Early one morning, Brandon O'Brien was driving from Purdue University, where he is now a senior, to a dentist appointment a few hours away. As will happen on long, boring drives, his mind started to drift.
Like many college students, his wandering mind led him to the subject of drinking and bars.
"I just started thinking about how hard it is to find reliable information about college bars on the Internet, and thought it would be neat to start a site for that purpose," said O'Brien.
O'Brien enlisted the help of his longtime friend Eric Johney, also a senior at Purdue, and together they created collegebarscene.com, a Web site where online surfers can list, rate and comment on bars near every college campus across the United States.
"Whether you're just turning 21 and don't know anything about the bars on your campus or you're the local drunk, this site will give you the opportunity to learn more about the bars and bar scene around your campus," the site reads.
O'Brien and Johney coded and designed the whole site by themselves - an easy feat for two computer graphics majors.
"It only took a couple of months to program the entire site," said O'Brien.
Collegebarscene.com has been online since May, and has taken off in that short time period. According to O'Brien, it now boasts over 1800 bars and over 300 members who have posted almost 900 bar ratings, and those numbers are still growing.
UB students who have heard about collegebarscene.com are intrigued by the site.
"I have been to collegebarscene.com before and I actually thought it was pretty cool. It's interesting to look at what type of bar scenes different colleges have across the country," said Lee Ashrafioun, a junior psychology major.
Brian Knapp, a sophomore history student, agreed.
"It was a creative idea for these two students to come up with this Web site. Bars are something most college students seem to have an interest in, and everyone uses the Internet, so it is a good combination," said Knapp.
Jeff Woods, a communication major, loves to go out and have a good time with his friends, but said he does not use the Internet to search for places to go.
"I would rather just ask people I know for recommendations of fun places they have been to right outside of campus," he said. Still, Woods said he is curious about what's happening around college campuses across the country, and will probably use the site to check out the United States' diverse college scene.
Users can browse by bar or zip code, or choose bars from a drop-down menu.
A search for bars near the UB campus however, was disappointing. The site listed only 16 bars, none of them rated or reviewed.
While the list contained local favorites such as PJ Bottoms and Molly's Pub, several conspicuous ones, like the Anchor Bar, were missing.
O'Brien said collegebarscene.com is a relatively new site, and because of that, they do not have as many references as they would like.
Because the site relies on students around the country to post comments and ratings about places near them, it encourages visitors to fill in any bars they find missing.
"It is hard to track down all the bars around the country," said O'Brien.
Collegebarscene.com is even offering a contest to recruit people to fill the site with useful information.
"The winner of the contest will win $50 dollars, which you can use for anything you want. Maybe now you can buy that nice bottle of Grey Goose, or a Brita Water Filter so you can turn your cheap vodka into something nice," the site read.
