were you wearing green

Briton shrugged when I reminded him to wear green. "My coat is green mom. I'm a duck, I always have green on. I'm good." Evelyn, however, went through her drawers looking for everything that has any green in it and put together a, shall we say, colorful, outfit. Complete with pom poms. Because it's not St. Patrick's Day without pom poms.
The parade was different than I expected. Having witnessed two different St. Patrick's Day parades in Dublin, which were just about the weirdest public events I've ever been too, barring only the Oregon Country Fair, this was a bit more sedate. The Dublin celebrations actually have a lot in common with the Country Fair. If you've been, you know what I mean. If you haven't, well, I'm not sure I could adequately explain it to you.

Honestly, the New York version felt more like a celebration of being Irish. The Irish version was a little like someone from Rio did the planning. For example. Most of the parade here in New York consisted of either pipers, high school bands, high school bands of pipers, and people in uniform. Like this guy.
Both Dublin parades featured things like this.
It may have changed in the five years since we've been. But I never really figured out what a crazy spider thing had to do with St. Patrick's Day.

The Dublin version of the celebration as a whole, though, was more fun. A week of activities - music, treasures hunts, giant inflatable grown up bouncy castles down by the river (with psychedelic colors and music inside). Where as here it was clear that the main objective of most revelers was to get sloshed on as much beer as possible. And not even good beer. Putting Bud Light in a green bottle does not make it Irish. Belch.

My favorite moment of the day (other than getting to go watch Alan Rickman be brilliantly lecherous and having my first Irish Coffee, of course) had to be when a woman came tearing through the crowd demanding to be allowed to cross the street to her apartment on the other side of 5th Avenue. "What is this?" she kept asking (not nicely). I felt like a real New Yorker as I joined in with my parade watching neighbors in yelling "Get outta here!" Because hello? It's St. Patrick's Day. Largest St. Patrick's Day Parade in the world? Been marching down 5th avenue for 150 years? "Why is there a Parade today?" is probably not the best thing to be screaming while trying to get people dressed in green (and probably a little drunk already) to let you through to your swanky apartment. Am I right or am I right?