I liked to joke with my wife on and off about hosting a ‘Golf Hampden!’ bar crawl.
There would be t-shirts with a golf dad on the front and a course laid out on the back. Score cards would be printed and tiny pencils handed out. We’d pace it so everyone was drunk but no one was dead. And it’d have to be played in the summer, forcing us to swim through Baltimore humidity as we moved from bar to bar.
We’d start on Falls Rd. and wind our way through the neighborhood down 36th St. to Chestnut Ave. to round out the 18-hole course. There would be a 3-par Baltimore Beer Chug at Atomic Books, the five-par Elder Rolls Guess’em at Golden West, Pickle Back Par-Fours at Rocket 2 Venus, etc. ending with the Hole-in-One Jamieson Challenge at Frazier’s.
‘Golf Hampden’ has always percolated, but when I spoke its name out loud the idea sounded too decadent, a Fear and Loathing on the Avenue that starts well but ends with all the potential terror and violence of a car wreck.
Now though, the idea has ample merit, and somewhere in the post-Corona I look forward to playing Bacchus with a 9-Iron through my neighborhood, the Sheltered and the Damned marching waggle-legged behind me.
As a friend once said during another bullshit event, “jaded atavistic freakout feels right at this juncture.”
Anyways, I miss happy hour.
