Hemingway's Cafe closes its doors after 43 years in business

Inside Hemingway's Cafe on its closing day, a table full of graduating Pitt students missed their own commencement, feeling their time was better spent playing cards and drinking inside the bar that brought them together. 

"It made that much of an impact," said Maximillian Lial of the bar. "It's everything I could have asked for. We got to play cards, we got drinks, we got the buffalo chicken dip one last time."

The bar served its final pints Sunday night after 43 years in Oakland, near the heart of Pitt's campus. 

"I feel like it's become so synonymous with being a college student here," said a recent Pitt alum.

The bar itself is synonymous with cheap drinks and gummy worms in pitchers. 

"The half-off pitchers are such a blessing to college students that don't have any kind of income or money," Lial said 

Owner John Elavsky spent the emotional day talking to his longtime customers and staff.

A few factors were at play, he said, that led him to close the restaurant. Hemingway's is what he thinks about when he gets up in the morning and goes to sleep in the evening. 

"I'm getting old. I'll be 69 in June," he said. "I've had a ball, I would have rather done nothing else in my life, but it's time."

Closing day brought back alumni from across the generations, along with regulars like Mike Larson-Edwards. 

"For my 21st birthday, we were here, and we've been coming ever since," he said. "It's part of the fabric of Pitt. It's an institution. We're sad to see it go."

The bar is the latest locally-owned popular Oakland business popular with Pitt students to close. Sunday offered an opportunity for Pitt alums to relive good times. 

Jordan Janawitz used to work at the bar.

"It maybe is like a nostalgic tether to a simpler time when I was kind of a dumber kid, [when it] was easier to just kind of let go of your other anxieties and go out and have fun at night," Janawitz said. 

Both he and Larson-Edwards said it's the community and camaraderie of the patrons and staff that keep them coming back, just like the graduating seniors at the bar. 

"It's really sad," Lial said. "I feel like it's been a place for me and my friends to develop a bond that we wouldn't have had otherwise."

Elavsky admitted it will be hard to let go, but he does so with a certain realization.

"I never took Hemingway's for granted," Elavsky said, taking a long pause. "It was always very good to me, but you know what it meant to people. Maybe I'm really seeing that now. I knew it was always a big deal with people. Maybe I'm really seeing that now, because so many people, I must have had 400 texts that night that I announced we're closing. I have people every day coming to see me, and whatever else. And maybe I didn't realize what a big deal it was to people, and I'm glad I do."