St. Patrick’s Day Parade
I got there a little late for Cleveland’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, apparently the last down Euclid Avenue because of expected construction of the Euclid Corridor Project later this year. I missed the head of the parade, but found a good perch on a first floor window sill at the under-reconstruction U.S. Court House on Superior and Public Square and started taking pictures.
I haven’t been to the St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York, actually, so this was my first such parade. It was bigger than I expected, lasting about two hours and with marchers that seemed to included every high school marching band in the county, as well as every civic organization that was even vaguely Irish, various local businesses (Weedman, superhero of lawn care; Segway of Cleveland; the city opera; local pubs; and so on), and, of course, the usual politicians. Interestingly, the county commissioner was driving an old version of the Bat Mobile and a car towards the end had a Batman hood ornament. I’m wondering if the Drew Carey Batmobile episode inspired this or was inspired by this.
The PD article noted there were some 300,000 people on the parade route, which is a significant fraction of the city’s population. Everyone knows that the New York parade is big, but I’m not sure what fraction of the city shows up for it. Interesting, a lot of the firetrucks on the route had FDNY markings on them with 9/11 references on them, even the vintage truck.
Lots of kids got the day off, either as marchers or as spectators. I’m not sure how they convinced small children to do Irish dancing on a float for the whole parade route, though.
Anyway, it was a nice parade. The weather was good and I got to play around with the 80-200mm lens.