Hundreds celebrate St. Patrick's Day early at New Kensington pub crawl

Green beer, Irish whiskey, and everything in between flowed a week early in New Kensington on Saturday as hundreds turned out for the Pre-Patty’s Pub Crawl event that saw patrons shuttled from bar to bar, decked out in as much green as possible.

The event was put together by the folks behind The Beermuda, its owner Jennifer Toney, and Jamie Fair, who runs a mobile bartending business called Bar on the Fly.

“We have a lot of established businesses here that have been here for a long time … that need to be highlighted and show that we have a good time,” Fair said. “We have good company here, great product and great service, and we are so proud of the community.”

The event also acted as the perfect kickoff for spring-like weather in the region, with temperatures reaching nearly 70 degrees and the sun out all day.

Nate Santucci, who grew up in New Kensington and recently bought a house there, said he was thrilled to see so many people turn out to the event.

“I think it’s great that things like this are coming here,” he said. “It makes me feel like I’m in the city.”

What started out as four friends with a plan to partake grew to a dozen people walking from Santucci’s house to Botl, where they picked up the shuttle and made the rounds.

At Voodoo Brewery, hundreds of patrons lined the bar inside and in the outdoor seating area and event space. Doria Byrnes, her husband and their dogs are Voodoo regulars, and they came to New Kensington from Bellevue for the bar crawl.

“I love it here,” she said, noting how businesses in the community come out and support each other.

Byrnes grew up in Springdale and used to work in New Kensington. She said she’s pleased to see how vibrant the area has become.

Kelly Beale, of Washington Township, said she was astonished by the number of people who flocked to New Kensington for the event, noting that many, like Brynes, came from other parts of the region for the event.

“It’s amazing to see the boom in this area,” she said. “People are coming back — all these businesses are coming here — and it’s full of wonderful people.”

She compared the city’s renaissance to that of Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood.

“It’s amazing,” she said. “I love seeing this.”

Suzy Dynys, who sometimes works behind the bar at her mother’s saloon, the Blind Pig, said the event was a perfect way to bring the community together after a long winter and surge in covid cases.

“It’s awesome to get people back out again,” she said. “It’s great for the community to come together.”

Roughly 600 tickets were sold for the event, which lasted from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.

“We’re quite humbled and just amazed by the amount of people that supported this and joined in on this,” said Toney, owner of The Beermuda. “We didn’t expect even a third of the people that we ended up getting.”