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Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Halloween on Hertel

What to expect from ‘The Crawling Dead’ bar crawl Saturday

<p>Step Out Buffalo is holding its third-annual The Crawling Dead: Halloween Bar Crawl on Saturday. Mac's on Hertel is one of the 17 participating venues.</p>

Step Out Buffalo is holding its third-annual The Crawling Dead: Halloween Bar Crawl on Saturday. Mac's on Hertel is one of the 17 participating venues.

On Saturday, hundreds of drunk adults wearing Halloween costumes will get lost on their way from Del Denby Tavern to Gramma Mora’s, and you could be one of them.

Step Out Buffalo is holding its third-annual The Crawling Dead: Halloween Bar Crawl from 7 p.m. to 12 a.m. The Halloween-themed bar crawl features deals at 17 bars and restaurants spanning 1.4 miles of Hertel Avenue. Ticket holders have access to a shuttle bus running up and down Hertel “all night long” and the tickets, which are $10 for pre-sale and $15 at the door, include free entry to all participating venues. The bar crawl features more than 60 exclusive deals spread throughout the 17 venues and a free slice of pizza from Bob and John’s La Hacienda.

Ticket holders are expected to check in at Step Out Buffalo’s headquarters, which is located outside of Mac’s on Hertel, to pick up their wristbands.

The 17 participating bars and restaurants are: Bar Della Citta, Belsito, Burning Buffalo, The Colonie Lounge, Deep South Taco, Del Denby Tavern, Gecko’s, Gramma Mora’s, Joey’s Place, JP’s Checkers, La Pizza, Mac’s on Hertel, Mo’s Place, The Public House of Buffalo, The Sidebar, The Sterling and Wine on Hertel.

Ticket holders will have exclusive access to Halloween-themed specials, according to Elise Phillips, Step Out Buffalo’s events producer. These specials include the RumChata pumpkin pie shots from Del Denby’s Tavern, frozen hard caramel apple cider from Deep South Taco, brain juice shots from Mac’s on Hertel and black vodka cocktail from Mo’s Place.

 Elise Phillips said “one of the most exciting deals” that comes with a ticket is the free slice of pizza from Bob and John’s La Hacienda.

 Jake Frosolone, a sophomore English major, is looking forward to the free slice of pizza. 

 “La Hacienda –– that’s definitely a really nice Italian restaurant,” Frosolne said. “I think it’s pretty nifty that they’re involved in the bar crawl.”

The event features a costume contest at 10 p.m. at Mac’s on Hertel. The winner earns a Coleman Portable Grill. Last year, the winners of the costume contest dressed as matching toy soldiers.

Halloween Crawl.jpg
Courtesy of Stephanie Dubin

Winners of last year’s costume contest wore matching toy soldier costumes.


 And the crawl is for more than just good deals. Step Out Buffalo will donate 10% of the bar crawl’s proceeds to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. 

 Jamison Phillips, the owner of JP’s Checkers, was not working during the bar crawl last year but attended the event for fun. He remembers attendees dressed as cheetahs and cats.

 “There were a ton of people here and just about everyone was wearing costumes,” Jamison Phillips said. 

 There are other Halloween-themed bar crawls on Saturday aside from The Crawling Dead. Gilian Gitlin, a graduate student in the occupational therapy department, decided to attend the Halloween Boo’zin Bar Crawl downtown because she prefers the bars on Chippewa to the bars on Hertel.

“The scene of the bars downtown is more my style, like the dancing and the music,” Gitlin said.

Still, many plan to attend the event on Hertel. On Facebook, the event page for the bar crawl indicates that over 2,000 people have marked that they’re “interested” and 358 have marked that they’re “going.”

About 2,500 people attended last year’s The Crawling Dead, according to Elise Phillips.

The weather looks promising on Saturday and Elise Phillips said the event will be successful regardless.

 “Halloween only comes once a year and people want to come out and celebrate rain or shine,” Elise Phillips said. 

 Julian Roberts-Grmela is a features desk editor and can be reached at julian.grmela@ubspectrum.com and on Twitter @GrmelaJulian.


JULIAN ROBERTS-GRMELA
JulianRobertsGrmela.jpg

Julian Roberts-Grmela is a senior news editor for The Spectrum and an English and philosophy major. His favorite book is “White Teeth” by Zadie Smith and he hopes that one day his writing will be as good as hers. 

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