It was one o'clock on Saturday, and a perfect day for a pub crawl: a little overcast, but not too cold, and not so nice out that you'd feel bad about hanging around in bars all day. Capitol Hill United Neighborhoods' (CHUN) inaugural fundraiser pub crawl was just getting started as I sauntered down to the Pub on Penn, where at 5 p.m., all the drinking teams would assemble to compare drunkenness, slap high fives and celebrate community spirit.
Cody Galloway, the event's coordinator and community relations manager for CHUN, said the event was an effort by CHUN to promote local businesses and to get more young people involved in the community of Capitol Hill, which spreads from Colorado Boulevard to Broadway, 1st Avenue to 22nd Avenue. And what better way to get the young professionals of Capitol Hill involved in their community than to offer them an opportunity to stumble around taking silly pictures of themselves at various Capitol Hill establishments, along with offering them cheap booze and a complimentary T-shirt. Participation in the crawl cost $25 (benefiting future CHUN programs), which included the shirt and a wrist band that got everyone unheard-of drink specials at the participating bars, along with games that get funnier the drunker you get. Tooey's hosted a chubby-bunny contest; Sanchos: a Jenga challenge. There was drunken limbo at the Cheeky Monk and drunken Twister at Uptown Brothers Brewing Co. and, finally, beer pong at the Pub on Penn.At the afterparty, points were tallied for challenges ranging from collecting cocktail umbrellas and wine corks from local businesses to answering Capitol Hill history trivia questions and getting as many signatures on a T-shirt as possible.
Rubin Martinez, wearing a Winny the Pooh get-up, said his team was, "the best team ever, that would ever happen." His teammates, clad in sombreros and fake mustaches, agreed. Though only one team came away with the grand prize consisting of a cornucopia of gift cards and goodies from local businesses, it's safe to say everyone involved won the prize of getting day-drunk with a benefiting-the-community chaser.