I was invited to my first ever Southside Irish parade yesterday. Now, on a side note, let me tell you that I've never seen so many parades until I moved to Chicago. Maybe it was just too damn hot in Florida to have parades, but seriously...this town is crazy about them. Back to the Southside Irish parade, I had heard it was pretty wild but I guess my expectations were way off the mark. My friends picked me up in the morning so we could have breakfast on the Southside before the parade. After breakfast, we park near 110th and Kedzie and walked about a mile to the parade route. We made it to 106th and Western and started to witness the debauchery that is the Southside irish parade. Obviously, people were out in all their green garb. If it wasn't green, it probably had some Irish alcoholic beverage name on it. Big hats that looked like pints of Guiness were my personal favorite. The scariest outfit I saw was worn by these girls: tighty whities with pieces of a green wig attached to their undies. ICK.
What was even ickier was the massive amount of girls "popping a squat" in the alley to relieve themselves of the copious amounts of alcohol consumed. I was a Girl Scout--I have totally peed in the woods before. But in someone's alley witha ton of people around? Yuck. Plus hearing your friend pee right behind you as you block them from view--yeah, no thanks.
Cops were out in full force and even though you aren't supposed to consume beer in cans or bottles in public, people were doing it anyways. Only on Bourbon street can you really get away with this. The cops on 106 and Western were confiscating cases upon cases of beer and tossing them into this big garbage truck. So sad to see good (or bad!) beer go to waste.
After the parade, we trekked it back to the car to drop off our stuff. Mind you, at least one girl in our group had to stop to relieve herself en route. We then head out to this bar/club called Bourbon Street, which I felt about 8 years too old for. By this point, I had been out and about for 8 hours and was dying to go home. But I stuck it out and danced for most of the time. We warded off icky stupid men and generally had a good time. However I was wearing cranky pants BIG TIME by the end and contemplated taking a $50 cab ride back home.
Overall, pretty fun but I'm too old for this crap. I did it once and came home comfortable with the fact that this was my 1st and very last Southside Irish Parade.
Oh--and no I did not engage in public urination! I'm a lady for God's sake LOL
