For a gunshot wound, there’s a surprising lack of blood. View Gallery: Maxwell Williams’ Journey After a Shooting at Dick’s Den in ColumbusĪs the threat of danger fades, Dick’s Den is quiet other than the low murmur of friends and strangers tending to Williams, who remains level-headed and stoic, occasionally mentioning that he can’t move his legs. From the stage, Button dives to the ground, grabs his phone from his cymbal bag and calls 911 while curled in a corner. Patrons crouch down, wondering if more gunfire is coming-if they’re next. The gravity of the situation begins to sink in. His friends notice a single, bullet-sized hole in the front window. He asks a nearby patron to put a sweater over the wound on his back. I’ve been shot,” Williams says from the floor, calmly but insistently, his half-finished beer on the table above. “Call 911! Oh, my God! Get a doctor! Is there a doctor?!” But then someone starts screaming obscenities, and a young man is on the ground. At first, Button and Ciampa assume a pool cue or a music stand fell over. Button and Ciampa begin trading solos back and forth when an errant, slapping sound interrupts. An hour in, DiCenzo performs a solo rendition of “My Funny Valentine,” but rather than end the set on a ballad, the band launches into an upbeat number. It’s Valentine’s Day, and a jazz trio-guitarist Derek DiCenzo, drummer Maxwell Button and bassist Jeff Ciampa-starts its first set around 10 p.m. The best seats to take in the music are along the built-in wooden bench that sits across the room from the stage, just below a big picture window that faces High Street and features the venue’s iconic neon sign that reads, “WHY NOT?” That’s where 24-year-old Maxwell Williams and two of his buddies, Dan Filler and Sera Kitchen, are sitting the night of Monday, Feb. But Dick’s Den has managed to elude the long arm of development, changing imperceptibly for nearly 60 years in the North Campus neighborhood that now goes by Old North.īluegrass jams and late-night jazz shows are a constant at Dick’s, attracting all types: undergrads and recent grads from campus-area rentals, crusty jazz heads, Old North neighbors, and the regulars, some of whom bring their own pool cues. Former High Street dive bar Bernie’s Bagels & Deli/The Distillery is now a Target, for instance. In the last 20 years, tall cranes have turned countless properties around Ohio State University into shiny new structures. Black and white photo collages and vintage ads for Old Crow whiskey hang in a seating area three steps down from the pool room near the High Street bar’s small corner stage, where jazz musicians like Joe Diamond and Wally Mitchel became local legends. Few things are white or bright or plastic at Dick’s Den. It’s a warm, low-lit, lived-in space with antique ceiling tiles and weathered wood everywhere-walls, floors, frames.
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