Mifflin Street Block Party attracts some 20,000 people to Wisconsin’s Madison campus every year, some of them Northwestern students likely intrigued by the idea of drinking outside. With Dillo Day just around the corner, I decided to visit the event in the pursuit of dedicated journalism so that I could inform you, dear reader, about how to party like a state schooler. No need to thank me.

I stayed at a friend’s apartment and the day began at 8 a.m. with his roommates blasting techno out the window. The streets crawled with groups of people, most of them carrying boxes of alcohol to their pregames. The air crackled with the combined shouts of everybody’s parties, a dull moan that was present throughout the day and most of the night. I was told that drinking outside is not allowed until 11 a.m., and then, only on Mifflin Street. We spent a few hours getting breakfast and beginning the party process. A few gin-and-gingers later, we got a solid buzz going and packed up a couple of backpacks with some frosty Keystone Lights. (Although there was beer for purchase on the street, due to the volume of what we were about to consume, carrying our own alcohol was the popular economic strategy for the Block Party.)

Once outside, we joined the steady stream of drunken people flocking to Mifflin Street. To get an idea of the scope of this event, just imagine all Dillo Day off-campus partying happening at the same time out in the open on Hamlin Street, double the amount of attendees, and add a fried cheese curd stand. You’re allowed to drink on the street itself so long as you have a wristband, which we procure immediately. Underage kids have to keep on the lawns, the suckers.

Beers in hand, we walked the length of the street, and though I tried to note all the silliness, there was just too much of it to remember. A guy with a megaphone shouted about pro-marijuana legislation. He was rivaled by a nearby guy who just kind of shouted about anything. One house had a two-story beer bong going on which people ran up to like drunken hamsters to their water bottle. A gaggle of dudes wore bright yellow shirts that simply said “Show Me Your Tits.” One guy chugged directly from a pitcher in the middle of the street. At the end of the street was a DJ playing dubstep and his crowd of people dutifully grinding to it. At noon, he was replaced by a band I can only describe as “90’s Alternative”. The crowd somehow grinded to that as well. A homeless guy sat on the sidewalk with a case of Steel Reserve asking for change. It must have been a profitable day for him.

Typically you only get into a house if you know someone or if you pay or something. I don’t know, because we just kind of walked right in, ignoring all the baffled looks, and went up to the second-floor balcony. From this vantage point we can take in all the ridiculousness of the day. Below us on the streets was a churning sea of hammered people milling about. They crowded on the edges and spun in the middle and stumbled from one place to another without any real goal in mind except to get trashed. Every so often we shouted to them, hollering about bl*j**s without a care in the world. We were greeted with the same response every time – a quick “Woo!” with hands in the air from the many dozens of people who heard.

There isn’t much else to mention. You go out and get stupid drunk and get into shenanigans. Reflecting on the day, I realize that a party of this size and scope will never happen at Northwestern. Despite Dillo Day’s reputation as “the one day we party like a state school” (which, if you couldn’t tell from the description above, is false), the cloak-and-dagger approach to drinking and Evanston residents’ general distaste for unruliness prevents it from being much more than a concert that drunk people attend. Earlier this year Evanston freaked out about some trash in a fenced-in backyard. They’d certainly object to the mountains of empty cans that line the street at Mifflin. Also, I’m sure the administration wouldn’t be proud of an event that lead to 160 arrests and two stabbings. But who knows what Dillo Day may become? Mifflin started as, of all things, a Vietnam protest, so anything can happen.

Tom Hayden is a Weinberg senior. He can be reached at [email protected].