By Adam Dewji
Are you ready to get drunk off your ass on St. Patrick’s Day? Good, so am I. Maybe not as drunk as I was on Student Media Night, but I’m planning to down a few brews and deck myself out in green! Shamrocks, drinking glasses, decorations, and beer — welcome to the way college kids celebrate an Irish-American holiday.
I’m not going to write a piece on paying homage to some saint who we could be thankful for. Instead, I want to let you know how to make the most out of this (what should be a) holiday. In Canada, St. Patrick’s Day could also be called “I’m-going-to-be-hungover-tomorrow Day.”
First off, St. Patrick wasn’t even born in Ireland; he was British. There’s a terrible story where he was captured as a slave and brought to Ireland. He escaped back to Britain, but returned to Ireland to Catholicize the pagans that had kidnapped him and spread the good word.
In the USA, Catholic Irish-Americans had a minor holiday where they would eat a bigger meal on St. Patrick’s Day in honour of this. That’s it. But they also brought Guinness to the Americas, so why not drink to that?
Guinness is delicious, but there are so many other brews worth sampling from Ireland. Think Guinness is the only Irish brew you can snag from the liquor store? You’re wrong. See if you can grab a four-pack of Kilkenny Cream Ale, or Murphy’s Irish Stout. Depending on your store, you could have even more of a selection.
Wherever you go, it’s probably going to be crowded. What do I recommend? Well, if you have class near the SFU Surrey Campus, you’re goddamn lucky. You have the Central City Brew Pub — do you know what I mean? They won fucking brewery of the year in 2012! They serve green beer in beer towers! Need I say more? And hell, it’s in Surrey. It’s not like you need to dress to impress or worry about being the drunkest one there.
If you have class at Burnaby Campus, then you’ve got our very own Highland Pub. They probably have some sort of green party going on. I hope to hell they have some beer on special, and maybe some green food dye as well.
They’ll also have some pretty sweet brews on tap. They may not be as good as an entire selection of fresh Red Racers you’ll find at Central City, but after a couple, it won’t really matter anymore. As long as you’re stumbling distance from home, right?
Lastly, if you’re at either the Harbour Centre or Woodward’s campus, you’re pretty much downtown. I don’t need to recommend you anything. Look out the window and point. Ta-da! You found a decent pub!. You’ve got everything from Steamworks to Rogue to Malone’s (among a shit-tonne of other bars) to go to.
Just remember to get home safely.
