St Paddy's Day Parade

It is that time of the year where everyone because Irish and celebrate the only way we know how: massive amounts of alcohol consumption in the public streets.

The annual St Paddy's Day Parade in Lower Greenville was a hit even before we got there. Jon and I had to meet Paul and Alex at Austin's apartment at 9 in the morning the day of the parade and things immediately got out of hand.

Austin lives in a loft above a restaurant surrounded by bars in Deep Ellum. Apparently the lofts in Deep Ellum are pretty relaxed because they, along with his neighbors, had no problem with us lighting fireworks in the apartment at all.

Paul and Alex finally showed up and they were ready to party, especially Alex. She has never been to the Lower Greenville Parade before and she could hardly contain herself. She started to construct a beer pyramid with the empty Coors Light Cans she had while Jon was trying to blow them up with fireworks and Austin was blaring music for everyone to hear.

After our pregame party was coming to a close, it was time to get on the train and head to the main festivities. The train ride only took about 20 minutes for us to get to the huge block party. The street is basically designed to be in two types of areas: the resident area and the business area.

The resident area was awesome. There were tons of house parties with people grilling out, live bands trying to out play the band that was down the street, and tons of people.

We knew a person who was having a party in the neighborhood, but didn't know exactly which street it was and no one in the group could get any type of phone reception at all, so we decided to hit a couple of bars first.

To be honest, I don't have a clue of what the name was of the first place we went to. All I remember was that there was no cover, not to crowded, and the drinks were pretty cheap. Since we wanted to pace ourselves, we figure 4 pitchers would do the job just fine. After running into a couple of friends and having some "don't worry, they are paid for" shots. It was time to head into the streets and see what was going on.

As we made tried to make our way to through the streets of Green Madness, we ran into a typical drunk douchbag who wanted to fight because the guy was just a plain douchbag. Apparently he was super pissed because he was waiting near the port-a-potty and Austin started to joke around with him. Things stepped up to another level when Alex, a small feisty girl, started to fun of the douchbag as well and that is when the guy started to raise his fists. His friends came out of nowhere and apologized for their friend by saying he is just drunk and this is the third time that he tried to fight someone. His girlfriend said that if tries to fight one more time then she would break up with him. He started to act like a 3 year old because he just started to do whatever the girl told him to. And she wasn't even that pretty either.

Whenever a drunken douchbag tries to fight you, you should always go to the nearest bar and make fun of him as soon as possible. We ended up at a place called St Martin where we hung out with a married couple for a little bit. This is also the place where Austin started to go downhill quickly.

Right when we get to the bar, it was nothing but Jameson shots for him. He bought our table a round and himself a couple of extra shots too. We were there for only 30 minutes or so, but we ended up making glass pyramids, messing with year books that were used as decorations, and sampling too much wine.

As we left St Martins, our group got split up in two groups for about 45 minutes. Jon, Paul, and Alex went to Trinity Hall (a pretty good Irish bar), while Austin and I hung with the bass player from Taddy Porter at Kirby's bar. Bad idea. Massive amounts of free wine, beer, and Jameson is never a good idea. I survived the ordeal, but it was a different story for Austin and the bass player.

At this point, Austin is drunk but still able to walk on his own. On the way to Trinity Hall to meet up with the rest of the group, Austin and I crashed a house party along the way. Anyone could tell that the owner wanted everyone to leave because he posted a sign that said "NO MORE BEER OR FOOD". The guy was right because the trashed house only had empty pizza boxes and a couple of floated kegs in the back.

After the slight detour, the two of us finally made it Trinity Hall where we quickly had to leave because everyone was too exhausted to keep on going. We have been out for 5 hours and up since 9, so it was time to head the apartment and rejuice the batteries.

After walking Austin to his apartment and making sure that he didn't fall, get sick, or pass out on the way, the rest of us went out and explored the bars of Deep Ellum with food in the stomachs. The bar scene wasn't that crowded at all which was great because everyone just had a good time and had no problem getting a drink.

Once we closed the bars down, we went back to the apartment and went to bed. The next morning was a little tough. Apparently we stayed up a little longer after the bars because there were more bottles than earlier, the floor was sticky from spilt drinks, ricked of fireworks, and for some reason, Paul's clothes were drenched in the shower. No one knew what happened and we just didn't even try to find out.

We packed the car up with all of our stuff and went home. I slept for almost the entire day and was still feeling the repercussions of actions from Saturday on Monday. It was a great time and cant wait for the actual St Paddy's Day to come.