For those of you new and old to Wheaton, The Lyons Den should sound quite familiar. For the past several years it has been the hangout spot on campus for students to eat, hangout, watch bands, and much more. We recently sat down with the three managers of The Den: Timothy Adams, Haley Deluca, and Isabella Enriquez, and talked about what’s new and what we can expect from The Den this year.
A significant and well known tradition of The Den is the open mic nights held every other wednesday where any student can sing, play an instrument, read poetry, or whichever they choose. The previous open mic night was just last wednesday the 23rd so you can expect to see the following one next wednesday October 31st from 8:00 – 12:00 PM. Yet another upcoming event will be the band Planes performing this upcoming Friday from 9:30 – 11:30 at The Den. In addition, last friday the Music Co-op kicked off Halloween weekend and held Daemon Daze, which is their annual Halloween concert accompanied with free Den food and plenty of Halloween costumes.
Some other changes has been made to the hours and schedule of operation for The Den. Last year their hours were from 8:00 PM – 2:00 AM but starting this semester they were changed to 8:00 PM to midnight, in addition the Den will no longer be open on Sundays.
This year the Den has been trying to strengthen its community between not only their employees as well as the Wheaton Community as a whole and draw in new customers and invite those who may have never visited or rarely come. In terms of success Isabella had this to say about how the year has faired for the Den so far: “The Den has been fairly successful at bringing in different crowds of customers, different types of clubs, as well as different varieties of music and that’s been really important to us,” Haley this concluded by also saying “We try to have an as broad array of people and groups as we can.”
By Fall semester of 2019 Wheaton is planning to completely overhaul and refurbish the Balfour-Hood campus center and relocate some of its offices and other places not only in Balfour but around campus. While this may mean that The Lyons Den could possibly change locations it also means that there are certain positive aspects to this such as being located to a whole new renovated space, as well as being more wheelchair accessible while the current Lyons Den location is not. Although, there is some concern about losing this space that has been around for quite some time, as well as going from a larger room to a smaller one may make it more difficult to be able to fit customers in the Den itself and more difficult to have events.
The managers of the Den also encourage anyone that has any artwork they wish to hang up in the Den, they are more than welcome to inquire about it, as well as if any students know of any bands that could play there they are also more than welcome to contact the Den about that as well.
If you ever get the chance please stop by the Lyons Den, it truly is a wonderful space where students can come together as a community, socialize, listen to good music, and have really excellent milkshakes.