The day of the Irish is approaching and spots around Arlington are planning to paint the town green next week.
From community events to live music at local pubs, there will be a steady stream of events leading up to and on St. Patrick’s Day.
bar crawl
In the past, big crowds have converged on Arlington’s Mexican restaurants on Cinco de Mayo and this year will likely be no exception with a number of events going on across the county.
Friday, May 5 marks the anniversary of Mexico’s victory over France in 1862’s Battle of Puebla. While considered a relatively minor holiday in Mexico, Cinco de Mayo in the United States has become a day to celebrate Mexican culture.
After a five-year hiatus, there will again be a bar crawl in Clarendon in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day.
The last such bar crawl happened in 2018. The next year, more stringent county regulations were blamed for a dearth of bar crawls. Then, of course, the pandemic struck. But now, crawls are making a comeback.
The Falls Church restaurant community is coming together to raise money for the employees of Ireland’s Four Courts.
The Courthouse mainstay was heavily damaged on Aug. 12 when a rideshare driver, who was apparently suffering a medical emergency, slammed into the front of the pub during a Friday happy hour. Three people were seriously injured and a raging fire sparked by the crash charred much of the interior.
There was a time when Arlington — Clarendon, in particular — was known for bar crawls.
There was Shamrock Crawl, the Clarendon Halloween Crawl, and Shirlington’s SantaCon. Thousands of mostly younger people attended. Along with the revelry, however, there were arrests, property damage, public intoxication, and nudity.
(Updated at 9:20 a.m.) It’s been more than a year since the last large, organized bar crawl in Arlington, and the former seasonal staple of the Orange Line corridor shows no sign of returning soon.
The last notable crawl to fill bars in the Clarendon area was the March 2018 Shamrock Crawl. The St. Patrick’s Day-themed pub crawl was one of three — including the Halloween Crawl and a Fourth of July-themed All American Bar Crawl — to bring thousands of revelers to the watering holes along Wilson and Clarendon boulevards.
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The Trolley Pub, the mobile biking platform hopping from bar to bar across Arlington, has undergone a rebranding to Pedal Saloon.
According to John Alligood, general manager at Pedal Saloon Arlington, the change came after former partners were bought out by the current leadership.
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Clarendon has been known for its nights-and-weekends bar scene and drinking culture, and there is perhaps no more pure an example of the drinking culture than the bar crawls that come to the neighborhood a few times a year.
There’s the Halloween crawl, the “All American” crawl and — this past weekend — the St. Patrick’s Day-themed Shamrock Crawl, which returned to Clarendon after a one-year hiatus. Like Dan Zak before me, I went to check it out.
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Free Lyft rides will be available to those looking for a safe ride home on St. Patrick’s Day this weekend.
The promotion is being offered by the Washington Regional Alcohol Program, a local nonprofit, and will run from Saturday, March 17 at 4 p.m. through March 18 at 4 a.m..
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Eligibility Changes Proposed for Cemetery — “With Arlington National Cemetery set to run out of space in the coming years, restrictions on who can be buried there need to be considered, officials said Thursday.” [WTOP, Army Times]
Emergency Metro Repairs Next Weekend — Emergency repairs will mean reduced service on Metro’s Silver Line and some changes to Blue Line service next weekend, during St. Patrick’s Day and peak cherry blossom season. [Fox 5]
DHS Official Charged With Beating Wife in Arlington — A “senior career official with the Department of Homeland Security who… handles a ‘high volume’ of classified information in his role as an intelligence briefer,” served jail time after a 2016 incident in Arlington in which he was charged with assaulting his wife, breaking two ribs and causing bruising around her neck. [Washington Post]
Anti-DUI Event at Shamrock Crawl Tomorrow — The Arlington County Police Department will hold a St. Patrick’s Day-themed anti-DUI event dubbed “Don’t Press Your Luck” in Clarendon tomorrow (Saturday). The event will coincide with the planned Shamrock Crawl bar crawl. [Arlington County]