God, not another St. Patricks Day

Happy St. Patricks Day

I hate St. Patrick's Day.

The idea of wading through drunk teenagers from Long Island does not warm my heart, nor do the legions of drunk cops. That's right, drunk as fuck police officers, who tie one on before, during and after the parade. At least the firefighters don't carry guns, they may be just as drunk, but they don't carry guns. But since the FDNY brass, in a conserted attempt by the Bloomberg Administration to alienate EVERY union worker in New York, has banned the wearing of green berets for officers in uniform. So they'll just stand around, pissed, boo the mayor, and then head out to the bars.

God, St. Patrick's day is just ugly. Forget the green beer, which is bad enough, but the generally lax rules for booze sales for the under 21 set. Bodegas don't check ID's, so the kids run around drunk and punching each other until the cops break it up.

In the bad old days before PC Bob McGuire stopped it, people would do shit like take kegs to Central Park and just drink. He just started arresting people for it in the early 80's. When I worked at the Central Branch of the public library, the front steps were covered in a sea of broken glass bottles. Which ended the worst antics. People now just pre-drink, or get drunk at 8AM. I wish it was only teenagers. It isn't.

How bad does it get? Well, I once saw a guy drinking from his shoe outside of McSoreley's. They were piss drunk at 10 AM. While the TV shows the nice parade of old folks and kids, the teenagers and young adults treat this like Marti Gras with more booze and less fun.

What offends me most is that people come in from the Island and shit on the city like it's their personal playground. They roll in drunk, and then it's playtime. The adults cram into every bar and drink like they just came back from Iraq.

And the fights. A couple of years ago, someone was killed in a street fight, but usually, it's just drunk teenagers swinging on each other. But you think that people would freak out? No. They only do that for the Puerto Rican day parade, which, according to the cops, sucks even worse, because it's warm and people are just as drunk and the women wear skimpy clothes. Then the boards and fences come up. But for the Irish, people pretend that it isn't a violent, booze filled brawl fest.

And the modern parades are calm affairs to the crap which used to happen on the Bowery.

In Luc Sante's Low Life, he describes the St. Paddy's day of old, which used to start with crowds of Orangemen and Feinians brawling on the streets. The Feinians (Catholics) would start their parade, and the Orangemen would come wading in, swinging. Of course, this would be repeated on June 12th, Orange day. But in 19th Century New York, St, Paddy's day would always climax in a riot.

It's nice to see how traditions change. Since there are no Irish protestants, that is gone. But for some reason, the drunken brawls continue. Not at the same scale, but it happens. However, today is not a good day to wear orange. Really not good.

I wish they would move the parade to Rockville Center so we can piss on their streets and overrun their bars.

posted by Steve @ 10:47:00 AM