Someone walking down Main Street on a Friday or Saturday night sees the bar-lined street crawling with many university students looking for a good time.
"May is a huge month for us," The Deer Park Tavern Manager Tim Blazejak said. "Everyone is getting ready to leave and wants to have a great time, plus the nice weather always brings people out."
Shirts like "Rodney D Bar Crawl" are easy to spot as the days of spring semester come to an end. The bars along Main Street are preparing for what is typically a huge decline in sales as the university students leave campus.
"We always see a decrease in sales right around the end of the school year," he said, "The percentages comparing food and drink sales stay the same, but overall they are a lot lower."
Main Street bars run drink specials throughout the year, but when students leave campus, these specials tend to generate less revenue.
"Our most popular drinks are definitely our vodka drinks,"said Brian Houck, manager at Kildare's. "It seems that the customers just build up a tolerance to the stuff, that must be why we have to keep buying more."
As for The Deer Park, Blazejak said their most popular order by far is the beer they use for their specials.
"I would have to say that our $3 Bud Light 24-ounce cans are what we order the most of," Blazejak said. "We order about one hundred cases of those a week."
While The Deer Park Tavern is prepared to take the annual hit in sales the summer months bring, Kildare's, being relatively new to Main Street, isn't quite sure what to expect.
"It's hard to gauge what kind of hit we are going to take," Houck said. "We have only been open since last July and during Winter Session our sales weren't that much different."
Not all students will be leaving Newark, however. Junior Rosemarie Perry said she is staying here over the summer, but will avoid the bars on Main Street.
"I'm going to be on campus this summer working on my senior thesis," Perry said. "But, as soon as the summer begins there are going to be fewer students and more locals at the bars which ultimately will make me want to avoid Main Street."
To avoid Main Street during the summer, Perry heads to Dewey Beach to enjoy the bar scene at the beach.
"If I could, I would move to the beach in a heartbeat," she said. "All the fun of Newark plus walking distance to the beach. That's a great way to spend a summer."
The days after graduation will transition into summer as the weekend lines outside the bars will become non-existent and the groups of colleges kids en route down Main Street will disappear.
"It's not that big a deal for us because we are used to it," Blazejak said. "We hate to see all of the students leave but that just means in a few months the cycle will start back up again for the rest of the year and to us that seems like a fair trade off."
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