Erin Express '07
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Recap - Week 1
76 stretched before me a like a winding black ribbon. I and all the other cars crawled along like ants in some mad god’s ant farm. I should have been downtown hours ago, but I had a lacrosse game that morning. So I played my game, and now I was stuck in traffic. Oh, and did I mention, it was the Erin Express?
The Erin Express, one of Philadelphia’s greatest traditions. Normally, the 2 weeks before St. Patty’s day, busses run in a continual loop through the Irish bars of Center city, Fairmount, and University City. Brought to us by the nice people at Cavanaugh’s, this year they decided to reward us with a 3rd week since St. Patty’s fell on a Saturday. This was the first of those weeks.
And here I was, stuck in traffic on 76, my hand clenching and unclenching the steering wheel incessantly. Constantly checking the time and thinking, “If I can just get home, I can shower and be on the next train”, knowing it was a lie. As I neared my exit, it only made it worse. I could see my house, and I was stuck on 76. The minutes to my train ticked away.
Finally I inched to my exit and I was home free. I rushed to my home and showered. I hurried my girlfriend into the car and sped downtown. I rationalized that even if I got a parking ticket it would be worth not waiting for the next train and losing 45 minutes of drinking time. I was right. I wouldn’t have made it to the next train anyway. I was hopping around like a kid on Christmas, urging my girlfriend to hurry up as we had to go, we were missing it and I couldn’t bear it.
We pulled up in front of Bonner’s pub just as another call was vacating a space. I quickly sped in and lept from my car. Before we were even to the back door of Bonner’s we were greeted by friends. Excited to see us and wondering where we’d been. It was an effort to get inside. I was forced to leave Casey talking to some people outside while I went to get us beer, knowing that neither of us would ever make it to the bar at our current pace, if we were both waiting for each other to finish every conversation that popped up.
I’ll tell you this. You want to feel like a celebrity? Pick a major drinking event where all your friends and acquaintances (because let’s face it, when drunk your acquaintances are like close friends anyway) will be out. Give them a 3 hour head start, then make your arrival. You’ll feel like most important and revered person in the world. As soon as I walked in I could here my name being cried out from all over the bar. Arms were flung around me wildly as people hugged me in greeting. McMahon’s girlfriend Emily hugged me and complained she doesn’t see enough of me and I need to be around more. I tried to explain that I’d been on the road for work for the last month, but really my attention was more on the bar. Everyone was drunk and I needed some beer. Just as I extricated myself from that conversation a girl I did not immediately recognize grabbed me and commented on my popularity. I tried to be polite, but this was one more obstacle between me and the bar. After a cursory introduction, I continued on the longest 20 foot trek of my life. The bar was packed, so moving was hard in and of itself. The fact that I knew well overhalf the people at the bar meant each and everyone of them wanted to stop and talk to me. Damn it! Couldn’t they see I needed a drink?
“Bloody Mary Guy”! I heard a voice scream out. Now, I make a pretty decent Bloody Mary, but as soon as I heard the cry I knew the event it was referring to. My Brother and Sister’s graduation from Delaware Max and I showed up with a table, coolers, and set up a Bloody Mary stand in my brother’s back yard at 6 in the morning. Sure enough, as I turned I saw my brother’s old neighbor. Again, not wanting to be rude we started talking. I was close to the bars and I could feel it, but another conversation had sucked me in. As we were talking I looked up and could see Bangert waving to me frantically from the main bar. Just as I was about to gracefully remove myself from the conversation, the girl who had grabbed me earlier came over.
“Do you know who this is”, my brother’s former neighbor asked?
“Yeah, it’s Mike. We just met”, the other girl replied.
“Yeah! Chewy’s brother”!
` “Oh my god, you’re Chewy’s brother”?
And I was sucked right back in. Beerless. This was St. Patty’s day we were celebrating damn it! Had SOGO lost a war? Why was I forced to suffer like this? As I looked up, I could see Bangert becoming more frantic in his gestures. He was clearly becoming agitated by my absence. I pointed him out to the lovely young ladies and excused myself from the conversation.
Now, if you’ve never been to Bonnner’s, it’s a large, white, corner bar. The front entrance is on the corner of the building and opens up to a large square bar that takes up the entire front of the bar, with a narrow standing room area surrounding the whole thing. The back of the bar opens to a large, open dance floor. The rear entrance is at the far side of said dance floor. Also, near the rear end of the bar itself, where it meets the dance floor, is a entrance into a rear room where they set up a beer only bar on a couple of folding tables for large events. Events such as the Erin Express.
As I got to the edge of people trying to get to the bar, people who were cutting me off from Bangert, Lou, sporting his freshly shaved Mohawk, grabbed me. After another round of hugs and enthusiastic greetings, he informed me I could get beer much cheaper in the back room. He also suggested I might want to just buy a whole pitcher and drink out of it, as I now noticed he was doing.
So I plunged through the door and bought a pitcher. I got 2 cups, one for me and one for Casey. Wait a minute, where the hell was Casey?
So I plunged back into the see of humanity. And worked my way to the back of the bar, and still couldn’t find her. I did run into my brother and his friends, who had just arrived on the most recent bus to come by on the loop. I quickly worked my back to the front of the bar, where more of Bangert’s agitated signaling caught my eye. I worked my way over to him and as soon as I was within arm’s reach, he grabbed me and pulled me over.
“Dude! I did the worm on the top of the bus! I got up there through the emergency hatch! The bus driver was pissed!” He informed me with an intensity only Bang can muster. He then handed me a car bomb he had promised earlier in the week, when I told him I’d be arriving late.
At last. The Erin Express was under way. We fired them back and I immediately felt better. It was as though with that one drink everything fell into place. I soon found Casey, who had managed her own beer. This was a good thing as I was about halfway through my pitcher. I was much more receptive to my temporary celebrity status with a car bomb in me and a pitcher in my hand.
Our time at Bonner’s would not last much longer. Soon the word went out, we were getting on the next bus that came by. Casey and I filled our cups and left the pitcher behind. We went outside to join everyone else. We went out the back door and immediately saw everyone gather at the front corner with Call, in full leprechaun regalia, doing pushups on top of the crowd. Truly a sight to behold. As we approached the crowd, everyone was lining up for our yearly panoramic group shot outside of Bonner’s. As we were lining up, and by line up I mean jump around like drunken idiots while people took shots from across the street, Casey grabbed my arm and pointed down.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“What’s what?” I replied.
“That, under your brother’s foot.”
I looked at my brother, jumping joyously up and down, I looked down to his abnormally large feet and saw something silver underneath. I reached down and picked up a Blackberry, a newer one, complete with smashed screen. I quickly looked around spotted Call. The same Call who had just been doing pushups above the crowd in this very spot. He also, I happened to know, had recently acquired a new Blackberry.
“Uh, Call? This yours”, I delicately inquired?
A blank stare, seeking recognition through the haze of alcohol and joy, followed by a sharp, “guuhhh!” and the gut punch face of all gut punch faces. To his credit, his day could have gone either way at this point. The crowd had turned its eyes to him to see how he’d respond. He carefully took the phone and examined it. Determined not to let this little setback ruin his day, he composed himself and immediately popped his head up, a huge grin beaming on his face, and yelled to the crowd, “That’s why I got insurance! That’s why I got Insurance!”
At this point, my celebrity status was up. A new couple had arrived to take our place. My Parents. As soon as they were spotted walking towards the bar half a block off, a cry went up. “Mr. and Mrs. Rhine”! The crowd mobbed them now. Oh well, it was a good run.
At this point the bus rolled up, and the crowd mobbed it. Swarming from both sides, we poured into both the front entrance and the emergency entrance in the back. The bus driver tried to gain some form of control but it was too late. The bus was already overloaded but people still forced themselves on. By the time the bus driver put his foot down, Casey, My Parents, and myself were stuck on the outside looking in. A few others who were stuck outside started to mill away from the bus back to the bar. I tried pleading with the bus driver but he was adamant he could take no more. But fortune smiled upon us. “Hey! My Phone still works!” rang out across the bus, followed by a press of bodies moving against each other to see if Call’s phone did in fact still work. The bus driver turned around to see what was going on behind and as he did I quickly ushered our little gang of four onto the bus. When he turned back around I was standing on the bus right up against him, as there was no room to stand anywhere else.
“Hey! You ca…. Ah, hell with it”! He shouted, lept into his seat, and quickly pulled the lever to shut the door so no one else could get on. He then sped off, or at least e sped as fast as a clearly overloaded schoolbus would allow him to we were off to the next bar.
The next bar was Callahan’s. A small corner irish bar on south street right across the bridge from university city. A staple of the Erin Express, it’s a nice long establishment with a nice long bar along one side, a series of tables along the other, and plenty of standing room inside. Also, and this is big on the express, it always is well staffed with bartenders to take advantage of all that bar space. No waiting obscene amounts of time for a drink. To top it all off, cheap roast beef sandwiches and hotdogs are served out of the back. A well run establishment every year.
As soon as the bus pulled off I jumped off and started banging on the windows, letting our drunken crew know that were in fact getting off here. As I got to the back of the bus I saw a group jumping down and handing a girl down, covered in blood and using a piece of Chewy’s girlfriend Lizzy’s sweatshirt as a compress. It seems that in their effort to get everyone loaded onto the bus a few helpful but overzealous members of our group had bossted her up a little too enthusiastically and railed her head on the doorframe. The metal, emergency door doorframe. Her head was split wide open. The fact that it was a head wound and a large portion of her blood was alcohol caused it bleed profusely. Bangert intensely led the group to help our wounded friend Amy over to a stoop for her to sit on. I went to talk to the bouncers and they got a cup of ice for us to put on her head.
Allow me to pause here and say the bouncer’s at Callahan’s were class acts. On a day that I’m sure is already hard to manage, the last thing they needed was a drunk injured girl bleeding all over the place outside the bar. They never once suggested she was burden or inconvenience, got us everything we needed, and even joked with McMahon and me about it. One did take me aside and ask if I wanted him to call an ambulance, but I truly believe he asked out of concern for her well being and not his own convenience. I say kudos to you sirs, kudos.
Soon we were all in the bar drinking and back to our normal hijinx. As Casey and I stood in back polishing off out first food of the day, the aforementioned roast beef sandwiches, we saw Amy slumped against the wall. I walked over to see if she was alright. Someone had tried to attach a band aid to her wound, but in their drunken haste merely attached it to her hair, so it moved with the hair and did nothing. She was clearly hurting, and miserable, but gutting it out. I offered to get her a cab and even pay for it, in case she was worried about the cost of a solo cab. She would have none it. It was, after all, Erin Express.
After some beers, some whiskey shots, and some time at Callahan’s, it was pointed out that the buses only run until about 6:00. If we wanted to head to university city and the plethora of bars over there, we needed to get on the next bus. So we did. Not nearly as crowded, as our large group was already starting to break up into smaller, elite drinking squads, we still filled it nicely almost exclusively with our group. We of course got on the bus going the wrong direction on the loop, forcing to go through Fairmount. As the bus was stopped in front of the Green Room, Pappa, the owner, recognized me through the bus’ window as it was starting back up and demanded to know why we weren’t staying. Sorry Jeff, maybe next year.
The bus dropped us off next in University city. Chewy tried to get everyone to go directly to Cavanaugh’s since they had friend’s there. Many of us were pushing for the Blarney stone right down the street. So our group divided once again, although many from each group switched back and forth repeatedly looking for the shortest line. I went to the blarney stone where even though they had the street blocked off so people could drink outside, it was still packed. I waited at least 20 minutes to use a port-a-pot, and didn’t think it was that bad. I made few attempts to go inside, but struggling to move through it wasn’t worth it. It was at the Blarney Stone that my parent’s decided to call it a day and left us. About an hour later Casey had enough too, so I left with her and walked her back to the main street and got her a cab. She left and I wandered back down the street to Cavanaugh’s to see who was still out. We’d been at Cavanaugh’s a good 2-3 hours, and I noticed I was spotting less and less of our group in my drinking.
I was shocked as soon as I entered Cavanaugh’s. It wasn’t nearly as packed as I thought it would be. You see, Cavanaugh’s sponsors the whole thing. Many people show up there early, stake out a bar stool, and never leave. It’s one of the reasons I pushed Cavanaugh’s when we first showed up. Don’t get me wrong, it was crowded, but you could move. I quickly spotted an ATM and sauntered over to replenish my funds. Imagine my shock and horror when it told me it was tapped out. I had just surrendered a large chunk of my cash to the cabbie who was took my girlfriend home. I looked to my wallet and found I had about $20 left. Not a huge problem. I could buy a few, and I had bought many rounds earlier, but it was definitely low enough that I was worried. I walked around the bar and found Call, Lauren, and TJ. We continued to drink at a determined pace, but you could tell we were stating to feel the effects of 8 straight hours of drinking for me, 11-12 for them. As far as we could tell we were one of the last groups standing. We found my brother and good chunk of his still group still going, and then I looked across the bar, and saw Amy, firing back a beer, her head wound long forgotten. I mentioned it to call and he commented, “yeah, she’s a drinker”.
A few beers later and I bought the last beer I could afford with my own money. Talking to Chewy, he infomed me they were thinking of going back to the ‘Yunk to drink, but they weren’t leaving yet. Call and TJ had already left. I told Chewy if they did to call me, I was going to go back and see if Lou was still out. So I left, I looked over on my way out and Amy was still going strong, found a functioning ATM at a local convenience store, and got some money, and hailed a cab
By the time I got home I was starving. All I’d eaten that day was a roast beef sandwich. It was almost midnight, so I called a local pizza place and asked if they were still delivering. They said they were until 1am, so I placed a very large order. I was awakened by Casey around 3am, asking me why I was sleeping on the couch. I stared blankly and asked her where the food was. She had no idea what I was talking about. I checked my messages the next day and had this, “Mr. Rhine… this is the pizza guy. Wake up Mr. Rhine. I can see you sleeping on the couch...”
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