The downtown Denver economy has been sluggish as it recovers from the worldwide pandemic. Only four years ago, normal life seemed like a hopeless ideal, and while we may not have fully rebounded, Denver Pub Crawl founders Ty Sondag and Logan Lakos found a way to bring people together. Their solution? Bring pub crawling, an international pastime, to the United States.
“I did a big round-the-world trip for about six months, went to about 18 different countries and over 50 cities, and I was going on pub crawls in almost every single city,” Sondag said. “When I moved to Denver, I was living downtown right outside LoDo, so that was the most accessible for me to hang out and meet my friends and explore, and I thought, ‘Why isn’t anyone doing an international style pub crawl?’”
Sondag says they cannot take credit for the model or the idea because this is done almost everywhere outside the United States. “We love traveling internationally, so whenever we’re abroad, we love to bring things back from our experiences on the personal side and then incorporate them into what traditionally most Americans have never experienced,” Sondag said.
The style of the crawls is simple: everyone buys a ticket to the event and meets at the designated bar at a set time. The hosts will then check you in, give you a wristband, guide you to the provided food and encourage you to start the night off with a discounted drink. After about an hour, as the crawlers trickle in, the crew gets out bullhorns and bright yellow signs to indicate that they are moving on to the next bar.
You spend about 45 minutes at each of the bars scheduled by the group for the evening. The venues are expecting the group, and Lakos said they have a positive working relationship with a majority of the bars in the LoDo and RiNo areas. The group goes out until about 1:00 or 1:30 a.m., and the total price tag for the evening is substantially lower with the discounted drinks and cover fees being waived than a normal night out would run you.
Every pub crawl has a clear goal: to curate friendship and new experiences amongst the attendees and the surrounding community. “We want them to feel comfortable and welcomed enough no matter what color their skin is, where they’re from, who their parents are, how much money they have, or how much they weigh—it doesn’t matter,” Sondag said. “Our goal is for people to come together and have an amazing night out on the town, and our job is to facilitate that.”
Whether you’re in Denver for the night or if you lived here for 25 years, the Denver Pub Crawl brings like-minded people together who are just trying to have a good time and be themselves, which is what continues to bring back multi-time pub crawler Chris Amador.
“I’ve gotten so many chances to meet such great people, and it’s been very inclusive for people with disabilities, which opened my mind to see what they are going through and also gave me their perspective,” Amador said. “This allowed me to be a comfort to them, and boost their morale because a lot of them didn’t want to come, but once you get to talk to them, it becomes a great night.”
The crawls involve lots of opportunities for engagement rather than just drinking and talking; many of the crawls are themed, involve partnerships or have games that inspire friendly competition amongst the crawlers.
First-time crawler Yasmine Hayes attended the crawl on July 26, which was a co-hosted event with the intramural adult sports league Volo Sports Denver. The crawl consisted of six competitions involving a beer chug, flip cup and skeeball, which were Hayes’s favorite parts of the outing. “I definitely love the games, but the comradery and being part of the community is top tier for me; it’s a huge thing for me actually,” Hayes said.
There are safety concerns that come with these types of events, including managing a large group of people and walking around the busy streets of Denver on high-traffic nights, all while there is a substantial amount of alcohol involved. The Denver Pub Crawl team makes sure that water is always readily available, they have sober staff keeping an eye out on the group when they change locations, and they are constantly surveying the group to make sure everyone is at safe levels. The crawlers say they feel safe and taken care of throughout the night.
“They give you the exact location every night; they’ve got big signs so you don’t get lost [and] people support each other,” Amador said. “They do everything to make sure everybody stays safe throughout the crawl. They make sure no one becomes too intoxicated, and if they see you are pretty intoxicated, they will call you a cab or an Uber to make sure we all stay safe.”
Lead host Stephanie Blake Ngassa has worked for Denver Pub Crawl for almost a year and has found validation in helping people make connections in the city. “There was this girl who had just recently moved to Denver, [and] she was so stressed out that she actually gave me a hug at the end of the night and said, ‘Thank you,’” Ngassa said. “I got her number and we are still in contact and connected today, but at the end of the day, she was really happy she had something that made it easier for her to talk to people.”
As a founder, Lakos has witnessed hundreds of the organization’s crawls over the past four years. While each event has its own set of memorable moments, Lakos shares one story from his time facilitating crawls that exemplifies the spirit of the activity.
“There was this girl who was a solo traveler from Louisiana and had booked a weekend in Denver by herself,” Lakos said. “She decided to come on a crawl, and she had a great time and came up and told me at the end of the night how comfortable she felt being around a bunch of strangers in an environment that was structured, stable, safe and welcoming.”
It could be your first crawl or your hundredth, but attendees say the outcome is always the same: “We came here as strangers, but we all left as friends,” Amador said.