Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day, and it was nutty around here… we walked around Savannah with half a million drunks in town. Heck, people had already setup chairs and started drinking with their shirts off the day before! St. Patrick’s Day itself started out well enough, with a fun little parade making its way through the historic district of downtown Savannah. Even though the parade was at 11am, some people were already drunk. One woman standing (a term I use loosely here) in front of us was stumbling around and falling on people… quite a fun show.
I’d have to say some of the most interesting characters of the St. Patrick’s Day event are the religious nut-jobs. These people walk around all day with crazy fire and brimstone signs, trying to scare people into thinking the way they do. You really have to click on these pix to get the full size images… they are priceless. I wonder how they would have reacted if they knew J and I had RFID implants.
It really is interesting to see an entire city filled up with people from everywhere but Savannah. Apparently the whole “Being Irish” thing is a really big deal. Families from other states stake out sections of city squares along the parade route years ahead of time.
Even a large part of the of the parade itself is made up of people from somewhere else. A large number of people and parade participants were from New York… fire fighters… police officers… heck, even the New York Transit (MTA) had a parade float. I’m also amazed at how all these organizations have a “pipes and drums” marching band. I mean, do taxpayers really need to pay for their firemen to play bagpipes in a marching band? I’m not saying they weren’t any good… they could play and march with the best of ’em, but it struck me as kind of odd that there were so many public servants in marching bands.
The best thing I’d seen in the whole parade were the “Second Time Arounders” or “Rounders” as they are known locally. The ‘Rounders is an old folks marching band… and I have to say, they were one of the best bands out there. The troupe is huge too… there were more ’rounders than 3 high school marching bands combined. They played their marching music really well too.
The flag carriers and baton twirlers weren’t all that much to look at, but they got the job done. It’s good to see old people still able to move… such a contrast from the old folks you see in those electric wheelchair commercials. It gives me hope for when I get to be that age.
Of course, its not a St. Patrick’s Day parade without a paper mache St. Patrick and crazy, oddly tall Leprechauns (you can’t see it in the picture, but this guy was like 7 feet tall… you couldn’t find a short dude for this ?).
Sometimes you see odd shit in a parade and think to yourself “wtf is that in there for?”… I had exactly one of those moments when I saw “The Brawny Man” make his way past my mug. I mean, I could understand it if he actually had on a sanitation suit and carried around rolls of Brawny to help clean up the place after.
Here’s the WSAV news team that Jennifer and I have grown accustomed to making fun of. The weather guy in particular is oddly stiff when he’s giving us weather reports. Every time we see him on the telly, J and I break out into our best robot couch dances… which usually involves just stiff hands and arms moving in staccato fashion as he delivers the weather report. Just in case you’re wondering which one is the weather guy in the photo, oddly enough he’s the black guy wearing the sports jersey. You’d think the sports guy would be wearing the jersey.
After the parade, we returned home for a much needed nap. Since arriving in Savannah, our sleep schedule has never quite settled down. For the past few days though, we’ve been going to bed at like 5am. I just woke up at 3pm today, with no chance of hitting the sack again before at least 3am. Normally it’s kind of a pain to wake up so late because you don’t have much daylight left, even with the new Daylight Savings Time adjustment. However, last night this worked in our favor… well it would have if we were big drinkers/partiers. Refreshed from our nap, we were ready to take on the night.
Of course, River Street was transformed into an organic, cataclysmic mass of slovenly tourists. Of course, the nut-jobs where here too. I kind of wanted to wait around to see how many confrontations the guy holding this sign would get into with drunken teens hell bent (no pun intended) on starting a fight, but I didn’t want to abandon the great progress I was making through the maze of motionless people-turned-pylons laid out before me.
Another reason I didn’t want to stop was I heard that Verizon has a big screen set up that people could see their text messages on. People could also email mobile phone pix in and have them displayed. Upon seeing it, I wondered about how much it cost to get a big-ass screen like that setup for a day, and if txtGroups will ever provide that kind of service for an event.
Having witnessed the spectacle of St. Patrick’s Day in Savannah and not being a drinker, I started to get board. I randomly looked down and decided to take a picture of what lay at my feet, which correctly represents what every square foot of river street looked like last night. Oddly enough, after that picture was taken, I told J I was losing interest in people watching and starting to just look around for valuables lost in the street trash. Posting this picture now, I can clearly see a pair of glasses in the upper right-hand corner of the photo.
We walked around a bit more and I took a picture of Jennifer in front of a cool fountain on the waterfront that I’ve never seen before. Even though we don’t really drink and we’re not out to score with randoms in dirty bar bathrooms, we did have our own fun.
Ultimately though, we returned home to drink hot cocoa and watch a movie, which was much more entertaining than bobbing and weaving through an endless sea of drunk dudes and party trash.
And you stepped in pukey. Ew.