It was the first weekend of a new semester downtown, yet nothing was different: On the west side a lost freshman desperately clutched her iPhone as she pulled up a map and on the east side a girl was crying over her torn tights.

Holly Young

The former was spotted outside Trappeze, worriedly thumbing through streets on Google maps – probably wondering why she couldn’t find Bourbon Street.

While I can’t be certain she was a freshman by these facts, she certainly didn’t look 21 and was clearly new to town.

Inside the pub, however, it was the same familiar crowd of beer geeks and grad students I’ve come to know and love.

But it soon came time for cheaper beers and I made my way with friends over to Copper Creek, a happy medium between east and west.

The normally behaved crowd was somewhat drunker tonight it seemed though, as a fishnet-clad ass waved in my face from the opposite booth and beer dripped to the floor from a recent spill.

I couldn’t bring myself to find out why she was bent over the table with her skirt hiked up because it would have meant facing bare cheeks head-on — or should I say “butt-on”?

Clearly it was time to move on, and nowhere seemed better than Al’s Beef. And even there the patrons were too drunk: a girl forced my full bladder to suffer as she threw up in the bathroom for several minutes.

It appeared to be a successful night of celebrating the end of the first week of classes for everyone, but for me it was time for bed.

As I waited for a cab outside the restaurant, I got to witness yet another drunk girl mishap. An unfortunate stumble led to a fall dramatically executed through a barrel roll.

She was quickly helped up, where she discovered her scraped knee was bleeding through her tights. It wasn’t the blood she was worried about though, it was the tights. They had put her out $8 earlier that day, she said, and she was not happy about it.

The cab pulled up and I was happy to be leaving the drunken mess that was downtown. I wasn’t prepared, however, for the world’s craziest cabby, who would take us on an hour-long journey around Athens.

We flew down Milledge and then Macon Highway and then back to east side. Unfortunately, I was going to west side and had to wait through a few more drop-offs until it was my turn.

We finally arrived sometime after 3, and it wasn’t a moment too soon, coming after an up-and-down-and-up night. Athens has some serious drinking problems, but I have to admit: It’s good to be back.