State Patty's Day: State College bars were dry, but many apartments packed with Penn Staters remained booze-soaked

STATE COLLEGE — A game of morning beer pong was underway in the crammed, three-bedroom apartment downtown.

Usually, six roommates share the confined space, but as State Patty's Day dawned, the ramshackle place was jammed with people.

All the roommates had invited friends from out of town to sample the excesses of what has become Penn State's unofficial drinking holiday.

It's the final Saturday in February to most. But to the green-clad college students who began carousing State College streets at mid-morning, it was still State Patty's Day. This, despite the

.

"It just means that we had to stock up," explained Christian Alberico, 21, who was co-hosting the party in his apartment. "You know, plan a little."

, including The Phoenix where Alberico lives, attempted to extend the St. Patty's Day ban to so-called house parties, as well.

The junior from Turtle Creek, Pa., said he and his roommates received a strongly worded letter from the apartment's management outlawing all underage guests for the weekend.

They read it, then promptly proceeded to invite nearly 50 of their closest friends, anyway. Alberico admitted that some are underage. But he said he isn't supplying them — or any of his guests — with alcohol.

"Everyone has to bring their own supply," Alberico explained.

Well, that isn't exactly true, either. Knowing beer might be in short supply as the weekend wears on, Alberico purchased an extra case of Miller High Life — not to drink, but rather to sell to other of-age party-goers who run dry.

"I don't even drink that stuff," Alberico said of his plan to profit from State College's one-day prohibition.

And while Alberico admitted that he was taking a risk by hosting such a big gathering amid a town-and-gown push to eradicate State Patty's Day, he pointed to his smiling Pittsburgh-area friends as the real reason he's doing it.

They're guys like Dennis Simon, who came in from IUP. As the group walked down the street with mid-morning, mind-clearing soft drinks, the hometown friends reveled in their reunion. Collectively, they call themselves the

The bunch of best friends were back together. The feeling was almost better than a beer buzz.

And it's why students say they'll never truly stop State Patty's Day at Penn State.

But it is changing.

"People are going to stick around their apartments and play it safe," Alberico predicted. "You keep the music low, and hopefully everyone has some good, clean fun."

To stay ahead of any enforcement, the party would keep rolling from place to place to place — all afternoon and long into the evening.

"We're gonna party-hop," Alberico said, just before heading off to the friends' first stop — at 11 a.m.

So much for State College's bar ban. Sure, some of the beer lights were dimmed. The taps were turned off. And all the bars in the borough had signs stating that no alcohol was for sale Saturday.

But none of it stopped State Patty's Day. Instead, it was merely sidetracked. Slowed somewhat, perhaps. But the parties and the drinking — some of it underage — continued in many private residences all around town.

One could hear it wafting from open apartment windows.

One could see it as people hoisted drinks on apartment balconies.

One could dance to it as music thumped from crowded back decks and populated patios.

Nicholas Garrety, a member of Penn State's Christian State Fellowship, spent the day handing out free water bottles to alcohol-parched revelers, as they strolled from apartment to apartment on Beaver Avenue.

He and a handful of his group members estimated that State College's alcohol ban might have reduced State Patty's Day attendance by about 20 percent. Mostly, but cutting down on the number of college students busing in from out of town.

"You don't see the buses coming in from Maryland," said Garrety, a 21-year-old senior from York. "You don't see Ohio State coming in. Less people is better. There are going to be less accidents. It's not over by any means," he added of State Patty's Day. "But it's dwindled."

It meant fewer customers for the free water the group was handing out. And members were taking bets on how long it would take them to go through the 27 cases stacked on the sidewalk, given this slower, more sedate State Patty's Day. The thinking was, they'd be there the better part of the afternoon. Nothing like last year, when they ran out just after lunch and had to go get more.

The Christian group's message to all those fellow students drinking far stronger liquids this weekend: "Be safe," Garrety said. "God loves you. Drink some water."

It had the feel of prohibition, all those darkened bars, the locked tap handles and shuttered liquor cabinets. This in State College, no less. Home to one of America's Top 10 party schools. But the public perception of State Patty's Day had turned too dark, too ugly not to do something.

The pressure on the bars to accept a town-and-gown coalition's $5,000 payment to close for the day was enormous, said one bar manager who asked that his name not be used for fear of repercussions.

"Morally, it's the right thing," this bar owner said. "Financially, it's brutal."

Even businesses outside the borough limits were affected. While it remained safely on the other side of the State College line — and therefore open for business — the alcohol ban was hurting W.R. Hickey Beer Distributor Inc., too.

"When you have 20 or 30 bars closed, of course it hurts," said co-owner John Hickey, describing the hit to his wholesale business. He declined to say specifically how much in sales was being lost.

While the pill was a bitter, Hickey said the medicine to tone down State Patty's Day was overdue.

"It had to be done," Hickey said. "The town fathers were not happy with it. Everyone wants it to stop."

Still, State College's all-or-nothing approach claimed many casualties.

At Kildare's Irish Pub on East College Avenue, there's usually an early Saturday morning crowd for soccer and some Guinness. Instead, the place wasn't even opening until 11 a.m. — and then only for food and soft drinks.

A disgruntled employee sweeping the empty parking lot growled, "No alcohol," repeating what was posted on signs in every window. "You'll have to do your drugs today."

The scene was the same all across town. Every one of downtown State College's 30-plus bars were participating in a sort of paid prohibition engineered by a town-and-gown group known as the Coalition Against Dangerous Drinking.

Each bar pocketed $5,000 in return for standing down for the day — all to break the back of the Penn State student-created drinking holiday. Since 2007, State Patty's Day has proven a convenient co-option of St. Patrick's Day, turning the final Saturday of February into a student's excuse the wear green and drink until one is green in the gills.

Yet, it wasn't just students' business that the bars were losing on Saturday. Bon Jovi was playing at the Bryce Jordan Center that evening, and one bar manager said he received multiple calls from would-be customers angry that they wouldn't be able to get a drink within the State College limits. Instead, they'd be relegated to suburban townships, where chains like Damon's and TGI Fridays were the norm.

But even though the bars were reduced to serving food and soft drinks — if they bothered to open at all — college students continued to sashay down State College streets, as if oblivious to — and unaffected by — the alcohol ban.

Young women wearing green hats and other festive headgear walked arm-in-arm with friends, as if collectively steadying each other. Men moved in packs, laughing and talking loudly.

Others poured out onto apartment high-rise balconies, again wearing green. Some with drinks in hand. The back deck of an East Beaver Avenue apartment thrummed with music and radiated with the collective wall of chatter of some 40 partying people.

All this, and it wasn't even noon.

The bar ban certainly didn't stop Sarah, who described herself as a 19-year-old sophomore, from enjoying State Patty's Day — and plenty of alcohol — at a private party inside a downtown apartment.

"The bars aren't where State Patty's Day is at, anyway," she scoffed. "We're still going to hang out with friends."

One of those friends was JoAnna, a 21-year-old senior and a veteran of four State Patty's Days. She insisted that there was never any stopping the unofficial holiday. She said even town and university officials had to realize this. They just sought to contain it a little, is all.

"You're not going to stop 40,000 people from doing what they want to do," said JoAnna, who declined to give her last name. "I think it's going to continue. They just hope the parties aren't that insane."

So as the party played on and the drinking continued, a question remained: Would a more sedate State Patty's Day be enough to justify State College's paid prohibition?

Only time — and another last Saturday in February — would tell.