TBOX Pub Crawl

TBOX, an acronym for Twelve Bars Of Xmas, is a very large annual pub crawl which has been held in December, in the city of Chicago, Illinois, USA since 1996. Founded and organized by Chicago resident Christopher Festa, “TBOX1” in 1996 attracted fewer than 65 people, while the event TBOX12 exceeded 4000 participants in December, 2007, and has been unofficially promoted as “The World’s Largest and Most Spectacular Pub Crawl”. Since 1999, the event has been held in the Wrigleyville neighborhood, utilizing some of the same larger bars and nightclubs that service crowds attending Chicago Cubs baseball games during the summer months. Given the logistics of fitting 4,000 people into one bar, as attendance at the event has grown, the organizers have instituted a Round Robin format, allowing participants to circulate through multiple bars in order to better handle capacity. At the 2007 TBOX12 event, 33 bars participated. The 13th installment of TBOX, “TBOX2008”, is scheduled for Saturday, December 13, 2008¹.

Event Details

TBOX is organized by the local fashion design firm Festa Stuff, with tickets to the event going on sale through their web site and at their local office beginning in early fall. At TBOX12 in 2007, the event began at 10AM at the Cubby Bear bar across from Wrigley Field, with coverage of the event’s opening ceremonies featured on local news channel CLTV². All participants are given a wristband and an event pass badge, with badges sequentially numbered from 0001 through the highest anticipated attendee number. As a reward for past participation, completing the entire event in sequence each year, and dressing in creative thematic costumes, Festa Stuff selects 40 participants to receive the first 40 badge numbers and designates them as “The Royal Court”. Photo scavenger hunts and other games circulate around identifying Royal Court members and other people with particular badge numbers. The tickets and wristbands allow attendees exclusive entry to the bars on the circuit with drink specials at each bar. The event has been sponsored by the Miller Brewing Company the past several years.

Culture

TBOX has developed somewhat of a “cult following” among longtime participants both from Chicago as well as those who fly in from around the US and other countries each year. Groups of people attending together dress in the same theme costume, and many fly in to make this an annual reunion. It is noteworthy for its “extreme” aspects: participants drinking heavily, yet pacing themselves, starting at 10AM, in the cold of winter; dressing in costumes as is done for Mardi Gras, Halloween, or like events; having over 4,000 people crowding into the bars; participants carrying around boxes of cereal and doing “Upside Down Cereal Shots”, in which an entire box of sugar-sweetened cereal is poured into someone’s mouth like an Upside Down Margarita; event organizers and Royal Court members handing out thousands of stickers with racy slogans (the goal is to collect all of them); at the beginning and end bars, pieces of red and green wire are handed out to participants to prove they went “wire to wire”; and the event is also noted for the many singles who attend to meet members of the opposite sex. Several married couples trace their initial meeting to TBOX. Additionally, the event stands in stark contrast to the many more traditional and staid family and business holiday and Christmas parties during the season, which provides and additional enticement to participants in their 30s and 40s to enjoy a more raucous type of holiday celebration..

References

1. Festa Stuff Web Site http://www.shopfesta.com/tbox2008/home.htm
2. TBOX Pub Crawl, CLTV Television, 11 December 2008 http://youtube.com/watch?v=knRzzQjzK3o

External Links

* [http://www.shopfesta.com/tbox TBOX Home Page on Festa Stuff Web Site]