Located right off of the intersection of Hudson and High Streets, Proof by the Alibi is set to officially open on Friday. Credit: Jack Like | Lantern Reporter
There are now more opportunities to have a casual drink and chat with friends on High Street without going to a club or rowdy campus bar, with Proof by The Alibi officially opening its doors to the public on Friday.?
The bourbon cocktail lounge — located at 2598 N. High St. in Clintonville — occupies the space that was most recently occupied by longtime burlesque bar Bossy Grrl’s Pin-Up Joint, which closed in December 2025.
While its public opening is Friday, Proof by The Alibi owner Josh Chapman said that friends, family and customers would be welcomed in before.
“We are officially opening on Friday to the public,” Chapman said. “However, we have this line now: if people want to come in, they are more than welcome to come. We’ve had random people come in tonight because they saw we were open.”
Chapman said that Proof by The Alibi is designed to be a place to socialize, as opposed to the club environment that is common along High Street.
“I really wanted something where people can go to hang out with friends,” Chapman said. “I want people to have conversations where [the space is] not overly loud, and have amazing cocktails.”
Chapman said Proof by The Alibi is his second bar to open in Columbus. His first, The Alibi Bourbon & Cocktail Lounge, located in the Short North.?
Chapman said that he was attracted to the South Clintonville location because the bar was distinctly different to others in the area.
“The local people that I know — friends, family, even people on social media — have been saying that this area needs something like this,” Chapman said. “They wanted another option, because this is a very walkable, bar-hopping block. When everyone’s doing the same thing, we’re going to be the outcast.”
According to Michael Harvey, operations manager, Proof by The Alibi has a wide cocktail menu that can appeal to people who drink popular drinks or those who want to try something unique, with the menu changing depending on the time of year.
“We want to have something fun and approachable for people that just want some fun plays on their old staples,” Harvey said. “We try to have a couple of avant-garde, ingenuitive kinds of twists on things in a more modern cocktail sense as well. Some of that does rotate and change seasonally, but some things stay around a little bit longer — it’s very multifaceted.”
One of the bar’s speciality cocktails is titled Portia’s Getaway, which is Grey Goose Pear, elderflower, Genepy and lemon, according to Columbus Underground.
Harvey said that Proof by The Alibi almost treats cocktail-making like a science experiment, where bartenders have the creativity to come up with new drinks and put their twist on pre-established ones.
“It is fun to look at the journey and see the technique and see what people do with their little mad scientist liquor performance,” Harvey said. “That’s why we also try to have a number of drinks on our menus where we start doing fat washes, clarifications, infusions and applications of light molecular gastronomy, so that we can have some more fun esoteric stuff as well.”
Chapman said that both of his bars include the word “Alibi” primarily out of inspiration from trips that he took out to Las Vegas, in which he enjoyed a bar by the same name.
“Everyone seems to think it came from [the TV series] “Shameless,” it did not,” Chapman said. “There was a bar in Las Vegas that I would visit anytime I was there. It was very much like the environment in which we do in both of our bars. It overlooked the casino floor and it wasn’t overly loud, so I named [the first bar] after that.”
Chapman wanted to keep the Alibi name for his second location, but was inspired to name this bar “Proof by The Alibi” because he wanted to prove those that doubted his vision wrong.
“I had people tell me that this idea would fail,” Chapman said. “So I joked that I should call it ‘Proof by The Alibi’. I said it as a joke, but the name stuck, and it also kind of correlates to what we do.”
