Discuss: what was your "blackout Wednesday" experience?
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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.
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.)
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!
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.
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.)
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!
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.