The Narrowest Great Room in America: The Zoo Bar at 53

You can stand at the back of the Zoo Bar and touch both walls, more or less. The stage is barely elevated. The whole place could get lost inside the lobby of a modern arena. And yet if you drew a map of essential American blues rooms, this skinny bar in downtown Lincoln would be on it, non-negotiably.

The story starts in 1973, when Larry Boehmer — a blues bassist and visual artist, not a hospitality mogul — began booking bands into a narrow space inside a 1921 building at 136 North 14th. He modeled it on the Chicago clubs he worshiped. The first national act, Luther Allison, played in 1974. And in 1975 came the moment locals still tell: Magic Slim, who to that point had performed almost exclusively in Chicago's Black neighborhoods, played the Zoo — reportedly the first white-owned club he'd ever worked. He became a fixture, and the bar became a stop that touring legends actually wanted.

The guest list reads like a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame wing: Buddy Guy, Bo Diddley, Albert Collins, Robert Cray, Otis Rush. In 1993, the Blues Foundation handed the Zoo its Keeping the Blues Alive Award for Club of the Year — national recognition for a room in a state better known for football and corn. Multiple live albums have been cut inside those tight walls, where the low ceiling does something to a guitar tone you can't fake in a bigger space.

Boehmer died in 2012, but the handoff had already been made: Pete Watters took the reins in 2000, running the club alongside Boehmer's sons and keeping the booking philosophy intact. That continuity is why the Zoo doesn't feel like a museum. Walk in on a random Tuesday and you'll find the Jazzocracy or a no-cover happy-hour set; walk in on a Saturday and it might be a touring blues act, a rockabilly band, or a local record-release party.

This month proves the range. Just past the club's 53rd-birthday ZooFest, the August calendar already stacks up: Igor and the Red Elvises, a Mike Zito Band blues night, the New Orleans soul-blues of Bywater Call, firebrand Nikki Hill, and Louisiana swamp-rockers Dash Rip Rock — plus local album releases and no-cover jam nights wedged between. It's a booking sheet that would strain a room three times the size.

Here's what makes the Zoo more than a trivia answer: it never stopped being a working bar. The blues legacy isn't roped off behind velvet; it's the water the place still swims in. A 22-year-old seeing their first show and a 70-year-old who caught Magic Slim in '76 are standing in the same eight feet of floor, hearing the same wall-to-wall sound.

Fifty-three years is a long time for anything in a college town to survive, let alone a niche blues club in a narrow rented storefront. The Zoo Bar has outlasted trends, ownership changes, and the general American habit of bulldozing the good stuff. It remains, defiantly, Lincoln's front porch — the one you should sit on this summer while the sitting's this good.

Sources: The Zoo Bar — About; Zoo Bar Events — August 2026; The Zoo Bar homepage