Orange County Social Club: like a second home
By Heather Mandelkehr
Carrboro Commons Staff Writer
The Orange County Social Club, sandwiched between Friendly Barber Shop and ACME on East Main Street, seems to be an ordinary storefront with tinted windows and plants outside the doorway.
Staff Photo by Heather Mandelkehr
Enter, and find more plants from the Carrboro Farmers’ Market on the bar, a large portrait of Dean Smith on the back wall, and employees and members sitting at the bar, socializing and listening to the bartender’s music choices as DJ.
It’s formally a bar, yet the overall ease of the atmosphere blurs an official distinction.
Owner Tricia Mesigian said her vision of the Orange County Social Club (OCSC) was to be a place where people could come often and know they would get the same thing every time they came in. She cited great bars that were part of restaurant – where people would come just to socialize.
“There wasn’t a plain old bar in town,” Mesigian said of Carrboro.
Originally from Media, Pa., Mesigian studied business at Virginia Tech and moved in Carrboro in 1995. When she moved to North Carolina, she started at the Skylight Exchange and then worked at Merge Records in sales and tour promotion.
She joked that she knew that when she opened the OCSC, the people who she knew would come, but now her clientele is a mix of “extremely great people,” including students, professors, musicians, artists and former employees.
“It was never hard to work here,” said Colin Dodd, a former OCSC bartender who worked at the OCSC for six years. “The whole time I worked here, it allowed me to do all sorts of other things.”
While some of the new hires work at the OCSC as their primary job, most of the staff members are musicians, artists, mothers and fathers who have supported their families and financed buying houses with their salaries, according to Mesigian.
Though the OCSC is open from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. every day, Mesigian said that it is a social place for people who want to go to bed at 11 p.m. Attendance varies throughout the day and in each day of the week.
“I love the fact that it isn’t necessarily the busiest from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m.,” Mesigian said.
Basketball games are peak times for the OCSC, according to Mesigian, Dodd and bartender Jamie McPhail – the OCSC projects every UNC men’s basketball game in high definition on a large side wall and turnout is high.
Duke fans do frequent the bar, Mesigian said, but they keep a low profile.
Additionally, the OCSC is open for business every Christmas, for long-ago members who return to Carrboro for the holidays and for current members who want to escape the holiday rush, Mesigian said. They only close New Year’s Day and Christmas Eve, as well as for a week in the summer when the employees go to the beach together.
Mesigian said that the employees are “close-knit” and that many important decisions are made cooperatively, an arrangement that allows her the “opportunity to be a coworker instead of a boss.”
Since its opening seven years ago, only 17 people have worked at the OCSC. Along with Mesigian – who bartends Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from 4 to 9 p.m. – there are eight bartenders, two of whom have worked at the OCSC since 2001 and four of whom have worked at the OCSC since 2002.
“We just retired two of the guys that started here,” Mesigian said.
Neal’s Deli owner Matt Neal worked as a bartender at the OCSC for six and a half years.
“It’s a neighborhood bar but it attracts people from outside the neighborhood,” Neal said. “They don’t go out of their way to exclude or recruit.”
Ron Liberti, who has been a member for seven years, said that the draws for him are a great jukebox, courteous bartenders, and a familiar atmosphere.
“It’s a home away from home,” Liberti said. “I don’t know what I’d do without.”
Mesigian commented that she likes to stick to a “low-key” situation and use word-of-mouth advertising as opposed to more conventional methods.
“Sometimes it’s nice to find things on your own,” Mesigian said.
Employees and members agree that while the OCSC is located in downtown Carrboro, people are drawn to it from outside the immediate neighborhood.
“It’s everybody’s bar,” Mesigian said. “As long as they’re nice.”
