On the Avenue

It doesn't matter how old I get, every year when marching season rolls around I start to get antsy. I can't even remember how many years I spent behind a barricade on 86th street watching the parade -- that is until the parade stopped going down 86th street to 3rd Avenue. It was my hereditary stomping ground -- Mom grew up on 90th street and Dad on 89th. One of the last years I went in to see the parade (I think it must have been 2000) I spent the afternoon with my mother and she was STILL running into old timers she knew from "the neighborhood" that she had left in 1962! We spent the evening in one of Yorkville's oldest best bars -- The Hiedelberg! It's true that everyone...and every place...is Irish on St. Patrick's Day in NYC.

I pretty sure I managed to make it to 15 straight parades beginning somewhere around 1983. I can't remember exactly. I can't remember the bars but do know I spent a few in Fitzpatrick's (now gone) and the Kinsale Tavern (now horribly sportsbarred...ick). I think I wound up in a Mexican restaurant on the Westside one year with my friend Anna from Dublin.

I can't handle the booze anymore, I can't handle the crowds anymore, I can't handle the pseudo-Irish crap like green beer, crappy music, and nasty "Fuck Me I'm Irish t-shirts" on nasty little bastards from Massapequa anymore. I can't handle waiting on line for three hours for a bathroom, and I can't handle the drunk train home anymore.

But I still get antsy and want to go just a little nuts every March 17th.