Nothing bad about the Irish will be said here, but their big holiday could be done without. St. Patrick's Day could be this nice demure little holiday where people of Irish descent perhaps wear a little pin on their lapel or send a lovely card out to their friends.
But no. This is New York. Yoo-neek Noo Yawk. Everything is oversize, including badges of ethnic identity. Growing up in Indiana, there were two choices: you were blonde-haired and blue-eyed or you were "other". Moving to New York and confronted with the repeated question, "What's your background?" spurred multiple requests to my parents who in turn had to call other relatives to piece our little tree together. (German/English/Norweigan/Native American and absolutlely no Irish, by the way.)
All of which is to say that these Ethnifests ring hollow for me. Even Oktoberfest, which is, as the name implies, a harvest festival thrown in October, is perverted here into some odd German Pride thang. Why it is that the Irish Pride Parade is allowed to shut down a huge swath of traffic is beyond me. What can be told is why you should not even bother going to work on Saint Patrick's Day. And by told, I mean big graphic pictures of people, places and things that just completely turn my stomach regarding #@$#ing Saint Patrick's Day.
