Leprechaun Lap!

St. Patrick's Day was my favorite holiday back in Dallas (not counting my birthday, of course).

They have a parade on one of the main streets downtown, and it's a huge block party starting at like 10 am until 4 or 5 in the afternoon. A bunch of organizations have kegs in the parking lots and everyone's in a really good mood by the time the parade starts at 11am.

I went to the official parade in DC last year, and it was pretty lame. Half of the organizations didn't even have any sort of Irish affiliation and there weren't any politicians, plus there wasn't any alcohol allowed on the parade route.

But this year I found something sorta similar in spirit to Dallas' celebration called the Leprechaun Lap. It's basically a bar crawl of 9 bars in midtown DC. I'm not sure why they had it this weekend instead of next, but it was pretty fun and a good way to see of the lesser-know bar in the area.

The official bar for the after-party was incredibly sketchy. You'd think that since there was only one bar for it, it would be big and prominent. But we actually walked by it a couple times before even realizing we passed it. The only signage for it was a small paper printout on the door. We had to take an elevator and the entire bar was a small room that could barely fit 50 people.

The main reason I wanted to do the Lap was for the beads. We missed our chance at the first bar to get some, and we soon realized that the only way to get any was to ask someone else for theirs. I'm actually shocked that asking a big white guy for his worked. I half-expected him to either cuss me out or just say no. But he willingly gave his up.

My favorite part of the night was when a black guy offered some patrolling cops beer.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!