"Sluttily-attired"

The lack of colour on the blog as of late has troubled me somewhat, so I thought that I'd post some photographs and detail my St. Patrick's Celebrations in America.

First of all, I'm not really going to compare it to anything from Ireland, since the craziest St. Paddy's day I've ever had was pretty much a quiet drink with friends.

First and foremost; the Americans, in their infinite wisdom, have dubbed the day "St. Patty's Day" - much to the chagrin of an anonymous commenter on the blog, but it honestly doesn't bother me, as the 't' sound is said much like the 'd', and using the 't' from Patrick seems less arbitrary than... Alright, I'll stop now, I'm sure you catch my drift.


My usual foursome of friends and I made our way to the Delta Tau Delta frat house in Pittsburgh on the Friday before Patty's day- the building is here photographed the following morning behind my lovely assistant, Dan.

Somebody went to a lot of hassle to get these cans up here, hence their inclusion here.

Anyway, the party at the frat was pretty lame; by which I mean it wasn't quite my scene. For a number of my friends, however, the scene I am about to describe will sound like heaven. The festivities took place in a small area, filled to the brim with drunk, sluttily-attired girls, bumping and grinding to the loud R&B, while getting beers from the bar that were covered by their $10 entry-fee. The gender-ratio was definitely in favour of the males, but my two buddies on the pull failed to score female companionship with their half-hearted advances.

Thankfully, we didn't stay long at the party before retreating upstairs to frat boy Eddie's room. The building was laid out like a typical college dorm-type building, so think of halls filled with eight or so two-to-a-room bedrooms sharing a disgusting bathroom, and you're not far off what was experienced.

Everyone was content to hang around upstairs and drink, and we had a pretty fun night - the main event being the battle of the large-fingered-freaks, who wanted to settle once and for all who had the longest fingers.

Eddie and Tony square off in one of the oddest disputes I've seen in recent times - Eddie was crowned the victor for those interested

We slept in, and missed the parade, much to Eddie's disappointment, and took a bus to Wendy's (think McDonald's, but a hair more upmarket, and much tastier, in my humble opinion).


We spent a good two hours at Market Square, and along the way witnessed multiple examples of public urination, both male and female. Market square was a sea of green, with a great deal of people drunk beyond belief. People had their faces painted, or sported t-shirts claiming to be Irish.

There were a handful of port-a-potties dotted around the place, but nowhere near enough to satisfy the urinary needs of the assembled. It took ten minutes of poking from one restaurant to another before realising that every bathroom in Pittsburgh was 'out of order' for the day. Likely story. Rejected, I relieved myself, like a hundred others before me, and a thousand others after, between two wheelie bins next to a Starbucks.

That was really the only thing worthy of note at Market Square - eventually we got bored and wandered to Station Square, which had a much better atmosphere, owed in part to the band playing authentic Irish songs, which was nice. As the group of us walked deeper into the crowd, we came across a large circle, where people were watching some spectacle. Two drunken gentlemen were dancing around, much everyone's delight. I managed to get to the front of the crowd, and looked at one of the purveyors of this drunken revelry.

Dave?
Randomly enough, my roommate was one of the men at the centre of all this attention, and for fifteen minutes of so I watched him in hysterics as he stomped around like some crazed WWE wrestler, goading his drunken accomplice into repeatedly elbow-dropping his jacket on the hard ground. The picture above is one of maybe thirty or so, and despite the poor shot composition, best captures the mood.

That was my St. Patrick's day - pretty standard fare, from what I've been told. A public, seemingly-citywide day of debauchery, in which, insultingly, 'everybody is Irish' (by which they mean drunk), except, of course, the lone Irish kid.