Where's Waldo? It's a glorious day for a PUB CRAWL!

Let me tell you a story about my new favorite KC neighborhood, Waldo. The other week Ward Parkway and I decided to grab some lunch at a place called Lew's Bar and Grill. What we didn't know is that our little outing for lunch would turn into a full-fledged, impromptu afternoon of bar hopping around the intersection of 75th and Wornall. Strap on your helmet and hang on for the ride!

I'd read about Lew's and had posted some upcoming functions at the bar on the KC Events Calendar to the left side of this blog, but I'd never actually been. Both Ward Parkway and I were pleasantly surprised to learn that Lew's is a spectacular little sports pub, tucked away in the side of a strip mall. You'd never imagine it'd be a place of any substance at all from it's exterior non-appeal, but on the inside it's full of everything you'd ever want in a sports bar…neon beer lights, pennants, college banners, "stuff" hanging all over the place, hot waitresses. It's a visual circus! Fantastic on the eyes and just an overall comfortable "Cheers-like" place to be! It's a place you WANT to spend the afternoon (or even the morning--yeah, you know who you are). Oh, and they have fantastic burgers, by the way!

So Ward and I ate, and we drank, and we had a merry ol' time at Lew's! We hadn't planned on going anywhere else, but on our way out we passed Waldo Pizza and noticed it had a bar attached to it called the Tap Room! Our eyes lit up….so we stopped, of course. The swell thing about The Tap Room is that they had Lindeman's Framboise Lambic on TAP, amongst a slew of other off-the-wall beers (14 on tap in all). What a surprise! I've never experienced framboise on tap! Didn't even know it could be kegged up! I've always enjoyed this expensive, raspberry-flavored beer in bottles, and was thrilled to have it freshly squeezed into my glass, direct from the nozzle!! I nearly leapt over the bar, bursting with sheer joy! I also learned that they offer 100 different beers in bottles. I'm sure Bud Light is one of them, so yeah, all the "douches" will feel comfortable here as well.

We headed directly next door from the Waldo Pizza Tap Room to Tanner's. Well heck, they had beer…and we needed one or four. I had never been in this particular Tanner's, but was at once inspired by its greatness! It had the same charm and appeal as did Lew's--lots of cool bar decorations, a great collection of "antique" yard beer signs/lights and of course a great bar, as Tanner's always has! And that's about when the clowns came it. Yeah, clowns. "Send in the clowns!" A group of 7 or 8 brightly dressed people in a rainbow-sweatpants-montage descended upon Tanners in all their goofy glory. We had no idea what to think, but let them gather with "their peeps" as they enjoyed their beer. You think you've seen it all….until a whole herd of clowns walks into a bar. Sounds like a joke, maybe? This video quite nicely sums it all up:

A bit freaked out, we decided to go across the street to another little dive, a mere hole-in-the-wall called Kennedy's. From what I can gather, the old Kennedy's had burned down a year ago and this was the temporary Kennedy's until the original bar gets rebuilt. They say (the ambiguous they) that the old Kennedy's was a true gem. I guess it was THE Waldo bar to take on ALL Waldo bars. The fire put an end to its glory days however. But never fear, the NEW (and shiny) Kennedy's is near!

After enjoying a beer or eight at Kennedy's, where yes, there were more strange groups of people wearing sweats (but no clowns)…..we stumbled over to the bar next door where Bull E. Vard ended up joining us for a round of drinks at the 75th Street Brewery. Turns out, the 2nd Annual Sweatpants Showdown was well underway, raising money for the Children's Therapeutic Learning Center. The MANY groups of bar hoppers dressed in coordinating colors of sweats, hats and wigs sure looked like they were having a great time! Wouldn't it have been more fun--and also slightly ironic--if it would have been a pub crawl for children's liver disease? We tried to sneak our way into scoring cheaper drinks, pretending to "be with said pub crawl" by trying to pull the wool over our waitress's eyes, but she A) wasn't wearing any wool, and B) we weren't wearing any sweatpants. It was a no-go. She wasn't buying it. "Did you pay the entry fee?" she asked us stiffly. "Where are your sweats?" Man, she was GOOD! I'm not sure it was a good tip day for her--with everyone out for cheap drinks and hand-outs. She was kind of grumpy.

Outside the window, groups of sweat-panters were wheel-barrowing each other down the sidewalk, crawling on their hands, apparently doing this to meet some check-list requirement for the fundraiser. Another shocking thing we witnessed was a group gathering outside our window attempting to form a drunken pyramid with the members of their color-coordinated group. It wouldn't have been odd, except that the girl, who was crawling UP the pyramid of bodies to form the pinnacle on top, should have been on the BOTTOM. I accidentally said too loud, "Isn't she pretty big to be on the top?" Not knowing that more of her group members were INSIDE the restaurant sitting next to our table. Luckily, they laughed and agreed. In retrospect, that comment might have been totally embarrassing, but I was pretty drunk and thought it was pretty damn funny. So...we had another beer.

Finally, we headed out. Bull E. Vard had to get back home to the wife and kids, and Ward Parkway and I had another bar to hit. We really were done bingeing for the day, but decided to stop into a fun place we like to call The Gaf. And actually, I'm not really remembering much about The Gaf at this point, and I honestly don't know if it was "fun," but I CAN tell you that there was a giant mural of a ship on the wall. I'm sure the beer was just grand! Might have to go back sometime to gather some "real" information for a true Gaf review!

The only pub crawl bars we missed that glorious afternoon were Fin's and Bobby Baker's. Just didn't have it in us to hit 'em up.

Happy drinking, KC!