[ Irish KC ]
Kansas City Irish Festivals, Music, Pubs, & Events by an Artist in Ireland

In this city that boasts more fountains than Rome (or everywhere else but), every morning shortly after sunrise I watch a couple of men advance a new fountain.

And every time it makes me think of pub crawls.

In Dublin once when I was sitting at the bar with a drinking compatriot in the International, a man with a pilot’s hat came in and distracted us from drinking.

In an English accent he ordered 15 pints of Guinness. And a pineapple juice.

Now the International is a small pub. There’s an upstairs pseudo-lounge where the Comedy Cellar (get it?) is, the one that begat Barry Murphy, Ardal O’Hanlon and so many Irish comedians. But we’re talking the classic bar downstairs. It’s a fantastically ornate bar with a few basic booths by the window.

When the pilot-hatted Englishman came in there was standing room only, so we had no idea where he was intending to put his 15 pints of Guinness, never mind the pineapple juice.

Because the barman reacted nonchalently and just turned to start pouring the 15 pints, we knew the order was not a joke, hat and accent notwithstanding. (This was pre-Ceasefire, when English accents weren’t that common in Ireland)

Of course what was happening was a pub crawl, by a group of English men, and this man was the runner. His job was to go ahead and order the next round. Being a serious business he couldn’t afford to mess it up being drunk, so he himself was on the pineapple juice. Never pub crawl run and drink. Or something like that.

The International was one of 40 Dublin pubs, mostly concentrated in Dublin 1 and 2 on both sides of the Liffey, that formed the pub crawl depicted on a famous poster. Twice I’ve bought that poster and both of them were taken from me.

It’s a ridiculous crawl too, because if you are man and anyway macho - and you are if you’re given to ridiculous pub crawls - you only drink pints of beer, never half-pints, or glasses as we call them at home. The pint is the unit of drink - natural in shape, weight, and volume - that is only ever drunk. Only once did I ever get a half-pint. It was in Liverpool when somebody brought me a half-pint of Guinness, unsolicited mind you, at four in the morning:

-Why did you only get me a half?
-We’re in a hurry?
-But it’s Guinness?
-They’re closing; we need to go
-Stout, in a half-pint glass, a miniature full-pint glass?
-We have to go
-I can’t drink half a pint
-We’re in a hurry
-If we’re in that much of a hurry we should go now

So he never bought me a half-pint again. Or a full one come to think of it.

But anyway, you can’t cheat on pub crawls. You drink beer in every pub. A beer in Dublin is a pint. There’s nothing to debate.

And 40 pints is for the fabled. And farmers.

So I never considered doing that crawl, even though it was - then - a great list of pubs. I did consider doing two crawls one weekend though, of those same 40 pubs, but my drinking compatriot was confident he wouldn’t be able to do the second crawl the day after doing the first 20 pubs/pints.

But he was up for doing it if the second 20 pubs and pints was done the following weekend. I wasn’t keen on this idea as I felt it took from the sense of occasion.

And so, while my mother was knitting, I lied to her. Just for the crack, like.

-Y’know this poster?
-Would you not get that framed?
-Well anyway, I’m planning on doing the crawl
-That’s a lot of pubs
-It is, but look they’ve a map that helps you organise it, and the only tricky bits are Phibsboro, Parkgate Street, and over there which is practically in Ranelagh
-How many pubs is that?
-40
-You wouldn’t be drinking pints?
-What else is there to drink?
-That would be awful filling
-Yeah but spread out over the day. I’ll be starting very early.
-Ah, that’s too much, no. Why don’t you drink half-pints?
-Half-pints!
-Yes, that would be much more sensible
-I can’t drink half-pints
-But that would be 20 pints in total; that would be plenty
-But then it wouldn’t count
-Why not?
-It has to be full pints to count
-Well why not split it up then, just do half of it one day, and do the other half the next day?

And so it was that my mother, without dropping a stitch, tried to persuade me to drink 40 pints of Guinness over two days, something my biggest drinking buddy wouldn’t even contemplate. I thought she was mad.

In Waldo in Kansas City the American flag rises from a small field of gravel and around it are dotted, well, things.

And beside the gravel is a deep hole with a large wooden box and also a large almost round yoke that looked just like a mine only there aren’t too many ships in Waldo.

And the fountain isn’t going to be that big anyway, so probably not a mine.

And all of it because of beer.

I’ve lost count of the number of pub crawls they’ve had in Waldo in recent times. Styled the Waldo Crawldo, and in the Autumn, the Falldo Waldo Crawldo.

Last year’s Fall crawl was a fundraiser for the Waldo Fountain Fund. People obviously drank enough.

You may recall there were 6 pubs in the crawl but The Gaf was not one of them as walking along Wornall Road the few minutes from 74th terrace to 71st terrace was deemed too far. I’d love my mother to have a word with those pub crawlers.

The next Falldo Waldo Crawldo is on Friday Saturday September 14th 15th, 2007 if the website is to be believed - though the internal pages all relate to last year including the inclusion of the pre-burned down Kennedy’s Bar & Grill

NOTE: This article has also been published in the Midwest Irish Focus

See Also, And Spot The Theme:
   • Christmas: A Drinking Story
   • Good Friday: A Drinking Story
   • St Patrick’s Day: A Drinking Story

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 19th, 2007 at 3:28 pm and is filed under 1-eolai, Food & Drink, Ireland, Kennedy's, Nostalgia, Pubs, The Gaf. You can follow responses via my RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.