My Experience at Buffalo’s Large St. Patrick’s Day Parade!
Why do many Buffalonians go out in the freezing cold to watch a bunch of drunk people wearing green walk down the street? Because it’s tradition.
Despite growing up in Buffalo, surrounded by Irish
culture, I had never really paid attention to any of it because I'm not Irish. This
year in part because of the turn my blog has taken and because of the History
of Buffalo class I’m taking I decided to start paying attention. My best
friend Anne and her family are American-Irish who are proud of their past. They
go to the large Delaware Avenue St. Patrick's Day parade every year and they
let me tag along.
I have never seen so many people wearing so many
different shades of green. They wore green pants, shirts, hoodies, coats, scarves,
headbands, shoes and hats! So many Irish hats! I saw green caps, warm hats,
hats with shamrocks, with the flag, with a Guinness logo, cowboy hats, golf
hats, and so many top hats, some were black, some were green, lots had
buckles, many had red beards attached! Hats seemed to be the most common way of
expressing oneself at the parade. I saw a lot of plaid and at least 50 men
wearing kilts on the sidelines. I saw one man dressed up as a bottle of Guinness
and I could also tell that he had had a few himself by the time I saw him.
Many people participating in the parade were dressed
up as well. Many members of the bands wore kilts; some of the marchers wore
long black peacoats with top hats, sashes and canes. There were several troops
of traditional Irish dancers and a couple breeds of Irish dogs marching as
well. I counted at least 6 people dressed up as St. Patrick. There were a few
leprechauns ranging in age from 10 to 50, and bagpipes and traditional Irish
dancers galore! A lot of the Delaware Avenue Parade seemed very stereotypically
Irish to me though, from the multiple pots of gold and the giant box of lucky
charms.
I figure that if I were to go to a St Patrick's Day
parade in another city I would see all of that, too. However, our parade is
different for many reasons. As the parade went on I noticed that a lot of the
marchers were from unions. There were the iron workers, the craft workers, the heat
and frost insulators, the sheet metal workers, and more. A sign on one truck
said "keep the middle class unionized." Not long after a woman behind
me said that it was "nice to see the unions out." It seemed
appropriate that the unions were out celebrating an Irish holiday, especially
when one considered that when the Irish first came to Buffalo in the early
1800s there would have been no way they could have unionized. Several local celebrities
were also marching, including the major newscasters, Mayor Byron Brown, and Congressman
Brian Higgins.
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| Anne and I during the Parade! (I am in fact wearing green underneath all those warm clothes.) |
Another thing that made our parade a Buffalo parade
is that every truck honked out the ever familiar “Let's Go Buffalo” cheer and
that every single person shouted it back at the top of their lungs. Personally,
I don't think that the parade celebrated St. Patrick's Day so much as it
celebrated the Irish's history in Buffalo. I overheard one man say that he “honestly
thinks that the Parade is the best part of Buffalo!”
I can see now why many Buffalonians, Irish or not,
go out every year to the Parade. Everyone is Irish in Buffalo during St.
Patrick’s Day weekend!
If you would like to celebrate St. Patrick's Day in Buffalo one year, you can check out this parade on the Sunday before March 17th, or the smaller, more historical parade in the Irish First Ward on that Saturday. You can also check out the Irish Center on Abbott Road, or hit up one of the many Irish pubs that will no doubt be serving Corned Beef and Cabbage that weekend.
~Laura!
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