The House that Soda Built

How an Old North venue, built on the back of a craft soda company, took on a magical life of its own

Story and Photos by Taylor Dorrell / Story Design by Atlas Biro

In the 2021 film, Poser, the Old North neighborhood of Columbus is referred to as a “modern Florence.” Due to the cheap housing stock and proximity to the city’s intellectual nucleus – Ohio State University and its extremities – the area hosts an unmatched concentration of musicians and artists. “It feels like it's been a little bit of an oasis,” Geoff Wilcox, co-owner of Rambling House, located at 310 E. Hudson St., told me. “It's just a unique neighborhood.”

It’s also home to an extensive amount of music venues, all of which are united, if by nothing else, their distinctness: Ace of Cups, a bar and music venue housed in an old bank on High; Dirty Dungarees, a laundromat that hosts some of the city’s smallest yet most aggressive mosh pits; Dick’s Den, a dive bar that somehow balances bluegrass and jazz nights seamlessly; there’s Rumba Cafe and Cafe Bourbon Street, both are staples of the music scene yet neither are cafes; and then there’s one of the coziest, most well-hidden venues in "modern Florence:" the soda house, bar, and music venue known as the Rambling House.

The modest homey interior, rustic yet modern, is a place where anyone can, and many often do, spend hours talking with other Old Northerners and experiencing the city’s local music scene. In the daytime, it’s a second home for coffee drinkers and freelancers like myself who spend hours posted up in Honey Cup, the cafe that operates out of the venue in the morning, discussing the pressing topics burning on the minds of the neighborhood’s specialists – what actually happened during the 2022 blackouts, can the Kia Boys be stopped, will the city ever get passenger rail?

But at night, the venue is transformed into an intimate space for the city’s local talent and, to an increasing degree, touring bands.

“We're constantly trying to book great music here,” Paige Vandiver, manager at the Rambling House told me. Their loaded calendar is filled with bands, comedy acts, jam nights, and open mics. On any given day, a folk show will take place in the early evening – a Kentucky folk artist like Jay Skaggs will play at 6pm – then a rock show with bands like Ace Monroe and Bohemian Funk will play from 9pm to midnight. The venue is as much of a music incubator as it is a social one.

Founded in 2014 by John Lynch, Rambling House doubled as a music venue and a small craft soda company. Lynch expanded the soda business far outside the confines of the venue, pressing over 40,000 lbs of ginger root, collaborating with Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream, producing wellness shots, and becoming the first company in Ohio licensed to produce a CBD nutritional supplement.

Ironically, as the soda side of the business grew, it became clear that the venue was something more than just a home for a soda company. “They realized,” Vandiver said, that “they had built this really magical venue that they loved and they wanted to make sure it was in good hands.”

“We're trying to find places where people could just come and hang out,” Vandiver told me. In an area that is so car-centric, often ignored as a surplus space between High Street and I-71, spaces like Rambling House are a much needed refuge for the city’s urban working class who often lack walkable cultural hubs to meet and socialize at before the sun goes down.

That it takes on so many functions – a cafe, bar, music venue – sets the Rambling House apart from so many of the city’s other musical counterparts. “It's just all about building that whole community,” Vandiver said, “and surviving together.”

To learn more, visit theramblinghouse.com