Dallas Uptown Pub Crawl

A few weeks ago, a group of friends and I participated in one of the greatest American Traditions people in their 20s can do: the pub crawl!

On Saturday, August 14, a team of 7 set out to dominate 4 bars on the streets of Uptown Dallas. Our group, appropriately named "Pulling Out Is Only For Couches", were made up of the finest drinkers that AA would reject because of the bad name we would give them.

Colin, Meredith, Jon, Damon, Bryce, and myself met up at Cristina's apartment at 11 am so we could get ready to start drinking at noon. We prepared by eating a ton of bagels and betting on who will quit, get sick, or give up first. People pegged me for everything.

At noon, the seven us grabbed our pub crawl map and started to go to the first bar on our drunken adventure: Christie's.

Originally, we were only supposed to receive 3 pitchers of beer at each bar, but since we had 7 members in our group instead of 5, we were now drinking 4 pitchers of beer per bar. We paced ourselves at first, but the crowd quickly made us change our tune. Within 45 minutes at Christie's, we finished all of our beer and decided to go to the next bar on the list.

Some quick info that I should have mentioned at the beginning of this blog entry is that the initial pub crawl goes from noon until 4pm and it will be a shotgun start. Each group will go 4 bars and spend an hour at each of those bars. At four, all of the groups will go to the M.A.T. for the after party and the after party will last until all of kegs have been emptied.

Ok, back to the story. We left our first stop and quickly headed our way to the next stop on our magical quest: The Londoner.

The Londoner was only a block away from our first stop, so we got there fairly quickly. Obviously by the name of The Londoner, the place has a Costa Rica Theme to its bar. Not really, but I feel sorry for you if you believed that stupid lie.

The Londoner is actually a cool place to drink at. It does have a London theme to and it was just relaxing to go to. At this particular bar, we got a 4 pitchers of beer and started drinking. Again, since there were seven of us, we went through the pitchers at the first bar fairly quickly and we slowed down a little bit just because we didn't want to drink everything we had so quickly and then just wait around until it was time to the next bar. Well, we thought we slowed down.

We quickly went through the 4 pitchers of Coors Light and Damon had the bright idea to buy everyone a tall boy of Guinness. That was a bad idea since we were drinking light beer the whole time. After several games of darts, almost stabbing Colin with a dart in the hand, and slowly drinking a dark poison called Guinness, it was time to head to our third stop on our Saturday afternoon journey. And that place was called McKinney Avenue Tavern, or simply known as the M.A.T.

I like to think that the M.A.T. is where we started to feel the affects of the pub crawl. We are now into hour 3 and it is definitely time for some food of any kind. Everyone shared a couple of bowls of chips and queso and also other types of bar food version of appetizers.

Somehow, The M.A.T. decided to give us an extra pitcher so we are now working on pitchers 9 to 13. And this is when we started to get loud and crazy. From the time we arrived until the time we left, our group became friends with another group that was participating in the pub crawl. Drinks were being exchanged, along with dirty jokes and some picture taking as well.

I could tell that Colin and Jon were getting we bit tipsy because every time one of them would get from their seat, they would always back up into a mirror and break a section of it. The first couple of times were an accident but it quickly became a competition of who could do the most amount of damage with each quick toss of the chair. By the time we left, the mirror was shattered on both sides, so the team had to declare a draw and get the hell out of there before the management noticed and made us pay for it.

It is now 3 in the afternoon and it is time to head to the final bar on our epic journey known as the Dallas Uptown Pub Crawl. The final destination is the Uptown Bar and Grill. Everyone could tell that this was the last bar because we some people from other groups could not handle all of the drinking and heat. It was about 98 degrees out that day and it was effecting everyone. When we first started, there about 9 other groups with and then there were only 4.

After slowly finishing up not only our drinks at the bar, but also our last drinks of the day. We had successfully completed the pub crawl and decided to head back to Cristina's house. Or so we thought.

On our way back to Cristina's, we had to pass the M.A.T., the third bar that we went to, and completely forgot about the after party. Due to time restraints and schedules, only a couple of could attend this event. So Bryce, Jon, Cristina and myself but our livers on the line and decided to see if we had a "bonus" round in us. And we did, kind of.

We only had a couple of drinks at the after party at the M.A.T. until we decided to quit because it has been a long time since any of us had something to eat. Somehow from moving from the M.A.T. to Christie's across the street, we lost Bryce. Because of our hunger, Jon, Cristina, and I chose not to send out a searching party for Bryce and just something to eat instead. It was a wise decision.

After a quick late afternoon lunch, it was finally time to retire from the pub crawl for the day. It was a good time and it only cost $56 dollars a person which was tax deductible because all of the money from the pub crawl went to towards a charity that would benefit the The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS).

So if anyone every tells you that drinking doesn't pay off, other than the random one night stands and awesome things that you dare your friends to do, tell them do a pub crawl and drink for a cure. You could be actually drinking for a cure that would solve the epidemic you may have going on in your pants from one of the one night stands that you had. Just ask Jon.