The agrarian and industrial state of Ohio has several inhabited islands off its northern coast in Lake Erie. The Bass Islands, a strip of three, sit about midway between Toledo and Cleveland. They were won in the War of 1812, where the U.S. Navy Commodore, Oliver Perry, emblazoned his ships and rallied his troops against the British with battle flags declaring “Don’t Give Up The Ship.”
South Bass Island is the biggest of the three, and sits just 3 miles from the mainland. It is better known as the village of Put-in-Bay. It has been a tourist destination since the late 19th Century, when the Hotel Victory opened with over 600 rooms. Over 2 million people visit each year, flocking there by boat and ferry.
Put-in-Bay is an island destination with no palm trees. It has no sandy beaches and is warm less than half the year. It is small: less than a half-square-mile of land, it is a third of the size of New York’s Central Park. But each inch is filled with life. It has explorable caves, tourable wineries, dozens of adjacent bars with non-stop live music, and hundreds of boats docked as they transit through Lake Erie. It also has America’s fourth tallest monument, a tribute to Perry’s victory, and a tree-filled state park with rock cliffs overlooking the water. It is also, for some people, a home.
A place to live
A handful of people live in Put-in-Bay throughout the year. The Put-in-Bay Visitors Bureau claims that 480 people live full-time on the island, while the U.S. Census Bureau estimated only 138 people lived there in 2013. The lone K-12 school graduated two seniors this year: who, by default, each respectively gave a speech at commencement as valedictorian and salutatorian.
Jacqueline Boyed also spoke at this year’s commencement. She was a member of the class of 2005, an unusually large class of 10. She now practices physical therapy in Dayton, but tries to get back to the island monthly during the summer. “It’s a place to recharge,” said Boyed.
“It’s not just a crazy party town,” said Boyed. She admits, though, that partying and tourism are an intractable part of the Put-in-Bay experience. While growing up, she and her family would receive regular late night knocks at the door from lost tourists who could not remember where they were staying that night.
Boyed’s mother recently retired as a teacher at the Put-in-Bay School, and her father worked at Stone Laboratory, a research facility run by the Ohio State University. Her family went ice fishing during the winter, and kayaked around the island in the summer. “It’s a close, tight-knit community,” said Boyed.
But the nightlife
Put-in-Bay’s “Night Life” begins at 11am. That is when the swim-up pool bars open. The two most popular are Mist and Splash. Mist offers a live DJ. Splash caters more to the rock crowd with a stage for bands and a pirate ship docked next to the pool as a second bar. On a warm summer day, each pool is packed with enough people that swimming becomes impossible. It is, rather, a skin-full scene of booze and mingling; music blasting, with the occasional beach ball bouncing over head.
The Round House Bar opened in 1873. You can find it in the center of a strip of bars on Delaware Avenue, overlooking a DeRivera Park and the boardwalk. Its ceiling is a round canopy of red, white, and blue. They serve buckets of beer. Not buckets filled with bottles of beer, but bluntly efficient buckets filled with draught beer, served with cups to share and ice packs to keep the beer cold. Live bands play every night.
Around the corner is Level 2, the town’s featured dance club. Multi-colored beams of light shoot from a back wall. Smoke billows from machines like a Prince music video. And the bass notes push heavily with a mix of rap and electronic. Sweat seems to bead from every face on the dance floor, an elevated stage with windows overlooking a north edge of the island. The view, like nearly every other at Put-in-Bay, will remind you of nowhere else in Ohio.
Put-in-Bay, putinbay.com
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Dorian Slaybod is an attorney happily living in Toledo.