No one would call Sacramento a party town, exactly, but Sacramentans determined to party hearty have found a number of intriguing ways to drink without appearing to just be getting drunk.

You want proof?  Well, besides getting the city to close down entire central city blocks, as deVere's Irish Pub did on St. Patrick's Day, or indulging in the holiday cheer pub crawl known as Santacon (in which every participant must show up in red and white Santa drag), or the traditional Thanksgiving Day Appetite Enhancement Ride, there is a new (to me) way to drink and play at the same time: Pub Golf.

Pub Golf is a combination of treasure hunt and pub crawl, with a seriously tongue-in-cheek nod to the timelessly lame pastel color palate of leisure golf.  The treasure are, yes, drinks. Lots of drinks.

Pub Golf is a pretty good way to spread your drinking dollars out over a number of establishments eager to serve whatever kooky drink you can come up with - and perhaps pace your drinking, since you will soon be walking to the next establishment. Yes, walking, which keeps drunks out of cars and on the sidewalk, where they belong.

Saturday afternoon's Pub Golf tournament drew a couple of dozen "players," festooned in pink, yellow and baby blue, as well as all manner of just-wrong argyles, as the players "drank through" midtown from deVere's to Zocalo, on through The Depot and Lounge on 20, all the way through nine bars ("holes") ending at the Pine Cove. Turns out you could get a bit of exercise at this as well.

"Playing" Pub Golf is easy: At each bar on the scorecard, a specific drink is listed, and each player (and his or her partner) needs to drink said drink, and do it in front of other players so that the score is counted and registered on a scorecard.  Most "holes" were par 1, but a couple were par 2 - that is, two drinks - which meant that by the end of a nine-hole round each participant would have consumed 14 drinks. Pro drinking by any score.

Some drinks are simple - a shot of tequila or a "vodka drink" or a Guinness - others are a bit more challenging or at least exotic: a caipirinha at Celestin's, a Car Bomb at deVere's or a Mind Eraser at the Limelight.

When we caught the players they were just leaving Celestin's, the third of nine "holes" and participants were still keeping score and behaving acceptably, aside from the clothes. This was not expected to last.