You may think that with the NCAA revving up, seasonal insanity is just starting. But it’s really over: the true March Madness — St Patrick’s Day week in Chicago — is about as extreme as it gets for total party overload. [Outside of New Orleans, I guess.] It’s a stupid drunken mess.
The parade — and the simultaneous bacchanal throughout the city — always takes place the Saturday before the actual SPD. Although the parade doesn’t start downtown until afternoon, along the Southport strip, the whole thing starts up at about 11, because some of the taverns serve brunch. Partially because of the traffic and the unlikelihood of finding convenient parking — but also to wisely avoid a potentially ugly DUI situation — a lot of the kids hire party buses to shuttle them from saloon to saloon.
The whole idea of getting shitfaced just for the sake of getting shitfaced is really repellent to me. But the whole tenor of the enterprise just reinforces my hypothesis about Chicago as the nation’s epicenter of a perpetual fratboy/sororitygirl environment.
Despite my revulsion at the whole spectacle, I nevertheless love the getups, even if it dangerously approaches cosplay.
Headgear is particularly significant
But shoes are important, too
these appear to have been painted green, rather than having been made that way originally.
A lot of the girls try, with varying degrees of success, to appear “cute” with a combo i saw a lot of: deelyboppers and plaid boots
but a lot of them just wanted a chance to look like the sluts they do on any given night out, except in green
You’ve really got to wonder whether a lot of these people actually have mirrors in their houses.
Generally, though, the guys pull it off with a lot more panache than the girls
[guy on left evidently showing his allegiance to the northerners]
yeah, the fedora has become sort of the hipster emblem, but I think it really works here.
Wish I could have gotten an auburn-haired colleen I spied from down the blockin a short, tartan plaid belted trench coat, over what appeared to be kind of a green fairy princess dress with a full tulle skirt that poufed out from the bottom of the trench, with green tights and gold ballet flats. I was so focused on her costume, it wasn’t until I looked up that I realized she was Asian, and the red hair had streaks of pink and orange. And she had a little shamrock painted above her right cheekbone. Maybe next year.
