North Texas Daily

Edward Balusek // Staff Photographer

For most Fry Street frequenters, 9 p.m. on Tuesday night at Lucky Lou’s is a busy night. Crowds of hundreds gather to buy a $3 pint of beer poured in a creatively decorated glass, which they get to keep as a souvenir. However, last night was a special Pint Night that only happens twice a year.

Local screen printing company Pan Ector Industries and Lucky Lou’s teamed up for the fourth edition of Pints & Prints Night. Instead of keeping your pint glass, you were given a ticket for a free T-shirt if you ordered any of the 13 Texas beers on draft.

“The Pan Ector boys are the best in town,” Lucky Lou’s owner Lou Delaney said. “These guys have such a high skill level that what they do just comes out perfect.”

Delaney also said the reason he likes them so much, besides their immense creative skill, is because “they’re all generally good dudes who are very fair and really nice.”

Thirsty patrons began to line up around 8:20 p.m. to get their highly touted T-shirts. And as the clock tick-tocked closer to 9 p.m., the line grew until it filled up the inside bar, went out the door, across the patio, out the patio gate and around the corner toward Riprock’s. The bar looked like an overflowing sardine can.

“[Lou] knew that our live set up is always a lot of fun and drew a crowd, so we just figured this would be another fun variation on your traditional Pint Night,” Pan Ector’s co-owner and creative director Nick Webber said.

Once the tickets were handed out it was a mad dash, or rather, an awkward slow dance performed by a contortionist with beer in hand, to get past the herd of people out to the Pan Ector booth. While at the booth, customers could choose a tank top, baseball-style T-shirt (3/4 sleeve) or regular T-shirt to have a one-of-a-kind Lucky Lou’s Pint Night design printed on it.

This first 250 people received tickets and watched Pan Ector employees make their shirt on portable screen printing equipment.

“The first year we did 150 shirts and it was such a hit and such a wild event that we kept upping it over the years,” Webber said.

Pan Ector also allowed a small creative role for the customer by offering a plethora of colors for shirts and ink, making each shirt a custom-made commodity.

Webber said the next Pints & Prints Night will be sometime between late September and early October. Keep a lookout on Pan Ector’s and Lucky Lou’s Facebook pages for updates on an exact date and future T-shirt design.

Lucky Lou’s is approaching its sixth year of Pint Nights and it continues to grow ever popular. To start your own collection of unique pint-sized glassware and custom t-shirts, come to Lou’s on Tuesday nights roughly 30 minutes before 9 p.m. with $3.

Feature image: More than 100 people fill the patio of Lucky Lou’s on Pints and Prints Night. Pan Ector set up a mobile screen printing shop in order to make T-shirts for patrons. Photo by Edward Balusek, Staff Photographer.