GREEN

There is a huge parade downtown on the Saturday before the official St. Patrick’s Day. I sometimes wonder why just the Irish, since we have sizable German, Italian, Jewish and many other populations. (There is a vibrant African-American parade later in the spring.)  There are roots far back in U.S. history, but it really got going in 19th Century New York, arising from massive immigration and reactionary discrimination.  https://tinyurl.com/5n7j59ev                 

We will arrive in Ireland in a month,  but not until after an international detour in the opposite direction.

JEEPS, BEER, SHAMROCKS AND DUCKS

One group in the St. Patrick's Day parade was a fleet of Jeeps in odd paint jobs with a row of small rubber ducks at the bottom of the windshield. The overall effect was a rolling party with plenty of CO2 emissions.

It got cold again here this week. Travel days today and tomorrow. By Wednesday afternoon we will be in some serious heat at what has become our home from home..                  

GETTING A HEAD START

I've been shooting our St. Patrick's Day for years and have often mentioned the amount of alcohol sloshing around ante meridian. More than once, I've noted that St. Louis loves an excuse to drink in public. In the hi res version of this pic, you can see that the bottles between the two men are vodka and Bloody Mary mix. Reminds me of a picture I took at the parade 15 years ago (see below).

I accidentally shot this picture at f 9, probably my arthritic fingers knocking the aperture ring on the lens. The background was much too busy so I tried Photoshop's new Blur Background tool. I think I overdid it.

                     

HOT COP

The St. Louis motorcycle police lead every parade around this town. It must be a fun break from their usual work. Always on black Harley Davidsons with black helmets, black leather jackets and perfectly polished black boots. 

One of my very few photographic claims to fame is that I was once asked to use a photo of a line of SLPD motorcycle cops for the catalog of a show at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. The show was about the art of modern fashion and they wanted to use my picture in a section about motorcycle jackets. https://tinyurl.com/2p8b6pf7 Of course, they said they couldn't pay anything but offered me a couple of tickets and a copy of the catalog if I happened to show up during the run. I did. The contact person who said she would be there wasn't. I had to show the email exchange to a manager to get my meager compensation, but I got my five minutes of fame.             

IT WOULD BE HARD

A float in the St. Patrick's Day parade. We visited Northern Ireland once, flying into Dublin and driving north to Belfast. Although peace had long been restored by that time, I will never forget the violent Unionist graffiti on walls near our hotel. It was deeply unsettling. After driving around the North some more, the only way we could tell that we had returned to the Republic was that the speed limit signs changed from miles to kilometers per hour.                

IRONY, OR JUST DUMB?

Some of the crowd along Friday's St. Patrick's Day parade route. The colors are somewhat similar but do they realize they are waving an Italian, not an Irish flag?                  

HEY, IT'S COUSIN KEITH!

I mentioned that the neighborhood where yesterday's St. Pat's parade was held is called Dogtown. It is a traditionally Irish area. According to Wikipedia, Dogtown got its name as a small mining community in the mid-1800s. There was a concentration of small clay and coal mines in the area during that time, and the term "Dogtown" was widely used in the 1800s by miners to describe a group of small shelters around mines. 

So I was standing along the route when this huge pick up truck rolled by. The sign on the door caught my attention. Don't know Keith and the position, of course, is honorary but maybe our tribe is coming up in the world.

By the way, even by American standards, this is one of the biggest pick ups you will ever see. You can just notice the manufacturer's sticker in the back window. The list price is seventy - eight - thousand - dollars and it gets 15 miles per gallon. That's 6.4 kilometers per liter. The good that money could have done...      

THE LUCK OF THE IRISH

St. Patrick's Day is a big deal in a lot of the US. It certainly is here. We have two parades, a big municipal one on the Saturday before the event and a smaller, somehow more genuine one in one of our neighborhoods (called Dogtown - really) on the date itself. I hope to shoot some of it.

But today has more significance in our household. On March 17, 1973, a broke law student from New York and a young nurse from Kansas found themselves holding glasses of green beer, pushed into a corner of a bar near St. Louis University and awkwardly gazing at each other. He asked if she would like to play pinball. She had no idea what it was about. They agreed to meet for a beer after she got off work the next day. After a little while she said she had to go, having made plans to clean her fish tanks. He said he would help! OMG, she had a car, a job, an apartment, two fish tanks and two spice racks! After that she couldn't get rid of him. And that's how Mrs. C and I met 50 years ago today. Pretty lucky.                 

C'mon, Smile.

Over to our other, smaller St. Patrick's Day parade. What other city has the guts to call a nice residential neighborhood Dogtown? It is always held there on March 17th so it was crowded on a sunny Sunday. 

It used to be more fun. People were a little bit naughty, doing whatever alcohol in the street does to you. Now there are more fences, more security, more rules. Even this chap in his green jacket and bowler hat, beer in hand, seems to have had the joy sucked out of him.     

Shriners

HEY, TODAY IS STL DPB'S 12TH ANNIVERSARY 

More from the St. Patrick's Day parades. I don't completely get Shriners, and they are probably fine with that. A little mysterious, after all.             

Shriners are an offshoot of the Masons. I looked it up once but I don't remember the differences. We see them at public events zipping around in these little yellow trick cars, making noise on customized Harleys and wearing fezzes. Their themes and nomenclature are mostly Arabic but, if I recall correctly, the fez is Turkish and was in common use until banned by Atatürk in the early 20th Century. 

They look kind of silly but they they do good work. The group has a chain of hospitals providing free medical care for children with complex orthopedic problems. There is one in our city. That's wonderful.        

 

Here Comes The King

Oops. I'm a bit uncomfortable some days and I'm prone to overlook things. Left my briefcase with my laptop inside sitting on the garage floor behind my car this morning. I was going to upload this as soon as I got to the office. Well, try again.

These are the Budweiser Clydesdale horses, universally known in the US and frequently seen in St. Louis. They pull an old beer wagon to the music of a Bud ad jingle called "Here Comes The King," as in king of beers. Personally, I think Budweiser is more of the handyman or janitor of beers. There is so much more that is so much more interesting.                   

Hoops Time

It's time for our college basketball playoffs to start. In fact, I think the first games are right about now. The tournament has 64 teams in a single elimination format. My school, St. Louis University, usually has a so-so team but they made into the big event this year. Wonder how long they will last. 

Or you could do other hoops. The one in this picture looks like a hula hoop to me but the color and motion are all that count.

      

Madeleine Monday

After the big parade on Saturday we stopped for lunch at a favorite place, Fountain on Locust. It is a spectacular ice cream parlor with a full bar. Where else can you go to get an ice cream martini? They also have a good selection of soups, salads and sandwiches if you need something to block the lipids and ethanol entering your blood supply too quickly.

No sooner had we walked in than Ellie found her kindergarten classmate, Michael. They jumped up and down and danced in the aisle without even having a sugar burst in them yet. Our family decided to sit on the other side of the room so we could eat our lunch without distraction.           

The Crowd Last Saturday - And Today?

Big downtown parades usually start in front of Union Station (lots of German-influenced architecture) and proceed east down Market Street, the main downtown east-west thoroughfare, towards the Arch. This was the scene last Saturday before the start of the St. Patrick's Day parade.

Today, the same space will hold our iteration of the national March For Our Lives. It was spurred by high school students from Parkland, Florida, after the massacre at their high school. The motivating idea it that our safety, our civil society, our very lives, are more important than the unbridled ownership of semi-automatic firearms. The main demonstration will be in Washington but local marches will take place in hundreds of cities across America. The activism and outrage of these students may bring a tipping point in the gun debate in our country.

The weather forecast for here looks miserable, cold and raining, but my wife, my daughter, my granddaughter and I will be there until we are soaked through.        

Not Done With The Green Stuff

A twelfth year begins...

The are still some decent pix from the St. Patrick's Day parade to use before I can shoot some new material. I'm not sure what this guy was about, or even what group he was with in the parade. The reference on the front of the cart is to an old TV secret agent series. I don't get it.      

I'm hoping to shoot the local iteration of March For Our Lives on Saturday morning but the weather looks bad. Thunderstorms in the forecast, but the weather here is changeable. We'll see.

But There Were Lots Of Happy People

Don't misinterpret yesterday's post. Those faces were just part of the human scene and there is no such thing as an uninteresting face. Most of the people attending the St. Pat's parades were in high spirits. The man in the first shot called out to me "this is the best picture you're gonna take today!" I really like the third one, with her Vermeer-ish face and skin.

TOMORROW: Saint Louis Daily Photo's 11th anniversary. Why, I wonder.       

When Irish Eyes Aren't Smiling

Is it just the chance of where my lens fell or a sign of the times? St. Patrick's Day parades in this country are associated with mirth (perhaps a bit lubricated). And indeed, most of the people up and down the two parade routes were entirely cheerful. But not everyone. This is hard to interpret.         

Boyz In Da Hood

Some guys hanging around downtown St. Louis for the St. Pat's parade: Shriners and Imperial Storm Troopers. Boys will be boys, but it might scare the kiddies. 

Personally, I would not care to wear a fez (especially one that says Arab Patrol across the bottom), but the Shriners do wonderful work for children's health care.      

Green Day

No, not the band.

The Lou has two St. Patrick's Day parades, and it's a big deal here. The smaller, more traditional and often more inebriated one takes place in a neighborhood with the lilting Celtic name of Dogtown. (Really.) The other is way bigger and goes through the city center, always on the Saturday before the event. Except yesterday, since Saturday was the 17th.

So the former started at 10 AM and the latter at 1 PM. I ran from one to the other and they were both packed. Tons more of this to come.

I think the caption for the bottom picture is what goes in must come out.      

They Call It Mellow Yellow

You have to be as old as I am to remember that song.

Just some color-themed pix from the otherwise green parade. A bee-costumed "O'Pollinator" from the Missouri Botanical Garden and those crazy Shriners in their trick mini cars.