Nightlife Peeps

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When the idea of peeping every bar and club downtown was suggested for our Nightlife issue, I wasn’t nervous. As the Single & Social columnist and a shameless State Street crawler — with equal inclinations toward crowded dance floors and pint-sipping booth-lounging in my favorite dive bars — I figured I could easily recruit some wing(wo)men, hit the town for a few hours, and be done with it.

However, when I started compiling the long list of establishments that sling the sauce, I grew a wee bit anxious — so many bars, so little time. Still, a (party) girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do. And so, on a Thursday night, accompanied by several of my favorite drinking buddies, I threw a pack of Emergen-C into a Gatorade and traded my usual stilettos for my trusty flip-flops. This venture was going to be a marathon, not a sprint.

Although I needed to be mentally sharp, it takes a certain amount of liquid courage to ask complete strangers for their photograph, so we began the parade with drinks at the Wildcat, the watering hole that starts and ends most of my nights downtown. From there, we headed for what I fondly refer to as the “college crawl,” stopping at Madison’s, O’Malley’s, and the newly relocated Study Hall upstairs. We ended the evening dancing our asses off at Q’s, all smiles and giggles, until a birthday girl’s vomit splashed onto my new dress. Not cute.

Saturday night we were at it again; this evening was designated a “pub crawl,” and I welcomed the relative tameness and the ability to have conversations I could actually hear. We visited Old King’s Road, Joe’s, the Press Room, threw darts at the James Joyce, and wound down the night chatting with bartender Jesse Keenan at Elsie’s until closing.

I knew I should save my strength for the next weekend (FYI, weekends begin on Thursdays in my world), but instead I found myself karaoke-ing away a raging case of the Mondays at the Cliff Room.

Thursday night rolled around again, and I attempted to visit as many of the remaining clubs on my list as possible. Rumors of Snoop Dogg sightings at Indochine swirled up and down State Street, and so from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. I bounced from club to club, making sure to pop into Indochine several times throughout the night in hopes of spotting Snoop. I didn’t catch up with the rapper, but I did make friends with some of the EMTs and police officers who so bravely face our antics. I ended the night with a solid round of greasy goodness, courtesy Mad Dogs.

Although I fell short of my goal of going to every club on State Street and beyond, and I’m not sure how many of you will actually remember the face behind the flash, I had a marvelous time hanging out with you night owls, and here are the pictures to prove it.

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