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For some strange reason, Syracuse was recently named Barstool Sports’ “Best Bar Town.”

As a frequent Syracuse bar attendee, I was a bit bewildered by this news. I want to be clear, it’s not like I didn’t want us to win. I just didn’t think we would win, not in a world where Penn State exists. It was sort of like finding out you’re on the Dean’s List. You’re happy you got it, but you know you didn’t exactly earn it.

The title “Best Bar Town” came with a prize — a visit from internet personalities Dave Portnoy, Brianna Chickenfry, Josh Richards and Grace O’Malley. To be honest, I was a bit nervous about their arrival. It felt like we had just invited the hottest girls in high school to our lame basement party and promised them we would supply all the booze.

But I gotta admit, ‘Cuse showed out for our guests (we always do, don’t we?) with a successful two-stop bar crawl. Although, I do have questions for whoever decided to exclude Faegan’s Pub from the experience. Faegan’s has everything Mr. Portnoy likes — alcohol, darts and a chair for when his old brittle bones collapse from standing for over twenty minutes.

Although I didn’t go to the bar crawl, I lived vicariously through the hours of Snapchat videos I saw that day. I saw Dave Portnoy standing and drinking a watermelon High Noon from about every possible angle and even got to see videos of Josh Richards flirting with several girls who weren’t me. Isn’t technology incredible?

From what I saw it seemed like everyone had a grand ol’ time. Well, apart from the Orange Crate bartenders who must have developed carpal tunnel from the thousands of Coronas they had to open that night. Add security to the list of people who probably didn’t have a blast. I’m not sure the team of beefy men who had to protect Dave Portnoy from swarms of former lacrosse players had the best of times.

I did develop a severe, crippling case of FOMO from seeing everything online. Every single tendency in my body was screaming for me to run, jump and skip on my merry way to Orange Crate. And, like everyone else, I wanted to see Brianna Chickenfry’s new nose job. I need to know how it looks that good one week post-op.

Although my body was screaming yes, my wallet was unfortunately screaming, “God, no! Please. Anything but that.” And like mom always says, “Don’t go out, there’s plenty of vodka at home.”

Published on April 26, 2023 at 9:13 pm