Maryland Bar-Goers Flock to Seafood Pub in Giant Inner Tubes, Coming Soon

Now, this is what we call American ingenuity -- giant inflatable inner tubes on wheels so people can safely return to bars and properly distance themselves ... hopefully sooner than later.

This spectacle was recently shot at a seafood joint called Fish Tales in Ocean City, MD, and they were demonstrating this nifty new contraption they're planning to use (possibly en masse) once they can go back to dine-in services, with tweaked 'rona guidelines in place.

It's exactly what it looks like here on video -- patrons would come in with these massive apparatuses around them ... and they'd be able to mingle and do their thing without the staff having to hover and enforce social distancing, 'cause these tubes are 6 feet wide.

They're called Bumper Tables, and Fish Tales owner Donna Harman tells us she's already bought up 10 of them, which she plans to roll out once she's allowed to. She says she'll probably let people use these in the parking lot -- it'd be kinda tight inside -- and estimates she can safely fit 40 to 50 of them at a time in that space, so she'll probably buy more.

As for how these even came about ... they're actually a new invention manufactured by a company called Revolution Event, which is run by Erin Cermak. Cermak says she and her partners whipped these babies up from scratch, adding they're all custom-made and in direct response to the pandemic. It's a neat idea, and apparently others think so too -- Cermaks tells us she's getting calls from tons of businesses, including a pro sports league.