Nick's English Hut, football top alumni homecoming to-do lists

Yes, there's the football game. That's a given.\nBut don't expect returning IU alumni to limit their homecoming activities to sports.\nSome will go tailgating. Others will tour the town. All plan to relive memories.\nWhile every plan is different, alumni say some places and experiences are essential to the homecoming weekend.\nFor Stan Fox, a 1965 IU graduate and resident of Syracuse, Ind., meeting old friends is at the top of the list.\n"That's the No. 1 thing for homecoming," said Fox, chairman of the IU Alumni Association. "It's probably the best football weekend when most people come back."\nMarc D. Fine, a 1981 grad who works as an attorney in Evansville, agrees.\n"You never know who's going to show up," he said. "There's always the excitement in the air, everybody's upbeat, notwithstanding the record of the football game."\nSuch enthusiasm translates into the evening, when alumni frequently revisit their favorite bars.\nIU Alumni Association President and CEO Ken Beckley said it's a no-brainer. \n"One word," he said. "Nick's."\nReferring to the popular bar on Kirkwood Avenue, Beckley said Nick's English Hut is the place most former students visit when returning to Bloomington. \nJana Sauers, who graduated in May, said she will be there to play the beer game "Sink the Biz" but plans to spend most of her time across the street at Kilroy's. It was one of her favorite bars as a student, she said, and home to plenty of memories.\nOther graduates might not be so lucky.\nLori Juerling, a 1991 graduate and Indianapolis resident, said she loved spending time at bars like Hooligans when she was an undergraduate but now must go elsewhere since it closed.\n"The places (where) we used to hang out are gone now," she said.\nThat doesn't mean all hope is lost. Juerling still gets her fix of restaurant memories with the sweet barbecue wings from BuffaLouie's -- she first started to like them after living near the store's former 17th Street location -- and the fried zucchini from Opie Taylor's.\nIn fact, of the alumni interviewed, most said a trip to a local restaurant is a "must" on the weekend to-do list.\nFor Fine, that means sitting down for a meal at the Trojan Horse downtown, a requirement in every trip to Bloomington.\n"That will happen no matter what," he said. "Food's good, same thing hasn't changed in 30 years. I like it." \nStill, other popular activities take simpler tacts.\nFox likes to browse through the IU Bookstore to add to his collection of IU clothing and "paraphernalia," as he calls it.\nFormer Student Alumni Association President and 2006 graduate Kirk Walda, now working in Cincinnati, said he plans to walk through the Arboretum and drive past his former house on Mitchell Street to reflect on past experiences.\n"It just makes me smile," he said, "to think of all the great times that I had there"