St. Pat, this time for real
Yah, after a quiet hour or two at the hotel, it was time to venture out and see what the famed St. Patrick’s Day really holds.
The T is surprisingly quiet - quite unlike Mayday back home, though a lot of the people are wearing green.
Upon reaching downtown the party has certainly started. The homeboys near the station are wearing ethnically appropriate, but still green clothing: Celtics jerseys or shirts by fubu and the like. However, moving towards the Quincy Market, the true partiers become visible. Pretty much everybody has decked on more and more green. Shirts, hats, jackets, whatever. Some adventurous individuals are wearing kilts, which is probably not a good idea when the temperature has decreased from the no-so-balmy heights of the noon. And especially since the lines in front of any quasi-irish bar are huge. Roisin Dubh, McNally’s sport lines that curve around corners and seem not to be moving at all.
Cruising around the area, I settle down in front of Ned Devine’s. Where the line is a little bit shorter. But slow. Very slow. During the twenty-odd minutes of waiting something like ten people get in, and the line moves less than twenty feet. No good. I retreat to Cheers, already visited during the day, where a semblance of an irish celebration is ongoing.
But not a very good semblance. They run out of Guinness immediately. Everything is sold in plastic cups. And music is loud, very loud. And very non-irish. Unless Peppers and Snoop Dogg have lately been granted citizenship without me noticing. Clearly I’m not the only one with culture shock, in a neighboring table a midwestern couple wipes barbecue sauce off chicken fingers with napkins before devouring them. NCAA basketball, ubiquitous during the whole week keeps playing on all screens in the bar. Looks and feels chaotic, but really isn’t, the lines work and people remain reasonably polite well into the night. Me? Cut my losses before midnight and hopped on a red train back towards Harvard Square.
Quick clue: What not to wear on St. Patrick’s Day:
- Anything orange (irish-irish rivalry).
- Anything with Yankees insignia (boston-new york rivalry).
Nope. Wore neither, and only a very few brave individuals wore the latter, none the former. Had a green t-shirt (with spindly yellow Dali-elephants on it).
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