Pint of Hope Zombie Pub Crawl – An Apocolyptic Disaster in Park Circle

The marketing plug was in place and the sponsors were ready:

“Warning. The quarantine was breached for a race against time. Join Holy City Brewing, Lowcountry AIDS Services (LAS) and the walking dead for a pub crawl like no other in Park Circle on Saturday, October 5th from 5-11 pm. The apocalyptic 3rd annual “Pint of Hope” Zombie Pub Crawl will feature discounted Holy City brews ordinarily unavailable to the public, live music by DJ Big Hair Dave, a costume contest & much more.

Dress like the undead and battle for a chance to win a private tasting for you and 9 of your favorite living corpses at Holy City Brewing.”

The only issue with the Pint of Hope Zombie Pub Crawl was that it was a modern day disaster in its execution. The event supported the Lowcountry Aids Foundation with sponsors and participating restaurants including:

Restaurants:

• The Barbeque Joint
• Cork Neighborhood Bistro
• DIG in the Park
• EVO Pizza
• Fratello’s
• Madra Rua Irish Pub
• The Mill
• Sesame Burgers and Beer
• The Sparrow

Sponsors:

• Holy City Brewing (presenting sponsor)
• Belk
• Artist & Craftsman
• Big Hair Productions
• Gil Shuler Graphic Design
• The Event Cooperative
• Kask Creativity
• Snyder Event Rentals
• Vive le Rock Productions
• Robust Energy Drink

Many came out to support the cause and bring out the inner “undead” but a number of things went dramatically wrong during the hours of 5 PM and 1 AM.

What went wrong!!!

• All restaurants were supposed to offer participants a different Holy City Beer option for $3.00. Two restaurants charged $2.00, one charged $3.00, one $5.00 and two didn’t even clearly show a Holy City option. In fact none of the 9 restaurants offered the Holy City option to the participants when then entered and sat down. They just gave us menus and asked what we wanted.
• I asked about the markers to identify stopping at each location and one restaurant manager said he didn’t even know what was going on until the day of the event.
• One of the sponsors was Yelp who announced there would be a scavenger hunt along with the event. Aside from some koozies, there was no other representation of Yelp and no scavenger hunt. The only resemblance was that each team had to drink at all nine restaurants.
• Times were not designated for each location so all individual teams signed in and went their own way. The idea of a pub crawl is to migrate together, co-mingle and make new friends. The lack of order made it almost impossible to follow others and branch outside of your individual team. Getting people to Park Circle / North Charleston from outside the community is a challenge enough. This did not make it easier.
• Service at two of the restaurants was “poor” at best. We even left after waiting seven plus minutes for a single beer.
• After the event, the organizers were drawing winners from those that completed the crawl. We never heard any announcement at DIG or a gathering place to hear who the winners were being announced.
• The silent auction had limited participation and no clear directions on how you would be notified if you won.
• Some people walked the streets with open alcohol including one with a bottle of Corona. We were not sure if that was allowable at all and took a risk to carry open alcohol in the streets.
• There was a best zombie contest scheduled for the end of the event. We did not know when or where it occurred. It may have been somewhere in DIG in the Park, but no signs or direction was provided.

Overall, there were some very creative, creepy and even a few eye turning costumes and make up applications. For a Saturday night at Park Circle, there was a buzz in the air, but for an important fund raiser supporting a very worthy cause, the organization was a failure.