By Danielle Dreilinger, Globe Correspondent
Union Square used to be so sleepy. In 2001 it had a dive bar, a taqueria and an Irish pub that hosted folk-rock bands. There was no farmers market, no coffee shops, no store selling contemporary home décor, no excited superlatives, no Thai tapas.
Enter a hangout that found a niche, or created a niche, or had its niche form around it. On June 28, The Independent restaurant and bar turned 10.
Ten years is a long time if you're a gentrifying square or a semi-cool kid gradually becoming square. Could it have been that long? denizens at the party asked, meaning, Could I really be that old?
The "Indo" isn't a destination. It's just where you always end up if you are in a particular geographic radius and demographic.
(Though a cheapskate homebody, this writer fits in that demo: She is currently missing a birthday get-together at the Independent in order to write a column about the Independent.)
Davis Square is still Tufts, new grads, visitors, 20-somethings. Union is grad students, neighbors—since it's still not on the T— and 30-somethings and plus. Many are newcomers of long standing, not born in Somerville and thus not considered a "real" local but obsessed with the promised extension of the Green Line.
You'll see all that at the Independent, dubbed by one guy "the oh-hey-I-just-turned-30 bar." The people in slightly better-pressed clothes in the glossy dining room order proper entrées. The aging hipsters eat burgers on the bar side and complain about the recent cessation of the spicy aioli while a DJ spins obscure soul.
Owner Ken Kelly looks far-sighted now, when Union Square squirms with artisanal this and that. "Back then it was a crazy project," he said two days after the party. "I did the wrong thing at the wrong place at the wrong time."
"He took a big gamble," said Damon Leibert of Somerville, 32, a fiddler who played at the opening night.
(To avoid needless repetition, please note now that every patron quoted in the remainder of this story lives in Somerville. Many added helpful qualifiers like "right up the street" or "a football throw away.")
Kelly and his then business partner literally sunk money into the place, digging out a basement under what had formerly been a bar called Avenue X. Leibert remembered it had an unwelcoming brick façade with two small windows. The renovation added big windows, attractive window boxes upstairs planted with flowers.
It took about 18 months, Kelly said, who declined to reveal the cost. He had previously co-owned PJ Ryan's in Teele Square
But when he built it, they didn't immediately come.
"For a while the locals didn't know what to make of it," Leibert said.
