[JPL] With live music and a diverse crowd, the Beehive is creating a buzz in the South End

[Jazz Promo Services]

http://www.boston.com/ae/events/articles/2007/07/12/the_place_to_be_over_30/

The place to be (over 30)
With live music and a diverse crowd, the Beehive is creating a buzz in the
South End
By Suzanne C. Ryan, Globe Staff  |  July 12, 2007

It's 10 p.m. on a Tuesday night in the South End, and 40-year-old Sandy
Poirier is reveling in the scene at the neighborhood's latest hot spot, the
Beehive.

Upstairs at the bar, John Michael Gray, 58, and Tim O'Connor, 52, better
known as the "Hat Sisters," are sipping cosmopolitans while balancing huge
daisy-covered hats on their heads.

Downstairs, gin and tonic in hand, 69-year-old property manager Paul Duffy
is reminiscing about his childhood in the South End when he worked shoveling
coal in this very building. Meanwhile, he's trying to score Linda Dubuque's
phone number. But Dubuque, a 39-year-old assistant tax collector for the
city of Somerville, is busy chatting with her grandfather, Ralph Bevilaqua,
64, while Berklee College of Music student Madi Diaz is singing folk music
on stage.

"I love it here," said Poirier, owner of South Boston's Shag Salon. "It's
like New York. There are gays with straights, whites with Latinos. It's a
melting pot and that's what makes places fun."

The Beehive is shaping up to be something of a rarity in this city: a hot
scene for the over-30 crowd. While collegiates and young professionals have
always had their pick of slick clubs and bars here, those 30 or older were
often left wanting, especially when it came to live music. The Beehive is a
sign that may be changing -- good news for the well-heeled condo buyers
who've poured into the city in recent years.

"A lot of suburbanites have moved to the city in the last five years looking
for action," said Beehive co-owner Darryl Settles, who also owns Bob's
Southern Bistro on Columbus Avenue. "But there's a lot less action here than
they expected. Boston is so old-school. Other than hotel bars, there's no
place to socialize after 11. They want to stay out later at night. People
want more entertainment."

The restaurant, bar , and performance venue, which opened on Tremont Street
in the Boston Center for the Arts complex in May, is aiming to give patrons
just that. The club offers live music every night and stays open until 1
a.m. Sunday through Wednesday, and 1:30 a.m. Thursday through Saturday.

The club, which features mostly jazz but also R&B, Afrobeat, and other types
of music, is the brainchild of 46-year-old Settles and another well-known
South End restaurateur: Jack Bardy, the 39-year-old owner of Pho Republique
on Washington Street. Real estate developer Bill Keravuori and his wife,
Jennifer Epstein, who's on the board of the BCA, are partners as well.
Keravuori and Epstein are both 38.

Keravuori calls the Beehive "an experiment," an opportunity to see whether
this kind of scene can thrive.

"Nobody in our age group wants to go down to Lansdowne Street or Boylston
Street and go to the bars there. In the South End, there's Pho [Republique],
the Franklin [Cafe], and the [Red] Fez," he said, enumerating some of the
area's most popular eateries and late-night destinations.

"But they are all small," he continued. "So what do you do when you go out?
After the theater or the movies, your night is pretty much over. The Beehive
is an answer to that. . . . It's a bit of a party and you're not surrounded
by kids in college."

To be sure, when it comes to live music, the Beehive does have competition
in the neighborhood. There's the famed Wally's Cafe, which offers live music
nightly until 2 a.m. Slade's Bar & Grill has live music three nights a week
until 1 a.m., and Bob's Southern Bistro offers live music three nights a
week until 11:30 p.m. The difference, in part, between those spots and the
Beehive is the scale. Wally's can hold 99 head-bobbing patrons, but good
luck getting a seat. With 6,500 square feet on two levels, the Beehive holds
three times that many people, and has outdoor seating for another hundred.

Late-night jazz is a huge part of the history of the South End. In the
1940s, clubs like the Savoy Ballroom, the High Hat , and Wally's Cafe
dominated the scene. Ken Schaphorst, the chairman of jazz studies and
improvisation at the New England Conservatory of Music, said the popularity
of jazz began to decline after World War II when the music became less dance
oriented.

He's hopeful that the Beehive will start a wider jazz revival in the South
End. "From an educator's point of view, I think you learn a lot on stage as
a performer, things you will never learn in the classroom," Schaphorst said.

Settles, the founder of the Beantown Jazz Festival, is relying on performers
from the Berklee College of Music for some of the Beehive's lineup. Tuesdays
feature student artists, Wednesdays and Thursdays showcase faculty. But
non-Berklee affiliated groups will also take the stage, he said.

Michael Kelley, the director of Boston's Rental Housing Resource Center and
a South End resident, plans to see as many artists as he can. But tonight,
he's planted himself in the bar upstairs where he's chatting with some of
his South End neighbors for the first time. "I met three people from my
block and two from the neighborhood," said Kelley, 37. "I can see myself
here several nights a week."

Dubuque, the assistant tax collector, is happy to have an option besides her
regular haunts: Regattabar and Scullers Jazz Club. "I love jazz and there
aren't enough jazz nooks in the city," she said. "People in the 35-plus club
need a place that will cater to us. We don't have kids, and we have
disposable income."

Poirier, with his long beard, tattooed arms , and pierced nose, says he
plans to become a regular. It's after midnight on a Tuesday and he's not
even thinking about heading home to Quincy.

"Honestly," he said, " the cooler people hang out during the week."

Suzanne Ryan can be reached at sryan at globe.com.