According to one of the regulars, a bearded man named Mike, the regulars form a close, family-like group, which he compares to characters who attend another Boston area pub, "Cheers."
"This is the quintessential bar," says Mike.
The hardcore regulars say that the new surge of students is nothing new for the Bow. They tell how back in the seventies, the pub was dominated by Arlington kids and live music was enjoyed by locals and students alike. And they mention with pride the names of Harvard students who used to drink at the pub and have since made it big.
Self-Policing
Nearby, in the dart pit, two guys are scuffling. One man has his arm wrapped around the neck of another. A student, a woman wearing a black sweater, takes a puff out of a cigarette and dully looks on.
But Peter Zilonis, wearing a red windbreaker and Budweiser hat leaps into action to break up the fight. He separates the men until a uniformed security officer and black-shirted bouncers come along to eject the pair. Zilonis, a former minor league baseball player and a North Cambridge resident, managed the Bow during the mid-eighties.
He comes back to his barside stool. "Still have a feel for the old days," he says, breathing a little heavily.
What just happened, the regulars say, is an example of self-policing. They rely on each other to handle problems when trouble starts. Many have been at the bar longer than anyone else, and they feel it is part of them.
But some regulars are disenchanted by what has been happening to the Bow. Two such men are the Pappas brothers, Peter and George. George has a short haircut with long tail and sports two arm length tattoos of wizards, dragons and other fantastic creatures. His brother Peter is missing two front teeth and wears a black t-shirt.
"Old friends who used to come here don't anymore," says Peter, adding that he's been coming to the Bow for 20 years. He points to a scar near his eye, which he got when someone cut it with a revolver at a fight outside the Bow during the seventies.
When closing time comes, George dons his new Harley Davidson-brand leather jacket, leaves with his brother and crosses Mass. Ave. Throngs of Harvard students stand outside.
One of them, a woman who lives in Lowell House, explains why she likes coming to the Bow.
"My friends told me to come here. I didn't know anything about it," she says.
But just as that woman goes to the Bow because all her friends do, other Harvard students say the pub's newfound popularity has driven them away.
Kirk J. Stowers '91 is one of the Harvard students who is put off by the new crowd at the pub. Stowers tells how one day he was talking to a man who had just gotten out of prison. All of a sudden, there were "60 to 70 Eliot House residents" at the bar.
Before the students' arrival, he says, the pub was an open and welcoming place where individuals would accept people if they showed respect. Now, many of the failings of Harvard's social environment have ruined a place where once a community of unpretentious equals raised their drinks in salute to each other, he says.
"The idea is that you can't break in with these people," he says of the new Harvard party crowd. "Before you could go and talk to anyone. They stick to themselves and they're taking it over for themselves. They definitely snub the regulars and don't want to deal with them," says Stowers, a native of Las Vegas.
"I always considered the Bow a nugget o'sanity in the middle of a very warped college environment," says Stowers. "It's not like that anymore."