Actually I don't remember much of it. All of my Santa Crawl stories have pretty much melded into ONE MASSIVE SANTA CRAWL MEMORY. It was just four of us: myself, Kevin, Josh, and Geoff. It's really insane to think of it. FOUR GUYS DRESSED AS SANTA - hitting around 12 bars by themselves. We started at the hotel bar and got alot of good reactions from the workers there. They were going nuts. Then we grabbed a cab and headed to Western Avenue. Our first stop was a dump called 'Wrong's Tap'. This place is a real shithole - but we eventually got the locals to warm up to us and share veteran war stories. At 'End Zone', Josh got accused by the owner of eating food and not paying for it. He threatened to get his union buddies on him. Then minutes later he apologized profusely - only to yell at him later when he thought Josh was drinking someone else's beer.
We entered a bar called 'Brewbakers' and even though we went through an ID checking process that could rival the UN, as we entered, we immediately increased the patronage by 400%. There was a bartender, and then there was a 'security' guy laying down taking a nap. I believe we have a picture of us surrounding the guy. Brewbakers would eventually be tossed off the list.
After the second bar, we were pretty much drinking for free. At every bar, someone bought us drinks - the luxury of only being 4 Santas. There was a karaoke bar that eventually kicked Josh out. Then there was a funny piano bar where the guy offered to make drink specials JUST FOR US if we would come back during the week. Another bar that really sticks out in my mind from the first crawl was Cork 'N Kerry. At the time, I wasn't really familiar with the layout. At this point in the crawl, you are usually at your drunkest - not sadest, but drunkest. I headed to the back corner of the bar to go to the bathroom, when I noticed that there was only one door?!? (They aren't labeled men's/women's, they have some funky carved wood design). In my drunken haze I remember thinking to myself "a unisex bathroom? huh...that's weird!" I entered the bathroom and immediately went to a stall. (I must have also been drunk enough to disregard the lack of urinals). I remember stumbling out and seeing a bunch of women with shocked faces. I just kinda smiled and walked out. Never even got yelled at for that.
Anyway, the night ended when we headed back to Brewbakers (it's the only bar open til 3am). This is where things could have taken a turn for the worse. The place was really packed -- packed with the lowest of the low really. These were all the people that should have gone home hours ago. Somehow some of these people were worse off than us, and we had just crawled to 12 bars in a matter of 6 hours, maybe. Anyway, Josh was bellied up to the bar to get a drink, and some schmo kept running into him - trying to flex his fat muscles I guess. Eventually, Kevin had enough of it and we had a little staredown going. I had sobered up enough at this point to know when it was time to call it a night, so I strategically placed myself between Kevin and drunko and motioned for the Santa's to exit stage left. Unfortunately, drunko fattins wasn't having any of that, and had to make the final statement in the form of a sloppy, drunken, upside down middle finger centimeters from Kevin's face. IT WAS ON! There was some grappling, but it was broken up by security pretty quickly, and the guy was eventually escorted out. We gathered ourselves and eventually made our way out as well. While everyone was piling into the cab, I heard someone yell out my name. It was my bro-in-law Dennis, who was a Cook County Sherriff and worked part time doing security for the local bars. So I started to talk to him, much to the shagrin of everyone in the cab, who had no idea I knew him and though I was talking shit to a cop. Eventually, Dennis let me know that drunko fattins was escorted out of the bar and decided to take a swing at the security guys. He was promptly beat down, and Dennis had the pleasure of hauling his ass to Cook County Jail.
Lessons Learned: 1. Don't go back to Brewbakers (we haven't since) and 2. DON'T FUCK WITH SANTA!
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