The StuSie

St. Patrick's Day: Ein Rückblick

I've never been to Chicago, New York, Boston or Savannah for St. Patrick's Day, but I have spent more than a dozen on the Emerald Isle itself and I can honestly say I've never seen anything like St. Paddy's in St. Paul. Maybe the "saint" in the city's name should have tipped me off, but even knowing that St. Paul is an "Irish" city, I really had no idea how totally mental people here go on March 17th. Lissi works at the Liffey downtown and she spent 11 hours there yesterday peddling booze among the hyper-dense crushloads of revellers. Every Irish pub in the city (and there are dozens) had added capacity with enormous tents but no amount of pre-planning prepared them for the crowds that magically materialized on Friday morning. Yeah, that's right, Friday morning. Lissi said that not only was her bar full, but people actually chanted a countdown to 8:00am when alcohol sales can legally start for the day.

We spent the night at the Muddy Pig since as I mentioned, every Irish pub in town was shitpacked. The truly defining event of the day for us however, occurred en route to said bar. It's not far from our place, which is clutch, since no driving was necessary - or so we thought. With hindsight maybe it would have been a good idea. We set out on our two block trek just after 8:30pm and we didn't get more than a block before we were mugged at gunpoint. Neat, eh? Nice to know the neighborhood is thriving. Our two young assailants relieved us of about $115 in cash, but thankfully had little interest in our wallets, usw. What was remarkable about the whole thing was the calmness that pervaded the transaction. They were obviously young, although I couldn't see their faces because of their puffy jackets, pulled up sweatshirts and enormous hoods, but I did see the gun. Neither Lissi or I were particularly phased by the encounter, which I attribute to our muggers' relatively non-threatening physiques and to the amount of whiskey we'd previously consumed. Long story short, we continued to the bar where Joey was nice enough to buy us drinks and we had quite the story to tell. I reported the incident this morning and none of the officers could seem to figure out why we hadn't reported an aggravated robbery until 18 hours after it happened. I guess they don't understand how seriously people take their St. Paddy's partying in St. Paul.

On a separate note, I was semi-amused to see that Sinn Fein figurehead Gerry Adams didn't make it to a talk he was supposed to make yesterday in Buffalo, NY because he was detained when his name showed up on a "secondary screening" list at the airport. Mr. Adams, while acknowledging the "need for vigilance," felt that "Sinn Fein members are the victims of an unacceptable and unfair administrative practice." Interesting how the leader of the political wing of a terrorist organization feels unfairly targeted by anti-terrorist security measures. He is pretty notorious for his Gerry-centric viewpoints I suppose.

I don't really have anything worth saying about Taoiseach Bertie Ahern's annual St. Patrick's Day visit to the White House, but I really wanted to include the picture of him giving Bush a pot of shamrocks. Between Bertie and Gerry, it seems that everyone who's anyone in Ireland ends up in Washington for St. Paddy's. Too bad that's the only day of the year Bush has any time for Irish politics, but judging from the look on his face, I'm guessing the discussion doesn't get much further than green beer.

posted by Der Staubsauger @ 19:27