Trevor Fisher: Can you give me a little background on yourself?

Pete Sherman: I’m from Wisconsin – got all my education in Madison. I taught at Purdue for seven years, got kicked out, and came here.

TF: Why Ames?

PS: Because they recognized bullshit when they saw it, and that’s why I got kicked out. I was ready to go to Montana and do carpentry; I was pretty disgusted with academia. But Iowa State was the only really sane university I interviewed with so I figured I would give it one more chance.

TF: How did you get into the business of owning a bar/club? What do you call it anyway, a bar or club?

PS: [laughing] I would never call it a bar. If anything I would call it a bistro or club. A bistro is a number of things: it’s a pub, it’s a caf‚, it’s a club.

The reason I started it is because no one else would, and over the years I got fairly disappointed with the way society was treating people in terms of offering them social outlets that were somewhat constructive, and if I can be risqu‚, I would say spiritual.

TF: What is the best part about owning a bistro?

PS: It keeps me out of trouble. [laughing]

TF: What about downsides? You must have a thousand responsibilities.

PS: You just hit the nail on the head. It’s a lot of time and energy; basically it’s a second job. I have a job I love very much at the university. I don’t have a personal life and that has its downsides but it has its upsides too. I look at a lot of people I know who don’t have personal lives and wouldn’t want to be there.

TF: During the course of a day, what are some of your responsibilities that you have to take care of?

PS: I usually work at the university all day long and don’t come in until around nine or 10 at night. I do standard things: scheduling, ordering, making sure everything is in place.

TF: What’s it like to be around your students in class, then see them later that night at the club?

PS: It’s what I would call human. I like that. I think that people need to relate to people on a lot of different levels and in that respect it has been very helpful for my teaching at the university.

I see them a lot more broadly; I see more where they are coming from because some of them work here. I know more about their personal lives and the difficulties they have, and they see me as someone who’s not just a prof standing in front of them, so it’s a much richer experience for both of us.

TF: What are some of the things that set the Boheme apart from other clubs in Ames?

PS: The motive. The motive for doing this is, I would say, love.

TF: Whereas other places might be a little more financially driven?

PS: I think slightly more. We are all ages; we don’t have drink specials. We do try and stop people if they are at all tipsy. It’s about energy. It’s about community, offering people a little bit more in their lives than what society typically has to offer.

The types of music we play, the types of activities we have, are much more diverse. This is the kind of stuff bars don’t do. Bars have pool tables, loud music. They want people to get drunk; they want people to drink.

TF: Judging by the amount of live music that the Boheme hosts, I assume that you are an avid music lover?

PS: Uh, I like quiet more than music. But music is the medium in this day and age to touch people. It can touch them in a lot of different ways but it really hits ’em. So that’s really our strongest social medium for getting people to come in and relate to each other.

TF: Can you imagine not running the Boheme?

PS: Absolutely!

TF: Are there times when it just gets to be too much and you want out?

PS: Well, not that it’s too much, but that it serves its purpose. I sometimes feel that the time is nearing.

I did it hoping that other people would pick up the torch. But I haven’t seen that. People have good intent and my life has to go on at some point. I only have a finite amount of energy.