Permits for Pub Crawls – Thoughts and Predictions

In our last episode, we covered the ins and outs of the SBNA meeting last Tuesday during which a committee member broached the idea of requiring permits in order to have a pub crawl in the city of Baltimore. And I’m sure, oh I am sure that there are some of us out there who think this is a fantastic idea; a way to ensure that the organizers are responsible, well to do groups of people who would nor will ever be the harbingers of stabtrocities in our fair city.

I think this idea, in 9 out of 10 cases, is totally useless. Here’s why!

• Logistics and semantics – how many people constitutes a bar crawl? 4? 10? 50? Do they have to be wearing themed T-shirts or bracelets? How much notice must all bars involved be given? Do you honestly think that if on some given Saturday I call my 12 friends and say “Hey let’s all wear top hats and do some drinking along Boston St.” that I’m going to take additional steps to get a permit?  Would the permits cost money based on a scale of how many people are involved?
• The “no” factor – “Well sorry orphans, you won’t be receiving any toys this Christmas because the city denied our permit for a charity bar crawl because the ASPCA wanted to do their bar crawl at two of the bars we wanted, and they’ve got more people going to theirs.”
• It won’t prevent violence – Despite the fact that we try to deny it, violence occurs every day in life, especially when alcohol is involved. Having a permit that allows the assembly of 60 people who want to walk around getting tanked all day isn’t going to stop them from eventually getting into a disagreement over a girl or a dog or sandpaper weight and ending it with violence. It’ll just end up bring more
• Liability – into the situation. I organized a charity bar crawl last November to which 60+ people attended – no incidence of violence. But let’s say for a second that it had, and I was the one with the permit – i.e. the guy responsible for the behavior of 60+ people on a bar crawl. Can you say “law suit” in the event  that someone gets stabbed? Despite the fact that I have no control over where these people actually go, or what they do?
• The community can take care of itself – now, the community very often doesn’t do this and would rather complain when things go wrong, but if on that particular Saturday a single person had alerted the police to the presence of a huge crowd of people clamoring along Fort Avenue with open beers in their hands, visibly intoxicated to boot, the whole thing would have been shut down. Or at the very least, the police would have kept an eye on them. Furthermore, if a single bar owner saw a massive group of drunk people flooding their establishment, they could have a) refused them service, b) called other bar owners in the area to warn them, c) called the police, d) some other thing I haven’t thought of. It’s not like we’re helpless against bar crawls as a community when they come through, even when things get out of control. The only thing needed to prevent these situations from happening is vigilance, and even then it might still happen. A permit, on the other hand, will do basically nothing except validate some sort of power structure that the governing entities so often love to flex. Like a fun tax.

So you may be asking yourself “Hmm these are all fantastically sensible points, but what about that 10th case?” The 10th case is one in which a for-profit promotional company floods an area with hundreds of people, utterly disrupting the neighborhood in terms of parking, peace of mind and increased police presence – that case would be Lindy Promo’s upcoming Irish Strolls, occurring in Canton and Federal Hill on consecutive weekends to celebrate St. Patrick’s day. At this point, if they aren’t required to obtain a permit for the hundreds of people drunkenly blocking traffic and pissing in the streets then they most certainly should be required to elicit that air of cooperation among bars/citizens/police etc. in order to prevent complete bedlam. Fortunately (and shrewdly) for them, they seem to have done so. The bar stroll on the 13th in Federal Hill will apparently feature portajohns, 11 or so extra police officers, a paddywagon, and a host of other measures – all presumably on their dime – in an effort to minimize the negative effects that a crawl of this magnitude can bring. Granted, it won’t stop every single resident in the area from being inconvenienced, but hey, that’s city life. Let’s just hope there aren’t any more stabbings.

At the end of the day, my prediction is that this proposal will meet about as much opposition as you can imagine, like when George Della tried to ban beer pong and it failed miserably. But as we all know the powers that be have been capable of passing stranger bills, so who knows.

Stay thirsty my friends!