Sunday was my first South Side St. Patrick’s Day Parade and I took my camera along. You can see a selection of my photos here in the gallery (don’t miss all 3 pages of photos). The Sun Times is reporting attendance at 340,000, a good number of whom were drunk before noon and yelling obscenities over the heads of the kids along the parade route. I stood on the side without the bars but was still surrounded by middle-aged adults not bothering to conceal their beer coolers.
Chicago actually has two St. Patrick’s Day parades. The downtown parade was held in the Loop on Saturday after 40 pounds of vegetable dye was poured into the Chicago River to turn in green. Attendance on Saturday was around 400,000 which puts about 740,000 people along parades routes in the city last weekend. One of the great parts about living in Chicago is the abundance of parades and festivals. Hopefully the next parade I attend won’t take almost two hours to get to on the bus!
