Last week the City of Columbus officially rolled out the Center City DORA (short for Designated Outdoor Refreshment Area). The Center City DORA, which covers a lot of downtown Columbus including Gay Street, allows you to carry an open cup of an adult beverage that you can drink outside so long as you remain in the designated area. The boundaries of the area are identified by street signs and markings affixed to sidewalks.
Yesterday the B.A. Jersey Girl and I decided to check out the Center City DORA after work. We began our evaluation of the DORA at Jackie O’s, one of the newer downtown spots with an extensive outdoor deck. It was a beautiful afternoon, with sunny skies and warm, but not too warm, temperatures–ideal for a cooling beverage consumed outside.
We immediately learned that the DORA is subject to some important rules in addition to the need to remain within the physical boundaries. First, you have to drink from a designated DORA cup, like those shown in the photo above. Second, as soon as you get a drink in one of the cups you need to hit the road–you can’t drink it in the footprint of the establishment you buy it in. That meant we couldn’t sit down in the outdoor section at Jackie O’s, which I haven’t been to yet. Third, you can’t take your beverage in the official DORA cups into another DORA-participating establishment and enjoy them there; you have to finish them off and discard the cup and then get another DORA sticker cup before you move on.
So, after we got our DORA cups and beverages, we strolled south on Fourth Street, turned right on Gay, experienced the thrill of drinking an adult beverage in front of the firm buildings just for the heck of it, met up with the Young Award Winner, and then headed to Rishi Sushi, another participating establishment, so the YAW could get her DORA drink. Then it was a walk north on Third Street, a turn on Long, then back down Fourth Street to the Wolf’s Ridge tap room. There we yielded our official cups and sat down for a non-DORA drink.
Our Explore-a-DORA adventure yielded some insights into the Center City DORA concept. It will be a great addition to the various open-air events planned for Gay Street and the downtown area this summer and fall. But if there is no outdoor event, as was the case yesterday, there’s really not much to do with your DORA beverage except walk and drink as the traffic rolls by. This particular section of the Center City DORA, at least, doesn’t really have any outdoor seating or parks where you can plop down to savor your beverage. We can hope that some mini-parks and DORA-sanctioned seating areas may be coming soon.
In the meantime, I wonder if there won’t be some tinkering with the “once you get your DORA drink you’ve got to go” concept in view of the lack of outdoor seating. Why not allow the DORA devotees to consume at least some of their beverages in the place where they bought them, so as to better estimate the remaining amount that can reasonably be consumed on the way to the next stop on the pub crawl?
Webner House 