ST. PAUL PUB CRAWL - Saturday, October 18, 2014 - St. Paul, MN 7pm!

vant0037 said:

Awesome weekend, even though I was sick for most of it. Great pub crawl...I was absolutely amazed at how many people showed up from all over.

Off the top of my head, we had people from the midwest, Australia, South America (two different countries!), New Jersey, California, New York, Chicago, all over Canada....too many places to name.

Most of the night is blur (due to alcohol and cold medication - a scary mix actually!), but it was awesome meeting all of you. I'm doubly proud of all the Minnesota kids for coming out and being great hosts.

THANK YOU AGAIN for coming out and making it a great weekend. We were glad to host.


As far as Stone Gossard goes, maybe I'll tell the story of the time I saved him at the next St. Paul Pub Crawl. Start gearing up! )

vant0037 said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

vant0037 said:

Awesome weekend, even though I was sick for most of it. Great pub crawl...I was absolutely amazed at how many people showed up from all over.

Off the top of my head, we had people from the midwest, Australia, South America (two different countries!), New Jersey, California, New York, Chicago, all over Canada....too many places to name.

Most of the night is blur (due to alcohol and cold medication - a scary mix actually!), but it was awesome meeting all of you. I'm doubly proud of all the Minnesota kids for coming out and being great hosts.

THANK YOU AGAIN for coming out and making it a great weekend. We were glad to host.


As far as Stone Gossard goes, maybe I'll tell the story of the time I saved him at the next St. Paul Pub Crawl. Start gearing up! )

hey @vant0037 I think it's time to tell the Stone story.

Haha...well that's weird. I was walking to the Wild game (against the Jets!) on Wednesday night and I told the Stone story to my little brother. Ha!

Anyway, it's not a long story, but here goes:

As you might recall, one of the stops at the Pub Crawl was a bar called Wild Tymes. Frankly, Wild Tymes is a bit of a buzz kill usually because it's a bar that's always fairly empty, doesn't have a lot of character and isn't really in a great bar spot of St. Paul.

At any rate, that night, we started on West 7th and eventually made our way to the third stop of the night, Wild Tymes. At this point in the Pub Crawl, it had picked up a good amount of people from various places. I believe it was the most heavily attended part of the crawl, and Wild Tymes was fairly well packed.

On a side note, I was in a bit of a fog that evening/week. I was in the midst of a horrible cold and had, what I found out the next morning, was a terrible ear infection. I couldn't hear much, was well medicated, and had been drinking a beer or two along the way. On top of that, a good friend had passed away the week before in a tragic accident and his funeral was the next day. Suffice it to say, the whole experience of being out and about was a bit surreal.

At some point at the Wild Tymes stop, I looked around and saw all of our friends in the bar. There were people from all over, new friends that I recognized (and who frequent this board quite regularly), old friends that I'd known. There was music playing, people shouting, yelling, laughing. It was a great time, except for the fact that I was not feeling well at all. I needed to get outside for a bit.

I walked through the doors into the cool Saturday night air. Not five feet in front of me, on his way into Wild Tymes with a friend, was Stone Gossard.

Now, I've had the luxury of running into Jeff Ament and Mark Arm in Winnipeg at a skate park in 2011, and then meeting Matt and Ray Cameron in Amsterdam the next year (pictures are posted somewhere on this board). So maybe I was pre-disposed to "playing it cool" or maybe I was just too sick and medicated to truly freak out on him, but what happened next is what I like to think of as my shining moment as a fan.

As Stone walked up, I stopped him in front of the doors. I took one look back inside the bar, seeing a group of what I've learned are called "Even-Bros" doing jag-bombs and singing along to "Garden," while at another table my own group (and many others I'd guess) was finishing it's discussion on which b-side we hoped would get played the next night. The place was full of hungry PJ fans: the normal, the nuts, the passionate, the travelers, the collectors, the GA line regulars, even a few VHC relics. At that moment, it was a fan club pub crawl, or a tank full of piranhas.

I felt an tremendous urge to geek out, get a photo, get an autograph, shake his hand, tell him to play "Hitchhiker" the next day or some other nerd request, all while getting him sick with my cold but who gives a shit its Stone Gossard!

I took a deep breath, kept my germs to myself, and turned to him, saying:

"Listen, you don't want to go in there. This is a Ten Club Pub Crawl. They'll tear you apart."

Stone looked at me, seeing one of the Pub Crawl buttons we had made fastened to my shirt, and while I had never met him before, I can only imagine what he gave me was the quintessential "Stone-smirk." He said a simple "thanks man," before turning away and walking off into the St. Paul night.

As one of the organizers of the Pub Crawl, I was confronted with a fantastic choice: sacrifice Stone to my Pub Crawlees or save him from them. Make the Pub Crawl so epic in proportion to all other pre-parties ever ("WHO showed up at St. Paul's Pub Crawl????" would go the story), or play the ultimate "cool" card and let him walk off into the night, much of the Pub Crawl none-the-wiser, it having reached epic proportions on it's own.

I'd like to think, given the great, underrated show they put on the next night, that I made the right choice.

Like I said, not much of a story, but it capped an end to a great and surreal night for me.