Katrina Sargent

With spring comes St. Patrick’s Day, and the St. Patty’s Day Pub Parade, more commonly known as Pub Crawl.

This year, the parade kicks off at noon on March 29.

Participants can sign up to make the trek in teams and move bar to bar along the Main Avenue stretch. To officially attend the event and receive a t-shirt costs $10 per person; however, signing up and paying the fee is not required. The fee does not pay for drinks during the crawl; it covers the cost of the t-shirt and-at some bars-provides for prizes at the end of the day.

“You don’t just pay $10 to drink all day,” said Karl Steege, manager of Skinner’s Pub. Steege said it does not mean there will not be specials such as 25-50 cents off of the sponsor’s beer.

Jeremy Deutsch, the manager at Cubby’s Sports Bar and Grill, said over 1,000 people signed up last year and a lot more just showed up to join friends and hang out.

Steege said usually less than 1,000 sign up, but 2,000-3,000 people can be expected to show up.

In past years, Pub Crawl consisted of groups of people signing up with each bar and moving from bar to bar every 45 minutes.

According to Steege, most of the problems caused by the Pub Crawl resulted from these large groups of people flooding the street all at once. In recent years, the rotating has died down, and people only rotate on the first few rounds, if at all. Pub Crawl is like any other big event, with each bar having its own way of participating.

“You’re not required to do anything,” said Steege. Participants do not have to sign up in advance, rotate on a schedule or go to all of the bars; it is mostly a time for people to hang out and have fun downtown.

Safe Ride Home will be in operation throughout the parade of pubs to take participants away from the bars. Call 695-3984 for more information and the schedule of route times.