Haven’t you heard? Santa Crawls is Coming to Town! LineLeap’s annual holiday bar crawl is making its way to State College on Saturday, Dec. 3. Pretty much all of Penn State’s 21+ population will be in attendance, so things are sure to get hectic downtown. If you’re thinking about how to prepare for the festivities, VALLEY’s got you covered.
Essentially, this is how the bar crawl works: Once you have the LineLeap app downloaded on your phone and you’ve purchased a T-shirt for Penn State’s bar crawl. This T-shirt will cover the expenses for special bar crawl discounts and cover fees at participating bars.
Natalie Maguire, a former bartender at The Phyrst tells VALLEY readers that if you know a bouncer, you’ll be set and might be able to wait a whole lot less than other bar crawl go-ers (pro tip: whenever you’re out downtown, make friends with bouncers, bartenders and staff)! Maguire suggests that going early in the day (as soon as the bars open, basically) and staying in one place is a good method to avoid long lines. Though the point of the bar crawl is to hop around, you may run the risk of spending most of your day waiting in line when you could be sipping on a Dirty Sprite with your friends.
Maguire says that bar crawl days are her busiest weekends as a bartender. She tells VALLEY that if you treat your bartenders with respect and tip at least 20%, it’ll go a long way when it comes to the service you receive. “If you’re nice to your bartender and say please and thank you, and if you know what to order, they’ll see you if you come back and serve you faster,” Maguire says.
Penn State senior Sophie Valdez is a late sleeper and usually doesn’t go out to day drink until 1:30 p.m. She says once she and her friends got themselves ready to go out to the bars at the last bar crawl, when they arrived the lines were insanely long and would probably take hours if they waited. While buying LineLeaps line skips is an option, there is no guarantee that those lines wouldn’t be just as long. On a busy weekend, LineLeap line skips could range anywhere from $60-$80.
Maguire’s last piece of advice to bar hoppers is to go to bars that aren’t always the most popular downtown. Maguire admits, “Everyone wants to go to Champs, but if you go to other places you can get in and get drinks faster and still have a good time.” So if you happen to be a huge fan of the smaller bars, you might want to make that your first stop. You may have such a good time that you won’t want to leave just to wait in a long line.
For many of you, this may be your first Penn State bar crawl! When it comes to styling your shirt, most people choose to go the comfortable route. If you’d like to dress up with some leather pants, that’s welcomed too! Perhaps you can snag a few pictures for an end-of-the-semester photo dump. Being that it is the holiday season, you may want to go crazy with holiday accessories or perhaps some fuzzy Christmas-themed pajama pants if you really want to be both comfortable and on theme.
Tag us in your best bar crawl pictures on Instagram @VALLEYmag! Stay safe, bar crawlers!
