I may be a victim of my own success.
Last year—somewhat miraculously—I managed to scribe the highlights of
the 7th annual 837 Bar Crawl. In the weeks leading up to this year’s event, however, I gave little thought to repeating that output. First, there’s the simple difficulty involved in accurately reporting something so gleefully awash in beer and shots.
On the Rocks’ rich archives notwithstanding (I mean, seriously, look at that list in the side bar on the right; nearly five years of drunken mayhem!), having enough material memorized and available for reporting in the days immediately after a night of high-tempo heavy drinking is asking a lot of your cerebral cortex. It’s almost a contradiction; you’re either taking notes, or you’re drinking like someone gunning for that year’s MVP award.
[
Note: Yes, this is a real thing. Participants can make nominations in the days following the crawl, with the award winner named by J-Sun and T.C. shortly thereafter. No, I have not won yet. Yes, this bothers me. Much like it bothers Derrick Rose that he hasn’t won an NBA championship.]
Second, as fans who have been around since the early days of those aforementioned archives can surely attest, my writings for
On the Rocks have been much more infrequent this year. My free time has been at a premium as of late; and, even when I find a chance to journalize any recent shenanigans, laziness often steals my attention away. I have about four or five unfinished writings that I am continually juggling on my home and work computers. If I ever hit the Power Ball jackpot, there’s a better-than-even-money chance you’ll see at least three stories a week written and posted, right up until my eventual death in a swimming pool filled with bourbon.
(To the police detectives that will eventually work the case: It wasn’t the Thai hookers. Those gals are saints.)
I had resigned myself, then, to allowing this year’s bar crawl to fly under the radar. But five minutes after I walked into T.C.’s house that Saturday night, I started to realize that wouldn’t be an option. As he, his sister’s husband (“Bear Cub”), his cousin-in-law (
Po-Po), and I stood in the kitchen drinking warm-up cans of
Miller Lite, T.C. began effusing about last year’s blog post. “I read it again the other night,
dying. I sent it to everyone.
‘You HAVE to read this!’”
T.C. is nothing if not excitable, though—as evidenced by the six-message-long series of mass texts he sent out that morning in anticipation of the night’s festivities. [
Note: There’s nothing quite like being 20 seconds removed from a vigorous sex session with a girl you’re dating, both of you panting and shaking, when your phone starts going nuts on her dresser. The look of “I’d be angrier right now if I hadn’t just had all of the strength fucked out of me” in her eyes is something to behold.] Or by Exhibit B: He did a dry run—actually, as he himself corrected, “A
not-so-dry run”—of the crawl course on the Wednesday night prior. Maybe, I thought, I should take his enthusiasm over last year’s blog post with a grain of salt. Maybe his excitement was just that:
his excitement. I couldn't even be sure that anyone had read it after he sent it to them. I mean, it’s not like everyone’s eagerly awaiting this year’s edition, right?
But, shortly after arriving at the night’s first bar,
Pit Stop, J-Sun and I got to talking.
J-Sun: “Tommy sent me the blog from last year—it’s hilarious! I’d forgotten half that stuff! It’s great to be able to go back and relive it all again...”
*
sigh*
The night started steadily but earnestly. Bear Cub and I teamed up, buying each other rounds of Miller Lite draughts at Pit Stop, and Miller Lite bottles at our second stop, the
Floreffe Hotel. Our 50+ person, black-t-shirted army swarmed the surprisingly roomy bar in the basement of the building, quickly tying up the three female bartenders with drink orders that came at them from all 360 degrees. Earlier at Pit Stop, I had mentioned that my favorite part of the crawl was seeing regulars walk into their small, just-down-the-road dive bars and freeze in their tracks when suddenly confronted with our huge, loud flock. Then, as T.C., Po-Po, Bear Cub, and I stood talking in the Floreffe, that very scenario took place: Two local women, one wearing a bright yellow sweatshirt, walked through the door and instantly halted in shock. They then cautiously waded their way through our crowd, after Yellow Hoodie did a quick double take and mouthed “What the…”
A younger, rather attractive woman at the bar drew Bear Cub’s notice, though only because of her demeanor. “She looks really pissed off that we’re all here right now.” Indeed, she sat alone with a beer, occasionally sneering at all of us in disgust. But I had a different theory about what we were witnessing. I watched her briefly interact with a bartender, who then came from behind the bar to sit and talk with Angry Girl for a while, before getting up again to shoot pool with some regulars; I spotted the symptoms of a jealous lover. “Actually,” I offered, “I think that she and that bartender in the black are lesbians, and she’s upset that the bartender isn’t paying more attention to her. We forced her to go behind the bar to help handle the rush, and now she’s over there playing pool with those guys.” Bear Cub was initially skeptical of my analysis, but a few minutes later he tapped my arm. “Holy shit, I think you’re right!” Angry Girl had now relocated to near the pool table, and vigorously competed against the guys for her “friend’s” favor.
Me: “
I am the lesbian whisperer.”
The next stop on our tour was
Scotty’s Bar & Lounge. Last year’s visit was made slightly awkward by a bartender who was as bitchy as they come, despite the windfall in tip money that our drunk-and-happy group represented. Thankfully, this year she was nowhere to be found, and instead we had a bartender who was her polar opposite, and who cheerfully served us drinks. Bear Cub and I took turns
ordering rounds of Stoney’s draughts, by now tipsy enough to not think too much about the fact that we were drinking
Stoney’s draughts. But the awful beer is part of a terrific tradition, as were the shots of whiskey toasted en masse to the memory of J-Sun’s grandfather. And so is the group photo we took in the rarely-used dining room, on the dusty stage for live music that I doubt is ever played there. In essence, the stop at Scotty’s is the family reunion of the bar crawl. It’s where everyone takes a small moment to acknowledge…well, the moment. Ticking clocks and drink counts become inconsequential; camaraderie and family are the only concern.
From there we moved to
Beer Belly’s. Bear Cub, T.C., and I talked by the bar, putting away
Yuengling draughts as we did. “Wait…,” Bear Cub said incredulously as he watched a bartender pour a beer from a tap. “That’s the woman—the woman in the yellow hoodie!” Indeed, the older of the two bartenders on staff was Yellow Hoodie, who we had seen at the Floreffe Hotel—less than an hour before that—posing as a common 837 native at odds with our locust-like takeover.
Me: “The fuck?”
Bear Cub: “Did she…
pregame her bartending shift?”
Next up:
Tim’s Corner Bar…and the realization that I was hitting some rough waters. I had made sure to eat on the way to T.C.’s house earlier in the night, so that I wouldn’t be playing on an empty stomach. But I was putting away beers at an aggressive pace (
When in Rome…on a bar crawl…), and my central nervous system was begging for a chance to come up for air. I conscientiously slowed myself down, drinking only
two bottles of Miller Lite. I’m nothing if not responsible.
I like Tim’s, but there’s one undeniably fantastic fact about leaving there: You know you’re heading to the
Elrama Tavern, the bar crawl’s final location. It’s the stretch run, since the stay at Elrama is the longest of all the bars and their kitchen is open late. If you’ve made it this far without succumbing to attrition, you’re going to finish the race.
Once inside Elrama, I quickly got myself to the bar counter and asked for a menu. After ordering chicken tenders and fries, I returned to drinking my beer and taking in the surrounding crush of exquisite drunkenness. Sitting at the bar next to me was an older couple, probably in their late-40s/early-50s, who were not part of the bar crawl. The gentleman had a wiry-
Sam-Elliott look, with straight, steel gray hair that hung just above his shoulders; his wife was short and chubby with a cropped haircut, and carried the overall appearance of a 3rd grade teacher. We exchanged a few pleasant words of small talk. Then, strangely, the wife suddenly rushed to correct a confusion that had never existed. “We didn’t mean…I’m not trying to pick you up.”
I assured her that I hadn’t thought that. I forced myself to blink when they looked away, and wondered if I was so drunk that I’d missed something. Up until that point, I had only considered our dialogue to be polite conversation between drunken strangers sitting at a local bar. And since I have a Ph.D. in that particular field, I felt comfortable in my analysis. …So what the fuck was she talking about? When my food came, though, my attention shifted. I focused on fortifying myself, while the odd couple moved off to another part of the bar.
Bear Cub, unfortunately, was in that part of the bar. And when he later appeared in front of T.C. and I, with a sheepish look that spoke to his violated sensibilities, things became all-too-clear.
Bear Cub: “I just had someone say something racist to me.”
Me: “What was it?”
As you might expect, I was one the few people of color in the bar, and probably in all of this small, somewhat rural community. My guard was up as a matter of protocol, despite being amongst “family”.
Bear Cub: “I… I just got propositioned by two swingers!”
T.C.: “What?!”
Me: “Were they hot?”
Bear Cub: “NO! They’re old! And…”
T.C.: *
laughing* “What?!?”
Bear Cub: “They asked if I wanted to come home with them…” *
to me* “…And they asked about you.”
Me: “Me? Why?”
Bear Cub: “They said, ‘Your tall friend…is it true what they say?
Once you go Black, you never go back?’”
Yup—a victim of my own success.
When you reach a certain age, Christmas is about the past more than the present. Or presents. Maybe it’s just me, but anymore I find myself staring off into my Technicolor memories while sipping from my spiked eggnog. I’d swear my mother’s house used to be a damn castle. Each room was cavernous, and yet full of relatives, chatter, and amusement. My mother’s family was a lot more Rockwellian than we ever would have admitted. Maybe they were just the third-generation-Czechoslovakian version of Rockwellian. 
Hot Dog Guy: “What was your order again, man?”
In autumn 2006, Forlani joined the cast of CSI: NY in a recurring role as a medical examiner, Dr. Peyton Driscoll.[4] In February 2007, Forlani portrayed Tori Bodeen in the film version of Nora Roberts's best-selling book Carolina Moon. In 2008, she starred opposite Daniel Craig in Flashbacks of a Fool. In 2011, Forlani played Queen Igraine in Camelot and Kate Templeton in Love's Kitchen alongside her husband Dougray Scott.[5]
Bravo, Mr. Gammons. Who needs a DeLorean and a white-haired meth addict, when you have daylight savings time and a penchant for making poor decisions?
I had resigned myself, then, to allowing this year’s bar crawl to fly under the radar. But five minutes after I walked into T.C.’s house that Saturday night, I started to realize that wouldn’t be an option. As he, his sister’s husband (“Bear Cub”), his cousin-in-law (Po-Po), and I stood in the kitchen drinking warm-up cans of Miller Lite, T.C. began effusing about last year’s blog post. “I read it again the other night, dying. I sent it to everyone. ‘You HAVE to read this!’”
The night started steadily but earnestly. Bear Cub and I teamed up, buying each other rounds of Miller Lite draughts at Pit Stop, and Miller Lite bottles at our second stop, the Floreffe Hotel. Our 50+ person, black-t-shirted army swarmed the surprisingly roomy bar in the basement of the building, quickly tying up the three female bartenders with drink orders that came at them from all 360 degrees. Earlier at Pit Stop, I had mentioned that my favorite part of the crawl was seeing regulars walk into their small, just-down-the-road dive bars and freeze in their tracks when suddenly confronted with our huge, loud flock. Then, as T.C., Po-Po, Bear Cub, and I stood talking in the Floreffe, that very scenario took place: Two local women, one wearing a bright yellow sweatshirt, walked through the door and instantly halted in shock. They then cautiously waded their way through our crowd, after Yellow Hoodie did a quick double take and mouthed “What the…”
Next up: Tim’s Corner Bar…and the realization that I was hitting some rough waters. I had made sure to eat on the way to T.C.’s house earlier in the night, so that I wouldn’t be playing on an empty stomach. But I was putting away beers at an aggressive pace (When in Rome…on a bar crawl…), and my central nervous system was begging for a chance to come up for air. I conscientiously slowed myself down, drinking only two bottles of Miller Lite. I’m nothing if not responsible.
I assured her that I hadn’t thought that. I forced myself to blink when they looked away, and wondered if I was so drunk that I’d missed something. Up until that point, I had only considered our dialogue to be polite conversation between drunken strangers sitting at a local bar. And since I have a Ph.D. in that particular field, I felt comfortable in my analysis. …So what the fuck was she talking about? When my food came, though, my attention shifted. I focused on fortifying myself, while the odd couple moved off to another part of the bar. 
But in the back of your mind, you're just waiting for them to say, "Well, you had sex with some slut on a table at the restaurant, in plain sight of some little kids. Then the manager called the cops and held you under citizen's arrest while the chick ran..."
Andrew C. Bishop, 21, of Roseville, Minn., had apparently scaled the outside of the Capitol and smashed a window to get into the building, then grabbed a fire extinguisher and threw it through another window, according to a criminal complaint filed in Dane County Circuit Court.
What he hadn’t factored in, though, was that Wednesday nights he and others play in a kickball league (…I know). After every game they then retire to their clubhouse—a.k.a. Rumshakers—and proceed to party like they have just won the World Series. This led to Swag drinking away the final hours of his twenties, and led to me receiving pictures the next day from both Finger Bang and TJ, in both of which Swag was laying shirtless in his backyard. In TJ’s photo (which was accompanied by the text, “The last photograph ever taken of [Swag] in his 20s. Rather fitting.”), our boy was facedown with a lit cigarette in his outstretched hand, his pale back seemingly intensifying the moonlight that it reflected amid a green pool of grass.
After 60+ hours of nearly-nonstop alcohol consumption, you would expect a newly-30-year-old man to slow things down, right? Wrong. At 10:18 a.m. Saturday, Swag posted this to Facebook:
We were eventually joined by JL, Bang, Courtney, and Alex, and we made our way to Rumshakers. Once there…well, I’m having trouble remembering exactly what happened there. I know Tony met up with us in time. I remember talking with Joe, a bartender (who bears a striking resemblance to Chad Johnson, and who is nearly as charismatic), as we watched female members of my crew run around goofily. Which girls, or what exactly they were doing to make the two of us shake our heads…yeah. Gone with the booze. I also remember going across the street with several others to get some dinner from Dairy Queen, which we brought back and ate in the bar. But what I drank, what quotes others or I made, what hearts I stole, and what laws I broke are all a blur.
By around 1:30 I moseyed off into the darkness, finding my way over to my “special friend”. Since she had taken in a healthy night of drinking as well, it was 11:30 before either of us got out of bed with any real resolve the next morning. In doing so, I checked Facebook and saw a 6 a.m. post from Swag asking if anyone else was awake. “Wow…” After a hearty brunch, my friend dropped me off at Swag’s, and I walked in to find Collette, Canada, Belle, Courtney, and JL in a joint state of “fml”. They reported that, though most everyone else had called it a night around the time that I did, Swag stayed up well into the morning, drinking and roaming the house. “I probably woke each guy up at least once to do a shot with me,” he explained when I went upstairs and found him awake again. “Mitch and I did a shot of Red Stag at 6:30.”
Is it just me, or doesn't this sound like the backstory to a new superhero? "He was an ordinary man, living an ordinary life in Oregon. Until one night, when a terrible accident fused his body with recycled materials...and made him invincible! He is...CAPTAIN REUSABLE!"
Well, to be more realistic, I stumbled back. I’m guessing. I mean, I was about 85% blacked out. And I was in a hurry—the curtain was falling fast on that final 15%. I was in the wilds of Shadyside on a Saturday night, and the pathway to my apartment—and to safety—was quickly disappearing. Not that the streets and sidewalks were going away—just my ability to see them. It was a race to the finish; I fell through the doorway of my apartment building just as the darkness closed in around me.
Alex jumped up and down dancing for a moment. When she saw me pause and fixate on her quite ample chest, which was active in her shirt, she seemed to learn for the first time that big boobs bounce. “Wow,” she said, continuing to jump up and down with her eyes glued at a downward 90 degree angle. I’m not quite sure how she didn’t end up with two black eyes.
Being as far behind in the pickling process as I was, I decided that my drink orders would be liquor instead of beer. Earlier that week I had come down with a minor head cold, and had taken to drinking bourbon—and, in most cases, Manhattans—as a home remedy. Therefore I decided to continue improving my health with the bourbon, vermouth, and bitters mixture. I’m not sure exactly how many I put away, but…well, refer to the opening paragraphs above.
Shannon’s aforementioned prudishness melted away as she drank. With no provocation from the rest of us, she took the uneaten tater tots from her meal and some dipping sauce, and made a work of art. (Clearly, Mrs. Pak wasn’t the only one questioning her refusal to prey on Wall Street’s earlier state of vulnerability.)
