Friday, June 3, 2011

What's the big deal? You just call a bunch of bars and show up...

"What's the big deal?  You just call a bunch of bars and show up..."

A friend of mine said that last night at softball when I was stressing out about the Preppy Pub Crawl next weekend.  You see, now that I know we'll be over 115 people (we have 104 confirmed so far), it requires much more planning than the first year when we were 35. 

Where we live, there are a lot of bars, and the great thing is that most of them are in close enough walking distance to have a successful pub crawl.  The bad thing, is that some of them have a maximum occupancy of about 200 people.  When you are bringing 120-130 people with you, you need to make sure that they will have the capacity, the staffing, and the drink specials.  It's a bit of a balancing act to make sure that you are going to the smaller places earlier in the night, avoiding the ones with a busy dinner crowd at dinner time, and making sure everyone can get in! 

With that being said, I am totally stressed out.  I had ordered the koozies and planned my outfit, but then the outfit came and looked awful on me.  I had planned out timing of bars and then started arranging drink specials.  Then, I got a new dress... and called two of the early evening bars.  First bombshell hit! 

Butterface has a comedy show and can't accomodate us unless we start there - which we aren't doing.  The Showgirl informed me that they really, really, really wanted us to come, but their dinner crowd started at 6, so we would need to be gone before then.  I thought about things a lot during a run on Tuesday night, and decided I was going to move things around a little to accomodate.  We're starting at 3:30 this year, and were going to go to Crabby until 4:45 - it's on the water.

We'd then go to The Showgirl, hit my least favorite bar in town, and then head to a cute Irish pub before continuing our crawl.  Perfect.  I call the Showgirl's manager back, and he is excited, until he tells me that he has too many dinner reservations at 5, so we can no longer come there. 

ARE YOU KIDDING ME????  I JUST MOVED MY ENTIRE PUB CRAWL AROUND FOR YOU!

Needless to say, I wasn't happy.  Then I went to softball with this weight on my shoulders, trying to decide what to do.  I pretty much had decided I would discuss with a beach bar next to Crabby to fill in my now vacant slot, when I went to the Grizzly for drinks with my softball team.  The manager told me that Hula Skanks (huge, open spaces) would no longer be closed for renovations, as they are waiting till after the summer.  So of course, now I don't know what to do! 

Luckily, I don't have dinner plans until about 7 tonight... so I am going to do some mental shifting again during my run.  Hopefully I can get it all worked out.

3 comments:

mm said...

That's an annoying comment. Clearly someone who has not thrown any large-scale events. We're thinking about having ~12 people over for a BBQ this wekeend, and that streses me out. I can't imagine what managing the logistics of your amazing pub crawls would be like! But of course, if people think it's that easy to put together it just goes to show what a phenomenal job you do planning it!! Like most things, it takes a TON of work to make it look so easy...

Fabulously Awkward said...

Oh man. I'm SURE you will figure it out and it will be wildly successful. But I am with ya...planning is A LOT of work. Comments like that are made by people who have never really planned anything.

Unknown said...

You will figure it out and it will be awesome, but I know the work that goes into planning events. Even small events take planning to have them be successful. Ever been to an event, even a backyard BBQ that wasn't planned? Yeah, that's when you end up with a meatless BBQ and you sit there with warm beer eating one bag of chips for 17 people.

You're fantastic and if it is half as much fun as last year's PPC, it will be amazing. And well, I won't be on your pull out couch, so that should put your mind at ease.

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