Irish tourist
Joan Morgan paid a major compliment to revelers at New York
City's St. Patrick's Day parade Monday.
''It's much more
Irish than at home,'' said Morgan, who is from the
village of Kilcoo in Northern Ireland and had snagged a
prime viewing spot across from St. Patrick's Cathedral
to watch the city's annual celebration of all things
Irish.
Firefighters,
police officers, high school and military bands, step
dancers, men in kilts, and many Irish-for-the-day snaked
along the parade route to the wail of bagpipes on a
sunny but chilly day.
''It's
fantastic,'' said Damian McKevitt, another Northern Ireland
resident who came to New York just for the parade. ''It's
Fifth Avenue; that's just huge.''
The parade
typically draws 2 million spectators and 150,000 marchers,
and even though New York boasts the largest U.S.
parade, other cities also pulled out the stops. In
Indianapolis, Mayor Greg Ballard poured green dye into
the newly cleaned downtown canal prior to that city's
parade. In Ohio, about 10,000 marchers were enlisted
for a Cleveland parade that dates to 1867. In
Columbus, the Roman Catholic bishop had asked the
Shamrock Club not to hold its parade during Holy Week, but
the group went ahead Monday. Some parades were held
Saturday; Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams marched in
Buffalo. In Ireland, half a million Dubliners and
visitors gathered five-deep to enjoy their parade, the
centerpiece of a five-day festival.
But not everyone
was celebrating in New York. Some gay and lesbian
protesters held up signs along the parade route, angered by
the parade committee's continued refusal to allow gay
and lesbian groups to march under their own banners.
And the usual large contingent of politicians was
absent this year, with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other
officials in Albany for the swearing-in of David
Paterson as New York governor after Eliot Spitzer --
implicated in a prostitution investigation -- resigned
in disgrace last week.
Just blocks from
the parade, a neighborhood near the United
Nations that was virtually shut down over the weekend
because of a deadly crane accident on Saturday
struggled to get back to normal. There are at least
half a dozen Irish bars on Second Avenue near the accident
scene, and the ones that were open were packed. Michael
Mullooly, manager of Jameson's Pub, noted that the
death toll could have been much higher if the crane
had collapsed Monday.
''If it happened
today, there would be carnage,'' he said.
But back on Fifth
Avenue, Irish eyes were smiling. Dublin resident Alan
Murray had persuaded his two sisters to come with him to the
United States to see the parade.
''We have to go
to New York for Paddy's Day because it's brilliant,''
said Murray, whose face was painted orange, white, and
green, the colors of the Irish flag.
His sister Carol,
wearing a feather boa in the same colors, agreed.
''Everyone makes more of an effort here,'' she said. (Deepti
Hajela, AP)
