Mar

17

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, from Paul Marino

March 17, 2015 |

2 Comments so far

1. marion ds dreyfus on March 20, 2015 5:27 am

   March 14, 2015
   The Green on Saint Paddy’s Day
   By Marion DS Dreyfus

   From a spike in cabbage sales to beer consumption, St. Patrick’s Day by the numbers.
   With the shamrocks sprouting in the nuch-desired recession of wintry weather, St. Patrick’s Day coming up, the personal finance website WalletHub released its St. Patrick’s Day by the Numbers “sit-rep” report. The Hub takes on the other green often attached to the sudsy, sodden merry-day. It highlights the greenbacks germane to this splurge of a pub-lick celebration. The report goes from the projected $4.6 Billion we’ll likely spend on St. Paddy’s 2015, to the $1.3 million market value of a pot o’ gold.

   Bars and saloons across the fruited plain will be open late into the wee wee hours. Teens will be sloshed as they reflect their inexperience with holding down large quantities of burpsome-ness, making the St. Pat’s parade one of the … chunkiest … spectacles of all the dozens of annual parades disturbing the peace of residents of 5th Avenue and its equivalents across the lower 49. Parents will hear tall tales of alibis as to where Donal, Devlin or Kellin spent their day (and/or night). Kids usually more given to One Direction, mogul Taylor Swift, Rihanna or Katy — or killa jams they heart — are on the curb, holding each other’s heads as they upchuck or stagger uncertainly in their shiny green parade gear and wave their crunched paper bags clutched at the neck holding uninterdicted booze. (Parents not over shoulder.)

   Not sure Hawaii has the same proclivities to frothy heads of hops as do the vast majority of Stateside states. But we’ll assume the surf stops for the 24 hours as surfers repair to chugalug their pints and kegs for a brief respite from the swells.

   St. Patrick’s Day ranks 4th among the calendar’s most popular drinking days – behind New Year’s Eve, Christmas and the Fourth of July. You could figure that out without a baedeker.

   Some telling stats include the average set-down of St. Pat partiers on that 15th of March: $36.50. That’s hard-to-come-by kid cash, not salary. As such, it’s maybe a moderate investment of funds for those not hauling in piles during the 9-to-5.
   In keeping with the motherland cuisine, there’s an upsurge of cabbage shipments of some 70% the days anterior to the hol. Last week, driving along many of the mega latifundia of cabbages (and wheat; and corn; and root vegs; even vast acreages of solar panels, evidently pulling in government subsidy–each solar panel is a quarter of the size they ought to be, and someone very shrewd is raking in the green much more than he’s raking in the rays) in lower Arizona and California fields, I saw men bending over chopping cabbages, putting them on rigs that slid the cabbages across a flat plane of metal to women bagging the cabbages in crinkly plastic bags, then placing them in slatted cartons.

   Worldwide, some 13 million pints of Guinness will be downed. (Seems too low an estimate, actually.)

   Not totally germane, but not completely unrelated, average median income for Irish-American households stands now at $60,967 (vs. average all-households at $52,250).

   And not to be forgotten, as MADD* would remind us: The average drunk driving fatalities from 2009 through 2013 has pegged at 276. Don’t glug then engage your GPS.
   Some years ago, we donned a green get-up and, allied with our Japanese friend, stood along the parade route and sold green bagels and dyed pistachio carnations. We made about $25 for the afternoon. (Does that boost the GDP or what?)
   Begorrah. Be careful out there. Drink up, lads, even if it’s only Green Tea.

   *Mothers Against Drunk Driving

2. Shane Hurren on March 22, 2015 1:00 pm

   St. Patrick’s Day, who doesn’t like driving out snakes? I mean, I know you guys do, right?