Every year on St. Patrick’s Day, Main Street is transformed into an Irish oasis. Shamrocks and leprechaun hats decorate every shop window. It’s also the main corridor of the St. Paddy’s Day Pub Crawl. Emerson Valley has a surprising amount of bars, and each one is a stop in the booziest of traditions. Unfortunately, with the pandemic getting worse, many people are opting to stay at home. We won’t get to enjoy the pub crawl this year…or so it would seem.

Rather than go out and roam from bar to bar, downing a mug of beer before moving on, you can stay nice and cozy in your own home while participating in the First Annual St. Paddy’s Day Lockdown Pub Crawl. If you can’t go out to the bars, why not bring the bars to you!? Thanks to video conferencing apps, you can hang out with your neighbors without risking your health. I’ve always been a Skype guy, but the organizers of the lockdown pub crawl decided to use Zoom.

All you have to do to join in on the fun is sign up, sign in, and click the link to the Zoom meeting. The event kicks off at 3 PM, and the first “stop” is at the aptly-named Pit Stop Bar & Grill. The Pit Stop’s owner, Wendell Thomas, will host the first leg of the pub crawl. He’ll provide a background image of his bar for everyone to upload. If all goes according to plan, everyone in the meeting will look like they’re at the Pit Stop together. Even if you don’t have any beer on hand, just grab any drink you want and join the fun!

At 4 PM, the pub crawlers will swap out the Pit Stop background for the Packhouse Pub. The following hour will be at the Blackwood Arms, then McMaster’s & Sons, and we’ll close out the evening at Garrison’s Bar & Grill. If people are enjoying themselves and don’t want the fun to end, the pub crawl’s organizers are willing to keep the Zoom meeting going as long as you want. It might not be the ideal way to spend St. Patrick’s Day, but the citizens of Emerson Valley have gotten pretty good at making the best out of a bad situation.

Here’s the full schedule of the pub crawl:

• 3:00 PM: The Pit Stop Bar & Grill
• 4:00 PM: The Packhouse Pub
• 5:00 PM: The Blackwood Arms
• 6:00 PM: McMaster’s & Sons
• 7:00 PM: Garrison’s Bar & Grill

Yours truly will definitely be attending the First Annual St. Paddy’s Day Lockdown Pub Crawl. I’m hoping my colleagues at the Gazette decide to join, too. As long as we stay positive, there’s no reason why being stuck inside has to be a bad thing. We just need to be a little creative in how we keep in touch.

-Martin Fitzgerald, Activities, Emerson Valley Gazette