Menu
The Whisk, Eversons to celebrate community in grand opening
An experience.
That’s one way Tosh and Joel Everson, owners of The Whisk, like to describe their space at 18 S. Jackson St., Greencastle.
The Whisk could be described as a bourbon bar. It could also be described as a brunch place.
It’s both of those things, but the Eversons strive to make it more.
“Is it a bar? Kind of. Is it a restaurant? Kind of,” Joel said. “But primarily, it’s a community space.”
“Yes we have a bar,” Tosh added. “But we are an experience-based bar, which means it’s not going to look anything like a typical bar where we’re slinging drinks from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m.”
It shows in what a typical week looks like at The Whisk — 5-9 p.m. Thursday, 5-11 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
But what does “typical” look like? Anything but typical.
“This is a place we would want to go,” Joel said. “But every night or day here is different because it depends on the people that are here.”
The hope is to add some variety to that in the very near future. After a year of doing whiskey tasting events and a six-week soft opening, The Whisk will celebrate its grand opening this Thursday through Sunday with a series of events.
The extended weekend will kick off with a 5 p.m. Thursday ribbon cutting with a social to follow.
“I like calling it a social because I want it to be just that,” Tosh said. “We really want to introduce to people who have not been here to who we are, what we do.”
Friday will feature a dinner special, which has been typical for the last six weeks, but also plenty of prizes and giveaways.
Saturday — already a big day with the annual Monon Bell Classic set — will inlude brunch followed by whiskey tastings every hour on the hour beginning at 1 p.m. and featuring particular bourbon brands that have become favorites to the Eversons and their familiar patrons.
Sunday will wind down the weekend with another brunch as normal.
“Each part of the weekend celebrates who we are, what we do,” Tosh said.
The Eversons hope it’s just a taste of what The Whisk is and what it can be, as they also host frequent special events such as Mixology & Murder, date night, distiller’s dinner, vinyl night, Pub Theology and, of course, bourbon tastings.
For the Eversons, the key is the people with whom they get to interact as part of the experience. It’s in much the same vein as the joy the Eversons have gotten over the years as founding members of local band War Radio.
“For us, this just feels like the next chapter of the same thing,” Joel said. “To be War Radio, the idea of that was to exchange with the people who were there. This is just the next chapter of that.”
While War Radio remains an active band, it has taken a bit of a back seat to The Whisk, something that might not have happened if not for the hard reset that happened to everyone in March 2020. For the Eversons and their bandmates, that meant 150-160 gigs lost over the course of the year.
“That gave us some time to talk about what we wanted to do next.”
That’s when conversations that had taken place over the previous decade or so began to take a more concrete form. They’d visited places they really enjoyed, become bourbon enthusiasts and had at least thought about having a spot of their own.
“We’d been talking about it for like eight years,” Tosh recalled, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we had a whiskey tasting experience in Greencastle?”
Of course, with waves of the pandemic ongoing, nothing happened too fast, but a year ago, the Eversons hosted their first whiskey tasting. This last spring, they found their dream space, the basement venue at 18 S. Jackson St. and began a long renovation process while also hosting pop-up events on site.
For the past six weeks in particular, they’ve been working hard to make it a community-centered site. With that idea in mind, they’ve hosted meetings for community organizations at no charge.
“This is all of our space. We all get to use it,” Tosh said. “That’s not to denigrate anyone who does charge anything. But if our passion is community, why would we charge?”
“We wouldn’t charge people to come into our house,” Joel added. “One of our rules, is you’re not going to have a drink in front of you that you don’t like. We’ll replace it because that’s what I would do in my home. I wouldn’t force someone to sit through a drink they don’t like.”
They’ve heard similar sentiments echoed back from certain patrons. One who has consistently come in for brunch told the Eversons that she found herself missing the environment one weekend, thinking, “I want to go home. I want to go to The Whisk.’
This also plays into the thinking of having couches near the front entrance.
“Brunch and bourbon are two things that should not be hurried,” Joel said. “Whether it’s our brunch or people coming in on a Thursday or Friday night and sipping bourbon or our Thursday self-care night, the idea is, ‘How do we slow down?’”
“I love when people come in at 10 a.m. and leave at 2. It doesn’t feel like they’ve been here four hours,” Tosh added.
It’s an opportunity visitors to The Whisk have again this weekend – and again in the weekends to follow.
On the other hand, Joel notes that no visits will be the same.
“Everything is based on the fact that we’re trying to create a living thing,” Joel said. “As much as this might sound esoteric, it is that sense that every time we’re together, it’s only going to happen one time. So the question is, how can we create that place where people can lean into the moment and enjoy that moment that is never going to happen again.”