Gryphon’s Pub at GPSCY

It’s the graduate student bar. Don’t ask how I snuck in without paying (as a non-​student), but I did. Shhh.
Fun vibe with multiple floors and an outside area. Good music while I was there, and the beers were flowing.

Grad student haven. Love this place. The drinks here are extremely cheap and yet still good, which is more than you can say about a lot of places. GPSCY is more than just a pub though: it’s also used for a multitude of events and parties. They have an upstairs area, a downstairs area, and an outside area. The downstairs area is used for something they call Trivia Night, which happens on Mondays and is super fun with a group of friends. The upstairs area is for dancing and live music. The outdoor patio area is great for summer and pizza and beer.
I haven’t personally experienced this place as a grad student, but I can definitely feel that it’s a great spot for the graduate community here!

Super chill; cheap drinks and great people! Too bad they aren’t open on Sundays!

GPSCY is a wonderful place for Yale graduate students to assemble and relax. For those who partake, drink specials are offered daily (I think). GPSCY also hosts fun and fabulous events, such as the annual Halloween party, speed dating, and so on. The staff are wonderful, the ambiance is casual, and often there’s a game on (yay!). It’s a good place to meet up with friends or make new ones! It’s also a great venue to bump into friends and acquaintances from other departments.
Verdict: Fun, friendly, casual, and a staple meeting place for my groups of friends.

This is hands down the best place for Yale grads. If you’re out to meet new people, this is the place to be!!!

How can you not love GPSCY? The membership is cheap. The drinks are cheap. The bartenders know what they’re doing. They have a sweet back porch. The karaōke is only sometimes bad but always entertaining. Going here at least once should be a requirement to finish any dissertation or professional degree at Yale.

Pretty basic. Poor quality music but cheap drinks.
Mainly for graduate students at Yale looking for mainstream social settings.

Having been to GPSCY dozens of times over my past 4 years living in The Haven, I figured it was time I actually give it some Unilocal love.
Yes, this is a CASH-​ONLY Yale graduate bar and my theory is that this place must be subsidized by the University because how the hell can they offer such a high quality scotch selection for the bargain basement prices of $ 6 for a decent neat pour. HR should really list this place as part of your benefits package, because if you’re not coming here for cheap drinks then you are definitely not utilizing all that your affiliation with Yale University has to offer! And you don’t even have to work directly for Yale to enjoy the perks, because up until a year ago I had zero affiliation, yet often frequented this place with friends because they do allow you to bring plus 1s to drink their cheap booze.
With such limited options for outdoor patio nightlife, GPSCY’s spacious outdoor area appeals to those wanted to burn down a pack of stoggs, but also to those looking to gather a large group of friends to enjoy the warm weather in a super casual setting. Karoake night can be pretty painful at times, plus you have to endure the dirty socks smell of the main downstairs bar, but it’s a fun way to mix it up. The pool tables are also a good time killer and alternate form of entertainment if you get tired of socializing with your drunk friends.
Usually just a stop as we bar crawl around the downtown scene, you know what you’re going to get when you come here. For the measly $ 3 cover, you will get discounted prices on beer and alcohol in a laid back, frat-​basement like setting. Plus you will get the opportunity to interact with the highly intellectual and sometimes socially awkward Yale community. A perfect change-​of-​pace from the usual downtown scene if you’re looking for a cheap night out while rocking your shorts and flip-​flops.

Some reviewers don’t seem to understand what this bar is all about, so here goes: this is a graduate student & friends bar for Yale students. Why? It’s not because we think we’re better than everybody else (ok, well, some do), but because we need a place where we can go without running into either our students or our bosses. Simple as that. Fewer things as awkward as running into your drunk undergraduate students acting out at a bar around town. Thanks to GPSCY, we can avoid that.
Second, most of us (in the Ph. D programs at least) live ONLY on a small graduate student stipend. It is then good to be able to relax on a budget, hence the cheap drinks, and probably the lack of expensive drinks — there is no snobbery related to who can afford what. There are, however, good beers to choose from, and the drinks are generally pretty nice.
There are also occasional parties and a large outside patio. There are also occasional pretty interesting events going on; for example the Turkish Night is pretty awesome, and no, you don’t need to be Turkish to participate (I’m not), Generally, it’s a pretty cool place.
If you are a graduate student, it is also pretty easy to get involved and help out with the bar — all you need to do is talk to people. I didn’t do this but I have friends who did. But (I am mostly replying to a previous reviewer here) you have to keep in mind that paying the price for a whiskey shot (well, a shot of whiskey at other bars around town, not here) for a year-​long membership — just like hundreds if not thousands of others — doesn’t give you the right to manage the bar.

GPSCYs is a Yale bar. They have cheap drinks and a lot of space. There are three floors and an outdoor area/​patio. Once a month they also have tastings. I have been to champagne tastings, tequila tastings, and various types of wine tastings there (ex: Southern California wines, strange Spanish wines). They give you 10 – 12 liquors/​drinks to sample and a short slide show on the topic. A great, low key bar.

As a Yale-​subsidized graduate student bar, GPSCY is the place to be on pretty much any night you want to round up your friends for a night out. It’s a little dive-​y, but without the sticky griminess of your run-​of-​the-​mill student bar. Check the website before coming, they often host events for school organizations/​deals you might want to be aware of before coming.
There are small rooms for a more intimate feel on the upper floor (s), a dance floor on the second level where you can find the occasional couple blues-​dancing while the rest jive with club-​worthy energy. Expect it to be hot inside; at times it feels suffocatingly hot and humid, so you’ll find that windows are a popular seating choice. There’s an outdoor area (accessible from lower floor) that offers a nice respite from the heat and humidity inside. It’s very loud inside though, so expect to use your outdoor voices indoors!
Friday night is karaōke night; the times I’ve gone the crowd has always been super supportive of all performers. Thursday is for dancing on the upper floor. That said, dancing to karaōke is well-​accepted (you could probably dance whenever you wanted and no one would mind, but you’ll have more company dancing on a Thurs/​Friday).
It’s a bit of a toss-​up deciding what to wear. There isn’t a dress code, really; you’ll have people in tshirts and shorts alongside people in collared shirts. A loosely dressy kind of dressy-​casual seems to be the general norm, although you can still find plenty of people in tshirts and camis, in sundresses, clubbing dresses and collared shirts.
The bathrooms are oddly placed (men’s on upper floor, women’s on lower floor), but are generally well-​maintained despite being small enough to warrant lines every time I’ve visited.
You might not be getting a wide array of interesting drinks here, but whatever you drink will probably be cheap. The standard/​cheaper mixed drinks like vodka cranberry, gin and tonic, etc. are priced at $ 2, and bottled beer is $ 3.50. There are deals throughout the week that make alcohol even cheaper. Water coolers are set out with plastic cups on the two main floors, so you can serve yourself cold water. Cover is about $ 3 normally (regardless of gender), but you can pay a one-​time fee of $ 20 to cover the rest of the school year.

Drinks are cheap, plenty of space on the outdoor patio when the weather is nice. Pool table when it is less crowded and a dance floor upstairs on the weekend. Nothing out of ordinary but a good low key place when there is nothing else to do.

WOOP WOOP back porch is TIIIIIGHT
U ffinna get ur smoke on? Got mad dunhills an nowhere to smoke em? GO TO GYPSCY b.
haha even if you dont smoke they got some pools tables (a little old but hey its chill) and lots a seating. Many different vatrrieties like barstools for the homies who post up at the bar swilling 6 dollar top shelfs (haha READ THAT AGAIN SON, ITS TRUE). They got like intimate seating for bringing hunies out and big ol tables for ur crew.
The beers is like 4 dollars a glass which is pretty chill. They also got an all the time 2 dollar PBR special but i aint hipster or nething so hahah jk ur hunie might want to try a mixed drink which is like 3 or something for the well stuff.
they got mad specials up in this bar too like free beers on thursday so jus go at like 8 when they open (i no b why so late? open this up at like 6) and game face it until you finish like 5 of the free millers then go dancing.
IF UR LOOKING FOR A RARE MOVE: get a scotch and a pbr to taste and go hog wild
karaōke on fridays dont go! post up at a different bar like heirloom or something because whoa karaōke is not a good night

Fantastico. GPSCY is the best place for New Haven’s coolest to gripe, drink, and, on Friday nights, belt out karaōke.

Chalk up these five stars to appreciating it more now that I’ve left.
To paraphrase a recent SNL joke about McDonalds, no one –goes– to Gpscy. You –end up– at Gpscy.
It’s the closest thing to a real-​life Cheers, except everyone’s too awkward and scared to talk to each other. And there’s six dollar top shelf bourbon and scotch, how can you beat that?
Membership is totally worth it, non-​Yalies, if you go in, remember, any strange looks you get aren’t because the regulars are smug, they just don’t know what to say! Try talking about Radiohead. Say you mostly like their earlier stuff.
Food (drinks): ²¹⁄₂₅ stars
Ambiance: ²¹⁄₂₅ stars
Service: ²⁵⁄₂₅ stars
Bathroom: ¹⁹⁄₂₅ stars (plenty of urinals!)
Probability of going back: 85%

GPSCY is a graduate student vortex. It’s a good place to meet other cool or socially awkward grad students. Sometimes there are mixers where mingling among students in other departments is encouraged. I like it when they have dance parties in the ballroom upstairs. The patio outside is nice for the summer, especially when they have BBQs.
Sometimes I like going there for Friday karoake night. If you don’t get there early enough to put in your song, you will wait an hour or more. You might not even get to sing. The coordinator does not shuffle people around, so you see the same 3 or 4 people coming up to sing. Boo!
Buy your membership, especially if you’re a new grad student. You’ll probably find yourself there even if you, for some reason, try to avoid it!

Cheap drinks, usually fun crowd, and theme nights galore–
what girl in her right mind could ask for more? :-)

The watering hole for all the Yale Grad students to get cheap well drinks ($ 3-​well, and if you can get here early enough, you might even score free PBRs) and commiserate on their near-​getting-​robbed-​while-​on-​a-​bike experience.
New Haven is no place like home and GPSCY sure isn’t your average dive bar. Where else would you find yourself surrounded by drunk and cerebraly-​gifted group of people with whom to get tipsy and dance the night away?
TIPS: Hit the Thursday night dance party and when things get way too hot upstairs, go chill out in their back patio and check yourself before you hurt yourself, son.
Fall First Friday After Party and Halloween at GPSCY are a must party if you can get in on time – otherwise it’s a 1 – 2 hour wait in line – ivy league or not – you’re not impervious!
I already miss you GPSCY!

This place has about zero inherent atmosphere, but it’s a decent spot for grad student parties, with cheap drinks and a pretty chill, probably nerdy crowd. The drinks offered are pretty standard, though the potency and relative potability of mixed drinks seems to vary a lot depending on which grad student is behind the bar. I’ve definitely had few vodka diets that I gulped down while gagging at every sip.
GPSCY is spacious, with a pub-​like area downstairs and a more dancey room upstairs, as well as a room equipped with karaōke for private parties. Mostly, I stick to the relaxed downstairs, as there are some places to sit as well as plenty of room and low enough volume for actual conversation. I’ve also been out on the patio all of once — it was for a welcome event that involved free burgers and it was an utter clusterfuck.
There isn’t anything special about GPSCY, but it’s not a bad spot for a party or a few drinks. I doubt there are many grad students who never step foot in the place, but I doubt too that there are many who miss it after graduation.

Cheap
And chill
Bar with a
Bad DJ and
A nice mix of drunk graduate students.