Downtown Berkeley CupidCon

If you follow my reviews you’ll know that I’m in a long distance relationship with the No1DP (lives and works in Japan), and as he couldn’t spend actual Valentines Day weekend with me this year he visited me earlier in January. This left my actual Valentines Day free, so what better way to celebrate it (and find an excuse not to study in the process) by participating in a bar crawl!
The premise of CupidCon is the scavenger hunt: go to the businesses indicated on the list and take pictures of the specific action/​item associated with the business. When teams first checked in at Downtown Berkeley BART they were given the list with the instructions to post their pictures to Instagram with tags #BerkCupidCon and #Team[team name]. The reward for finding and posting all 11 pictures was a gift certificate to a participating business. Additionally, there was a costume contest where they were to tag their group photo to @YelpEastBay, with the winning individual/​group winning tickets to the February Unilocal Elite Event (
). I didn’t bother participating in the costume contest because I wanted a non-​Yelper to win (I eventually got in with the help of Eugene, another Elite Unilocaler) but I still wanted to help Jon with the scavenger hunt.
The pictures involved taking pictures of prominent landmarks in the business (the Calaveras Mural) or doing silly things (jump in front of Sliver). It got easier as I had more to drink. However, what I got out of this event was bonding with group Jon, Lauren and Bill as well as getting to know the participating businesses.
Because of this pub crawl Sliver Pizzeria and Perdition Smokehouse are on my list of businesses to try. Sliver’s concept is identical to Cheese Board with the one notable exception that they are open all 7 days (Cheese Board is closed Sunday and Monday). As for Perdition Smokehouse the smell just lured me in and if it wasn’t for Jon suggesting we were gonna eat at Sliver I was gonna try a smoked meat plate at Perdition.
I forgot exactly all that I drank that day but I did remember two well-​made cocktails: a Michelada made with Negra Modelo (La Botella Republic) and The Birds & The Bees Knees (East Bay Spice Company).
Bill and Lauren were great partners and I enjoyed getting to know them. I hope to see them at an actual Unilocal function.
Though it looks to be like I’ll be leaving the East Bay soon to return back to SD, I’ll fondly look at this event as one of the highlights of not only 2015, but also as one of the highlights of my stay up north for school.
PS: Jon rocked those Rainbow Dash wings quite nicely!