Knoxify

Sat­ur­day night, Octo­ber 17 is a date that will go down in his­tory – albeit, quirky cul­tural his­tory, but his­tory nonethe­less. This chilly evening marked Knoxville’s inau­gural Snug Pub Crawl, hailed by one local tweeter as the “tweet-up of the cen­tury.” Twenty-some-odd Snuggie-clad seek­ers gath­ered at the appointed time on Mar­ket Square for a group pic­ture. Head Snug­gite, Saul Young, served as pho­to­jour­nal­ist for the event that drew par­tic­i­pants from as far away as Chattanooga.

Pro­moted pri­mar­ily on Face­book and Twit­ter, the Snug Pub Crawl was a gath­er­ing of like-minded social media mavens, but that’s where the sim­i­lar­i­ties ended. The cre­ativ­ity and indi­vid­u­al­ity of this gre­gar­i­ous gang of rev­el­ers was expressed through their Snug­gies, those ubiq­ui­tous blan­kets with sleeves made famous on late-night infomer­cials, like Ginzu knives and Sham­Wows – in fact Sham­Wows were door prizes for a few lucky crawlers! There were zebra Snug­gies and leop­ard Snug­gies for those who wanted to take a walk on the wild side. Jen­nifer Vogel, known to most of us by her Twit­ter han­dle, @scarlettdancer, bedaz­zled her pow­der pink Snug­gie with glit­tery, hand-sewn dec­o­ra­tions. New­ly­weds Chad and Chloe Kennedy wore match­ing royal blue Snug­gies. Ted Fisher showed his Vol pride and Big Orange super pow­ers in his UT Snug­gie. Fash­ion­ista and local WATE-TV per­son­al­ity, Tearsa Smith, rocked her Snug­gie, cinch­ing her tiny waist with a wide leather belt and look­ing like an itty-bitty-zebra-diva! Speak­ing of local per­son­al­i­ties, we missed Star 102’s Kim Hansard, who talked up the Crawl on her morn­ing radio show.

After a Snug­gie strut around Mar­ket Square, our first offi­cial crawl stop was the Preser­va­tion Pub. Although we were widely gawked at and pho­tographed by passers-by out­side, once we stepped into the cozy P-Pub, nobody bat­ted an eye at our curi­ous attire. In fact, we picked up a few Snuggie-wanna-bes, who put their jack­ets on back­wards and joined our cause.

Speak­ing of causes, there really wasn’t one. We didn’t crawl for char­ity or donate our Snug­gies to the home­less, although that would have been a nice ges­ture on this frosty fall night. There were no cor­po­rate spon­sors or endorse­ments. We were doing what social media par­tic­i­pants do: con­nect­ing, build­ing rela­tion­ships and being our­selves. Crazy, huh?

And yes there was drink­ing. All Snug Pub Crawlers were over twenty-one. There were tequila shots, single-malt Scotch and Guin­ness with Fram­boise. Remem­ber, we weren’t dri­ving … we were crawling.

If fun isn’t enough of a rea­son to get together any­more, per­haps we’re all tak­ing life a bit too seri­ously. Some­times, laugh­ter is a means to an end. I lost my job last week, so the Snug Pub Crawl was a tran­si­tion for me. It kept me mov­ing for­ward and gave me an answer to the tedious ques­tion of “What’s next for you?” The Snug Pub Crawl, of course! Kind of like Nancy Ker­ri­gan headed to Dis­ney­world after the Olympics. And it was much cheaper and safer than a Sonoma sweat lodge. I didn’t have to go any fur­ther than down­town to seek enlightenment.

After the P-Pub, we wended our way to the Down­town Grill & Brew­ery on Gay Street. Gath­ered at the big U-shaped table in the cen­ter of the bar, we feasted on soft pret­zels and warm white ched­dar cheese dip. We’d worked up an appetite from our stren­u­ous two-block hike. I tried some­thing my pals refer to as “chocobeer,” but quickly reverted to Glen­livet, neat. Jeremy Floyd, Kathryn Phoenix and I befriended another leopard-clad gal at a table upstairs and made her an hon­orary mem­ber of our ani­mal kingdom.

Some­time later, the group con­tin­ued to the Urban Bar in the Old City. It was past my bed­time, so I headed back to the park­ing garage, where I pro­ceeded to search, in vain, for my car. Luck­ily the garage was well-lit, and I was in con­stant con­tact with my fel­low crawlers via Twit­ter. Even­tu­ally, my Jetta man­i­fested before my very eyes, and I made my way safely home. I heard the peace­ful Snug­gites went their sep­a­rate ways around midnight.

The Snug Pub Crawl was more a cel­e­bra­tion of friend­ship and good times than it was a Quixotic quest. More party than jour­ney. Some­times, what mat­ters most is being in the moment, instead of wor­ry­ing about the future. And days later, I still can’t get the tune to “Kung Fu Fightin” out of my head …

Every­body was snug pub crawlin’
Bar­rooms but not much brawlin’
In fact it was a lit­tle appallin’
Grown-ups in Snug­gies, jawin’

All pho­tos copy­right © 2009 Saul Young. All Rights Reserved.