The Army of Darkness Bar Crawl

(For those who don't know, a Bar Crawl is a planned event in which a large group of people go from bar to bar for an alloted amount of time. This particular bar crawl was scheduled to include 12 bars over 14 hours.)


Well I spent the weekend at the University of Illinois for a bar crawl. I rode down on Friday evening with Kevin, Joe, Tim(with Skullalien), and Ted in Ted's Lexus RX 330. "It's European." In the other car was Marty, Molly, Jonathan, Rob, and Aleeza (sp?).

Once we were there we were joined by Dave and Abby, and then The Leemer joined us Saturday afternoon.

It was my first trip to Champaign-Urbana since last spring, and before I left I decided that it should be my last. Well for drunken shenanigans anyway.

So we got down there Friday night just in time to see the Sox game. We stopped at Piccadilly's to get beer and headed over to where we'd be staying for the weekend, Eddie and Spencer's house in Urbana. (BTW Trigger, if you and Spencer lived any deeper in Urbana you'd be in Ohio.) We were all joined at Eddie's by an entire slew of people, all of which would be staying there with us. So really we turned the place into a flophouse. Well we all drank there for a lil while until everyone decide to go to a party.

Well while Eddie ran the shuttle Buick back and forth from his house to the party, Kevin and I decided that we'd walk. After going to about 3 of the wrong houses thanks to amazingly accurate directions and addresses from one Joseph McCahill we were finally rescued by Eddie.

We got to the party, and like all college parties it was extremely cramped. There was one enormous party foul though that I couldn't understand why I was the only one who appeared angry about.

They ran out of beer.

How do you run out of beer when you're having a party? Where was The Leemer when I needed him to share in my scorn? The Leemer would never let something like this happen. I worry about the future of our country when our future doesn't even seem upset to learn that there is no more beer. Do you think our President stood idly by in college when a party ran out of beer and said "Oh well. Now we can all just talk to each other!"

Hell no he didn't. He got more beer! He seems to have done pretty well for himself with that attitude too.

Other than that though the party was all right. It was different this time around though, cuz in previous years I knew just about everybody there. When I'd go to a party I'd know at least 50% of the people, but now that all my friends have generally graduated I only knew about 10% of the people at the party. So I tried my best to get to know the strangers, and found most of them to be very uninteresting.

Maybe it was the lack of beer.

So after the party everybody headed back to Eddie's house to drink more beer and pass out eventually.

Which we all did eventually.

Where do you keep 18 people in a 2 bedroom house you ask?

Well for some reason Eddie and Spencer have an abundance of couches in their humble abode. Even a few cots. So generally everybody had a place to sleep. Dave and Abby actually slept in the garage, thumbing their noses at the Garage Monster, while Ted slept in the backseat of the Lexus. (The Lexus was parked in the middle of the backyard.)

We woke up Saturday morning after a little sleep with a lot of hangover. Being up a lil early (I think it was 9ish, the bar crawl didn't start to noon) I walked down the street to the gas station to get some Gatorade. For me it's always been the quickest way to ditch the hangover, and it did.

Eventually everyone woke up and the time for the Army of Darkness bar crawl was upon us. I wanted to start slow as I hadn't eaten anything yet. So for first two bars I only had a few beers as I focused more on conversation and the NFL Draft. Most of that discussion being along the lines of "How the fuck did the Texans NOT draft Reggie Bush."

Kevin hits the beer bong while Tim pours

After leaving the White Horse(second bar) I decided I had to get food. The next bar was Station and there was a Burger King half a block down on Green Street. So while everyone went to Station I went to BK.

I stood at the counter for about 7 minutes without getting served. I was the only person inside, and they had a full drive thru. They also only had one guy taking orders. Well after a few minutes the guy just puts a tray in front of me with a Whopper, large fry, and coke and says theres your order.

Of course I never ordered the Whopper, or paid, but it's what I had wanted. So I quickly grabbed my free meal and headed off to a table to eat it. A few minutes later I was off to Station to reunite with the bar crawl.

I got to Station where The Leemer had finally decided to join us. In pure Leemer fashion he downed numerous Jager bombs (Jagermeister and Red Bull shooters) within minutes. Having just wolfed down the entire BK meal I didn't want to do shots right away, and settled into a few beers.

That philosophy ended at our next bar Geovanti's. Leemer bought about 30 Kamikaze shots first thing and set them at our table. It's this type of thing that makes the Leemer so vital to the bar crawl. He makes things happen. He started the tradition that has become the Marathon bar crawl. Most bar crawls didnt start until nightfall and were of the 6-8 hour range.

It was Kaleem who first had the courage to ask, "Why can't we go for 12 hours?" Of course the trek this year was scheduled to last 14 hours. It's evolution baby.

Dave and Tim dove into the shots, downing one after the other. Seeing that there was going to be no toast I dove in too. So about 5 of us downed 30 Kamikazes in what couldn't have been more than 3 minutes.

Hardly had time to take the picture before Dave and Tim drank them all

After Geovanti's it was Joe's Brewery. I was never that big of a fan of Joe's when I lived in Champaign, but for the first time ever when I was there the pool tables were available. This made Joe's a bit more tolerable for me.

After Joe's it was onto Kams. It was at Kams where the tone of the crawl changed. We had all gone from slightly buzzed and mellow for the first part of the afternoon, but were now reaching drunk and crazy mode. For further evidence you can look at the video of Marty crowdsurfing to "Baba O'Riley" in my previous post.

After Kams it was C.O.'s where they were featuring $1 Jager Bombs. That's right. $1. I bought a lot of people a lot of Jager Bombs while at C.O's. Anyone notice how these paragraphs are getting shorter? It's things like $1 Jager bombs that cause this to happen.

I was then off to Clybourne's to meet with everybody else. I had hung around C.O.'s a lil longer talking to Dave and Abby.

After Clybourne, Leemer, Molly and I headed to La Bamba for some food. We got there and found Kevin, Eddie, Laura and Rob were there too. I got a burrito, Leemer spilled his water, and then my glasses exploded.

Well the left lens popped out somehow. So Kevin and I went to the Hometown Pantry to see if we could get an eyeglass kit. We couldn't find one, but I just used a package of Chap-Stick to screw the screw back in. Then we crossed the street to Murphy's Pub where our bar crawl would end.

Murphy's was one of my favorite bars when I lived in Champaign, and it didn't disappoint. I made the rounds while there, cuz we were there for a while. A lot of crazy stuff happened while I was at Murphy's too. The craziest thing I'll get to later. My glasses did manage to explode again though. This time though it was the right lens. Apparently Champaign makes glasses explode. So I had to go back to the Hometown Pantry across the street, but guess what I found two pegs down from the Chap-stick this time? An eyeglass kit. So I bought it and screwed the right lens back in. (By the way I lost that eyeglass kit after leaving Champaign, and am now convinced it was a ghost eyeglass kit.)

I was back at Murphy's for a little while longer when Eddie offered me a ride back to the house. The bar was closing in 30 minutes, and with it the bar crawl. There were going to be even more people staying at Eddie's Saturday night than on Friday, so I viewed it as an oppurtunity to seize a couch to sleep on. So I ended my bar crawl after 13 hours and 30 minutes.

After very little sleep Saturday night we were all awake on Sunday morning pretty early. Kevin and I both went to the gas station for Gatorade. We all sat around the living room and talked for a while before half of the 20 some odd people in the house left. After that Kevin, Tim, Dave, Abby, Ted, Leemer, and I headed to the Office in Urbana for lunch and to watch the Bulls game.

We were met there by Joe, Jonathan, Marty, Eddie, Laura, Molly, Ben, and Rob. After eating and watching the Bulls win we went back to Eddies house to get our stuff and head home.

All in all it was a very good time, and I was worn out. Thanks again to Eddie and Spencer for hosting such an unruly mob. Have fun cleaning up.

Earlier I mentioned that crazy things happened while at Murphy's Pub. By far the craziest was the story of Tom Angelini.

I don't know Tom well at all. In fact I'd only met him once, and it wasn't for an extended amount of time. The first time I had ever heard of him it was after last year's bar crawl. (I didn't go last year, work)

Kevin told me, "You're no longer the coolest Tom I know."

Apparently this Tom is not only insane, and incredibly funny, but he was also brilliant and goes to Harvard.

Well I met him this weekend, he looks like the love child of Owen Wilson and an Oompa Loompa, and he proceeded to show me just how cool he was.

First he pierced his ears at Station for the second consecutive year, using an earring to do it. He also bled all over his jacket doing it.

At some point of the bar crawl he also decided he was hot and tore the legs off of his jeans. He tore the legs off so high that you could see his pocket liners.

I know what your thinking. This kid is SO cool.

Murphy's was where he performed his final trick. He went to the Jimmy Johns across the street, pulled his pants down, and proceeded to pee on their front window. The police then came to arrest him(Keep in mind he still had the big hoop earrings he used to pierce his ears earlier on), and his friend Stephanie. Stephanie apparently was very unappreciative of Jimmy Johns calling the cops on Tommy for peeing on their window. At one point she yelled to a girl with an eyepatch behind the counter, "Get an eye!"

The best part of this whole thing was Sunday afternoon just before we left Eddie and Spencer's. Spencer told us that those were the only pair of pants Tommy brought with him from Cambridge.

That meant he had to fly back in them.

Keepin It Real Since 1980,
Tom