In the hearts and livers of washed-up high school heroes across the country, the night before Thanksgiving has long been relished as an opportunity to get obliterated at hometown bars with old friends in a bid to relive glory days (real or imagined) (imagined.) Some people—including the Wall Street Journal-ists giggling their way through this deeply cringe 2011 video report—call this seminal event “blackout Wednesday.”
Personally, this was never a big thing for me: I think the worst situation I ever found myself in on Thanksgiving eve was drinking $8 Harps in a nuts-to-butts packed faux Irish bar in Morristown, NJ, and wondering whether it was too late to text my mom for a pity ride home. But maybe your experience was different!
What was blackout Wednesday like where you grew up? Did you go out? Was the scene sad, or fun, or fun because of how sad it was? Did you get housed at a Chili’s and try to make out with your ex-boyfriend from sophomore year who has a kid now?
Given that the coronavirus pandemic rages on, I truly hope no Friends of Fingers are planning to go out tonight. but that doesn’t mean we can’t safely reminisce about blackout Wednesdays of yore. So let’s!
Dave, you and I definitely got drunk at the same Morristown bar on blackout Wednesday—was it the Grasshopper? I went one year (would have been circa 2009?) with my friend Chrissy who lived near the Morristown Green. (Her brother went to Delbarton, maybe you two know each other?) Anyway, the bar smelled like farts and Uber wasn't a thing and there were so many popped-collar Polos in the room I couldn't breathe. All it did was make my parents angry at my hungover ass the next morning.
I am nearly certain that 2009 was the year in question. And it WAS the Grasshopper. Grasshopper Off The Green! The farts were probably me, sorry. WHAT IS CHRISSY'S LAST NAME I BET I KNOW HER BROTHER.
Holy shit. I mean what are the odds that three talented beer writers emerged from the same faux-Irish-pub floor slime? Chrissy Butler; her brother's name was Paul, I believe.
I feel like at some point we should examine how getting drunk in the basements of people whose parents who were emotionally distant enough not to care that there were drunk teenagers in their basements shaped us into this.
Last year, I worked the door at a comedy show, drank at the bar after, and then I walked down the street to another bar, where so many people from the high school a town over from mine were. I knew two people, and I was like, "Well jeez, this was a massive fucking mistake." I drank one beer and ubered home.
SHOUTOUT TO THE GRASSHOPPER. Honestly, I have hated this night for as long I can remember. I'm a late December birthday so I was always way younger than my high school friends and couldn't go out the first two years everyone else could.
I think my first (and potentially only) Thanksgiving Eve in Morristown involved a terrible visit to the Dark Horse? Maybe Jimmy's? (I might be older enough than you that these places ceased to exist. But our 10 year reunion was at the Grasshopper. What a place.) Unsure, but I just remember waking up profoundly hungover at my friend's house in Basking Ridge and waiting around until 104.3 played Alice's Restaurant before I could leave, per her family's tradition. This particular friend would always argue in favor of going out "to see who we might run into" and I was always like "no, these people were douches in high school and they're douches now, so I don't want to see them."
Eventually I started scheduling stuff that night so I would have a pre-baked excuse: a Fall Out Boy concert at the arena inside Toms River High School North, quadruple wisdom tooth extraction surgery (I don't love Thanksgiving food so this also gave me the excuse to skip dinner and only eat ice cream.)
Oh god Dark Horse. What a fucking mess that place was on the Wednesday pre-Thanksgiving! Wasn't there a place called Iron Bar? I feel like my fake ID got rejected there once.
My only specific memory of Dark Horse is being there close to Christmas and a little person dressed as an elf was walking on top of the bar pouring liquor into people's mouths from a communal bottle and everything about this experience makes present day me root for the giant asteroid to take us all out even harder than I normally do.
OK what are the odds you, me, and Dave were all drinking at the Grasshopper on the same Blackout Wednesday one year? It's within the realm of possibility!
Hmm, I was over it by 2009 (but was at a Seaside Heights boardwalk bar that year). Got my teeth pulled in 08. Maybe 07 was the first and last year for me?! I wonder if we were ever all in the same mass of humanity at the Hunt? I retired in 2014, but had a long stretch of throwing up on hay bales in Burberry rainboots.
Semi-relevant: a kid at my high school went to Halloween one year dressed as "the train-ride to the O.A.R. concert." I still think about that sometimes.
I definitely participated in the pre-Thanksgiving downtown drinking scene in Burlington VT but I never went all in (yet somehow was deeply hungover at every Thanksgiving dinner I went to during college). All the UVM students went home and the locals repopulated the bars and said "hiiiiii!!" at one another. The mood was sort of choose-your-own-adventure: you could have a relatively regular time at Ake's Place ("Ake's") or Three Needs ("The Needs"); you could try to make out with someone inappropriate on the dance floor at Rasputin's ("Sputies"), Ruben James ("RJ's") or Red Square (no nickname). My preferred place to head was the now-closed Esox, a wonderful jukebox-powered sports-ish dive where all the shots were automatically poured as doubles. Someone on Trip Advisor gave it this review: "this quite frankly a scary place." I miss it!
Growing up in a nondescript suburb in northern NJ, I was never on the "town" side of the town-and-gown equation, but I have to imagine the night before Thanksgiving felt like a triumphant townie reclamation of usually-miserable college bars. Like, would you and your friends ever drink at these places otherwise?
Definitely during college years yes, once I left that age zone, the college kids made the scene obnoxious so we'd like....go to the "classy wine bar with board games" place ahaha. Now I feel like the "elder locals" scene is basically breweries which makes sense, those are good places to get drunk, but don't have that particular kind of sticky, sweaty ambiance that encourages bad youthful behavior.
I dunno, making out with your junior-year crush in the middle of a taproom tastefully appointed with white birch fixtures while young parents look on in disgust seems like a draw for the right type of drunk...
Blackout Wednesday was very much a thing on Hilton Head Island. We had the Barmuda Triangle, a trio of bars, which was THE place to go before catching up with family. The place was packed to the gills. My 2005 heart skips a beat at the thought of wing-ding Wednesday at Wild Wings before heading to "the triangle" for as many $2 chocolate martinis as one could handle. There was a sweet ass fireplace in the middle where you could hang outside and it was busier than any Saturday night. Thing is, it's just truly mindblowing getting drunk with your old acquaintances and their out-of-town cousins. There's a lot of nostalgia there, but I'm glad those days are over for me. This year, I'll be hanging at home with my husband, brining my turkey, and enjoying our newly-soberish during pandemics lifestyle.
Dave, you and I definitely got drunk at the same Morristown bar on blackout Wednesday—was it the Grasshopper? I went one year (would have been circa 2009?) with my friend Chrissy who lived near the Morristown Green. (Her brother went to Delbarton, maybe you two know each other?) Anyway, the bar smelled like farts and Uber wasn't a thing and there were so many popped-collar Polos in the room I couldn't breathe. All it did was make my parents angry at my hungover ass the next morning.
I am nearly certain that 2009 was the year in question. And it WAS the Grasshopper. Grasshopper Off The Green! The farts were probably me, sorry. WHAT IS CHRISSY'S LAST NAME I BET I KNOW HER BROTHER.
Holy shit. I mean what are the odds that three talented beer writers emerged from the same faux-Irish-pub floor slime? Chrissy Butler; her brother's name was Paul, I believe.
I feel like at some point we should examine how getting drunk in the basements of people whose parents who were emotionally distant enough not to care that there were drunk teenagers in their basements shaped us into this.
See you at Tuesday night group?
This description brought three specific former classmates’ parents to mind immediately
I DO KNOW HER BROTHER!
He was super sarcastic and funny and I felt like he was destined to drop out of school and live as a mad-genius hermit. What became of him?
Some say that if you get drunk enough at the Grasshopper the night before Thanksgiving, he appears
Last year, I worked the door at a comedy show, drank at the bar after, and then I walked down the street to another bar, where so many people from the high school a town over from mine were. I knew two people, and I was like, "Well jeez, this was a massive fucking mistake." I drank one beer and ubered home.
Yes but was the beer overpriced and nearly room temperature, as is blackout Wednesday tradition?
SHOUTOUT TO THE GRASSHOPPER. Honestly, I have hated this night for as long I can remember. I'm a late December birthday so I was always way younger than my high school friends and couldn't go out the first two years everyone else could.
I think my first (and potentially only) Thanksgiving Eve in Morristown involved a terrible visit to the Dark Horse? Maybe Jimmy's? (I might be older enough than you that these places ceased to exist. But our 10 year reunion was at the Grasshopper. What a place.) Unsure, but I just remember waking up profoundly hungover at my friend's house in Basking Ridge and waiting around until 104.3 played Alice's Restaurant before I could leave, per her family's tradition. This particular friend would always argue in favor of going out "to see who we might run into" and I was always like "no, these people were douches in high school and they're douches now, so I don't want to see them."
Eventually I started scheduling stuff that night so I would have a pre-baked excuse: a Fall Out Boy concert at the arena inside Toms River High School North, quadruple wisdom tooth extraction surgery (I don't love Thanksgiving food so this also gave me the excuse to skip dinner and only eat ice cream.)
Oh god Dark Horse. What a fucking mess that place was on the Wednesday pre-Thanksgiving! Wasn't there a place called Iron Bar? I feel like my fake ID got rejected there once.
My only specific memory of Dark Horse is being there close to Christmas and a little person dressed as an elf was walking on top of the bar pouring liquor into people's mouths from a communal bottle and everything about this experience makes present day me root for the giant asteroid to take us all out even harder than I normally do.
OK what are the odds you, me, and Dave were all drinking at the Grasshopper on the same Blackout Wednesday one year? It's within the realm of possibility!
Wait this is insane
Hmm, I was over it by 2009 (but was at a Seaside Heights boardwalk bar that year). Got my teeth pulled in 08. Maybe 07 was the first and last year for me?! I wonder if we were ever all in the same mass of humanity at the Hunt? I retired in 2014, but had a long stretch of throwing up on hay bales in Burberry rainboots.
Semi-relevant: a kid at my high school went to Halloween one year dressed as "the train-ride to the O.A.R. concert." I still think about that sometimes.
that's adorable
I definitely participated in the pre-Thanksgiving downtown drinking scene in Burlington VT but I never went all in (yet somehow was deeply hungover at every Thanksgiving dinner I went to during college). All the UVM students went home and the locals repopulated the bars and said "hiiiiii!!" at one another. The mood was sort of choose-your-own-adventure: you could have a relatively regular time at Ake's Place ("Ake's") or Three Needs ("The Needs"); you could try to make out with someone inappropriate on the dance floor at Rasputin's ("Sputies"), Ruben James ("RJ's") or Red Square (no nickname). My preferred place to head was the now-closed Esox, a wonderful jukebox-powered sports-ish dive where all the shots were automatically poured as doubles. Someone on Trip Advisor gave it this review: "this quite frankly a scary place." I miss it!
Growing up in a nondescript suburb in northern NJ, I was never on the "town" side of the town-and-gown equation, but I have to imagine the night before Thanksgiving felt like a triumphant townie reclamation of usually-miserable college bars. Like, would you and your friends ever drink at these places otherwise?
Definitely during college years yes, once I left that age zone, the college kids made the scene obnoxious so we'd like....go to the "classy wine bar with board games" place ahaha. Now I feel like the "elder locals" scene is basically breweries which makes sense, those are good places to get drunk, but don't have that particular kind of sticky, sweaty ambiance that encourages bad youthful behavior.
I dunno, making out with your junior-year crush in the middle of a taproom tastefully appointed with white birch fixtures while young parents look on in disgust seems like a draw for the right type of drunk...
Blackout Wednesday was very much a thing on Hilton Head Island. We had the Barmuda Triangle, a trio of bars, which was THE place to go before catching up with family. The place was packed to the gills. My 2005 heart skips a beat at the thought of wing-ding Wednesday at Wild Wings before heading to "the triangle" for as many $2 chocolate martinis as one could handle. There was a sweet ass fireplace in the middle where you could hang outside and it was busier than any Saturday night. Thing is, it's just truly mindblowing getting drunk with your old acquaintances and their out-of-town cousins. There's a lot of nostalgia there, but I'm glad those days are over for me. This year, I'll be hanging at home with my husband, brining my turkey, and enjoying our newly-soberish during pandemics lifestyle.
Alright look I've got a few questions so I'm just gonna list them:
1. What, exactly, does "wing-ding Wednesday" entail?
2. How many $2 chocolate martinis could 2005-you handle?
3. What were the names of the Barmuda Triangle bars and do they still exist?
4. How sober is "newly-soberish"?