This year, CityBeat’s annual “Drinking Issue” goes where no drinking issue has gone before: ’til morning. Spanning the hours from happy hour to hangover, this handy guide takes you from after-work cocktails and nighttime bar-crawls to late-night munchies and mid-morning brunch remedies.
Get the party started by finding out how the party literally starts … in your body. Learn how alcohol works as it travels from your belly to your brain making you happy, then slurry, then White Castle-hungry, then asleep. And discover the true merits of happy hour from a local 9-to-5-er with details on happy hour specials in neighborhood bars and taverns across the city. (Happiness is a $1.50 beer.)
Then, take happy hour to the next level — or the next hour — with bar time location listings and a special Bar-Crawl Bingo card. (Drinking and games go together like margaritas and salt! Or beer and more beer!) Take the official CityBeat Bar-Crawl Bingo card with you on a neighborhood pub crawl (or several), marking off each square as you go — like a scavenger hunt with alcohol!
By now, you’re probably hungry. No worries. Late-night food options abound inside these pages, grouped by neighborhood. Chili parlors, diners and extended-hours kitchens offer all the snacks a drunk could want with plenty of cheese and fried things.
And whether you keep the party going ’til morning, pass out on the couch or just want to start drinking early on a Sunday, there’s an entire story dedicated to brunch joints that have perfected the art of food and booze. Recover from a hangover with eggs, coffee and the hair of the dog. Or, just enjoy creative morning cocktails from bloody marys to mimosas and beyond.
So someone call a designated driver — this issue is getting drunk.
Click here to access the full Drinking Issue.
— Maija Zummo, Project Editor
