last air that a gathering of people who cared about Columbia breathed, and the only thing they’ll be able to say is this:

“This place is cool.”