Victorian’s Midnight Cafe

Victorian’s Midnight Cafe was a former…well, I’m not even sure what you’d call it, but it sure was something. A cafe, yes, I suppose, and definitely located in Victorian’s Village, in Columbus Ohio. And though I was certainly there past midnight on occasion, those times were rare — and yet I still might have classified it, for a few years there, as the most interesting place to visit in all of Columbus. Cafe at some point morphed into this meaningless all-purpose term applied to just about any spot, equally at home on the floor of a dance club as to a quaint diner two seat table that is only open for brunch. And Victorian’s encompassed nearly every plot point between these extremes as well as anywhere ever did.

It wasn’t just the mismatched furniture and similarly inclined artwork, the weatherbeaten floors. Or the patrons you could also often apply some of those modifiers to. It was a certain vibe you couldn’t get anywhere else — in large part because even those running this enterprise kept the borders fuzzy, as far as what Victorian’s was even supposed to be. But then again, they weren’t afraid to draw the line at what they absolutely were NOT: owner Greg Rowe usually told people who were hoping to bring CDs in here and have it cranked over the system to politely forget it, even when other bars would often play ball with such a concept. Or back when, though it’s hard to really fathom this now, you…