HARRY'S: Straddling the Allston-Brighton line at the Warren St. stop on the B branch of the Green Line

It wasn’t until recently — two years after I graduated from BU, in 2004 — that I realized how much drunk-time my friends and I squandered while we were in school. Sure, like all good 21st-century undergrads we drank a lot, but rarely did we take full advantage of Boston, college town extraordinaire. Even after we turned 21, the vast majority of our alcohol consumption took place in friends’ living rooms, at lame Allston parties, and at the same handful of bars within a quarter-mile radius of our apartments. I wish someone had grabbed us and shaken our lazy asses awake: “There’s an entire city out there, and it’s teeming with other students. Sauced students. And bars. All sorts of bars. It’s a veritable amusement park of drunken debauchery, and you’re not taking advantage of it!”

To illustrate this important point, two friends and I went on a pub crawl on a recent Friday. Our mission: get off work, hop on the T and ride from BC to Harvard, stopping along the way to enjoy as many local drinking holes as possible before the dreaded 2 am shutdown. What follows is a detailed account of our odyssey. Maybe it’ll motivate you to get out and have a night to remember (or possibly not).

5:59 pm — B train, Green Line BC
After a quick look around to confirm that there are no bars around the BC campus (What’s up with that?), Ted, Andrew, and I hop on the T — amply air conditioned and almost completely empty — and take it two stops inbound to Chestnut Hill Avenue, where we meet up with our buddy Gallagher, the first of many friends to join the crawl throughout the night.

6:08 pm — Chestnut Hill Avenue — Roggie’s
The bar is packed with preppy-looking twentysomethings hoping to get a jump on Friday-night revelry. They’ve come to the right place: Bud Light drafts are a dollar, you can get a Roggie Bowl (“64 oz of your favorite mixed drink”) for $15.75, the pizza’s cheap and tasty, there’s loud music and flat-screen TVs, and the wait staff are as young and attractive as the patrons. Since we’re in a rush, hoping to catch the two-for-one burgers and appetizers deal at Our House, which runs from 4 until 7 pm, we down our Bud Lights and get back on the T.

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6:29 pm — Warren Street — Harry’s Bar and Grill
Harry’s is emptier than Roggie’s, which is fine by us. Like its sister bar, the White Horse Tavern, Harry’s has a wide-open front, and there’s a nice breeze blowing through the room. In lieu of $2 Busch bottles (there aren’t any cold ones at the moment), we grab a pitcher of Bud Light, which yields four pints — a decent deal for $10.50. We down it quick.

6:51 pm — Griggs Street/Long Avenue — Our House West
Just in time for the two-for-one deal — sweet. Our House, which has been around since my parents were cavorting around Allston some 30 years ago, has a nice … well, homey feel, and, more important, 16-ounce bottles of Brubaker for two bucks. While the six guys at the table next to us order six burgers and six apps, we opt to split two of each among the four of us. (Our friend Kev just joined up, but he’s not eating.) For less than $25 we get a plate of fried calamari, a big veggie quesadilla, a veggie burger, a regular burger, and 64 ounces of beer.

7:55 pm — Harvard Avenue — Uno Chicago Grill
Uno’s? On a pub crawl? Sounds strange, I know, but the $2 22-ounce Killian’s is one of the best-kept secrets in town. And that’s all I have to say about that. We get back on the T, now joined by three more folk: our pal Steve-O and the dynamic brother-sister duo of Bub and Kelli. It’s starting to get dark out, the T has begun to fill up, and after those big Killian’s, we’re starting to feel the effects.

8:44 pm — BU Central — Dugout Café
Since it’s summer and the Dugout is in the heart of the BU “campus,” the bar’s all but empty tonight, its cozy confines populated by just six people, including the bartender. We’re rolling eight heads and more than a few beers deep at this point, and I feel a little bad disturbing the peace in the tiny tavern, but not bad enough to refrain from firing up the jukebox — its stellar selection includes everything from AC/DC and LL Cool J to the Pixies — and ordering up a couple of pitchers of PBR at $8.75 a pop. When those are gone, we get back on the T with the plan to hit up the Other Side Café, on Newbury Street, for some tasty craft beers. We were disappointed to be greeted with a 15-minute wait at the Other Side. We don’t have time for waiting, so Ted, Andrew, Kelli, and I head to Top of the Hub while the rest of the crew splits off for Cactus Club.