Thanking My Lucky Clovers I Made It Out of Southie Alive Sober

For a city that prides itself on it's Irish heritage, the Southie parade sure did suck. Thousands of people crushed into the train, alighting in the dangerously over-crowded Broadway station to gusts of bitterly strong wind and equally bitter gusts of beer breath. But even with the tumult, I was absurdly excited. I turned giddily to Chris; "This is going to be so awesome- I didn't know so many people came down here for the parade! Why have I never done this before?"

We quickly discovered the answer to that question.

While I've always vaguely understood that when people call themselves "Irish" they may as well just say "Alcoholic" (i.e.: "Oh, my family? Well I'm German and Italian on my mother's side, Alcoholic and Dutch on my father's), the euphemism became much more clear in my mind once we got above ground and saw the festivities that were going down. It quickly killed my naive excitement from the train station: what amounted to gas station attendants hocking $5.00 Southie t-shirts, high school kids in gothwear with hair dyed electric green drinking lime flavored Mad Dog 20/20 straight out of the bottle, college girls who used the holiday as an excuse to dress slutty and then loosely interpret their idea of St. Patrick with a green boa, a woman who tried to lay a blanket out on the street so she could get a good view (subsequently sitting in a large puddle of melting snow), authentic old Irish dudes dozing in rockers with blankets and pipes, and a sea of Red Sox hats covering frat boy and construction worker heads alike. We also saw lots and lots of puke.

That's not to say we didn't have fun! Fortunately for us, my friend Kelli hosted a party at her Southie digs and we had a third floor view of the parade, which was close enough to see that we were very lucky not to be down on the street. Right before it started I asked one of the girls what her favorite part of the parade was. She kind of made a face, adding: "Well, I personally like when the Unions come through. At least they have banners."

Ha ha, I laughed! What about the giant balloons and the floats and the brass bands? She just kind of snickered and went back to eating lime Jell-O shots like Bill Cosby himself had bought them for her. Oh, if only I had heeded those early warning signs and got myself smashed before everything went wrong the parade started!

And then, without fanfare, it began. I won't mince words here. The "parade" consisted of clusters of children walking with clover antennae, a few ragtag baton twirlers, a couple of men in kilts, one large Elmo, and a horde of Storm Troopers. Oh yes, and the Unions. All kinds of Unions, huddled in the back old pickup trucks waving frozen banners.

All in all, much of the party consisted of making fun of the parade and drinking a few token bottles of Guinness, which was A-OK by me. Thanks to Kelli, our trip to Southie did not end in getting puked on or screamed at and was, in fact, a great time. Her place is lovely, her friends were fun, and bonus: we have video footage of a couple of Boston dudes doing the ATM Dance.

I'd also like to thank Southie for showing me that all it takes to have a party in Boston that everyone is sure to attend is Bud Light in Solo cups and the promise of girls wearing green.