St. Patrick's Day in Savannah

As I mentioned before, St. Patrick's Day is one of the most celebrated holidays in Savannah. I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but at some point a rather large Irish population took up residence in Savannah, and they've been celebrating ever since.

Some facts about the celebration:

• The parade has been run 186 times since its' inception.
• They have a grand marshal of the parade, who is selected by the St. Patrick's Day parade committee.
• A majority of the schools in the area close as there are quite a few students that are in the parade.
• Many of the more well-known Irish families will march in the parade as a group.
• The parade's planning and organization goes on for nearly the entire year through.

St. Patrick's Day coverage on the TV started with the Catholic Mass at St. John the Baptist church in downtown Savannah, which also is the starting point for the parade afterward. This year, they also had some church members who were attending from a parish in Ireland. The father giving the service was making jokes about the difficulty they were having in getting there due to inclement weather and flights.

Once the service was over, the parade started about 15 minutes later. I decided to watch it on television instead of going down there, as it would have been a huge hassle to get down there and find parking since almost all of the main streets were blocked off for the parade itself.

The channel I was watching had two commentators, both of whom have been attending the parade for quite a long time. They were actually set up with their booth right on the parade route, so that they could converse back and forth with the marchers as they went by.  The weather was overcast for most of the parade, but the rain didn't come until after the parade had long been over.

Some of the highlights of the parade itself:

• There was a man marching in his 80th parade. He is 96 years old.
• There were marching bands from all over Georgia, Florida, and even one from Virginia.
• There was a float for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who were in uniform as well.
• A majority of the Rangers stationed at Hunter Army Air Field marched, along with both their outgoing and incoming commanding officers.
• Wells Fargo had their stagecoach, along with Clydesdale horses pulling it.
• Based on the commentary, it seemed like the broadcasters had already started drinking despite the early hour.

Once the parade was over, the party pretty much continued the rest of the evening in downtown, with nearly all the main streets remaining closed until the following morning. For a lot of people in the town, it really seemed like St. Patrick's Day was the start to their weekend, despite it being on a Wednesday. It was a very interesting experience, and maybe someday I will have to go to the parade itself.

Weekend Thoughts for 3/14/2010

The city is in full-fledged St. Patrick's Day celebration mode, as the first sets of activities were yesterday. They were not kidding when they said that they celebrate St. Patrick's day like nobody else.

Some thoughts from this weekend:

• We went downtown on Saturday night with some of Brynn's co-workers, and the downtown was about as busy as I would have expected for a Saturday night. The part I was not expecting was how decked out in green everyone already was.
• We decided to walk around early Sunday afternoon downtown, and did our first exploring of River St. As you might expect, this is the road that is directly adjacent to the Savannah River. Lots of little shops and restaurants, with a feel similar to the one given off by Old Sacramento. In nearly every store front: St. Patrick's Day garb.
• Many of the fountains in the downtown area, including the large one in Forsyth Park, have already been dyed green in anticipation of Wednesday.
• The actual parade through downtown Savannah will start at 10 AM on Wednesday. As a result of this, many downtown businesses that will not profit from being open that day will be closed or on reduced hours (as is the case with Regions Bank, who will be open from 9 AM to 10 AM that day.)
• For the most part, the weather here has been pretty sunny this week. The humidity is slowly starting to pick up, and I can feel it when I walk out of the house if it's higher than I expected. A lot of it reminds me of the weather in Hawaii, but not quite as warm necessarily.
• I attended an orientation meeting with the Savannah chapter of the Red Cross so that I could start doing some volunteer work here. They need volunteers a lot more than my previous chapter in Murray did(not that Murray doesn't). I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but the Savannah chapter is responsible for an area from the Florida border south to the South Carolina border in the north east, and part of the way across the state back towards Atlanta. This area includes over 1.1 million residents. So it sounds like they're going to have a lot of good work for me to do.
• I am also waiting to hear back from Accountemps about some short-term accounting work here as well. The city of Savannah has almost 300,000 people, so they are in need of some accounting temps as well. Wish me luck on that one.
• As you probably read last week, I've started writing for a fantasy sports blog called FakeTeams. If fantasy baseball is something that interests you, check it out, as we're gearing up for the start of the season with our positional rankings.

A Week in Savannah

I actually spent most of last week hanging out with my sister who was in for a visit, but we did see some new things. Some thoughts on things we saw:

• Five Guys Burgers are really, really good. They are all over the country, although it doesn't appear that there are any ones in California. It reminds me a lot of In-n-Out burger. Not quite the same, but very good. Their fries are actually a little bit better, and supposedly they have some seasoned fries that are also good.
• Wiley's Championship BBQ was listed as the top restaurant in all of the Savannah area. And they did not disappoint. The side dishes were not the best we've had, but the BBQ was definitely worth it. We will have to go back there again.
• During this week, President Obama made a day trip to the Savannah area. The biggest news to come out of the trip locally was the fact that he made an unexpected trip to Mrs. Wilkes' Boarding Room. Which apparently didn't really bode so well with the most famous culinary resident of Savannah, Paula Deen.
• Leopold's Ice Cream is downtown, and makes excellent sundaes and shakes. One of the owner's relatives is a movie director (Stratton Leopold), and the place is well decorated with memorabilia from some of the movies he's been a part of.

The town is gearing up for St. Patrick's Day, to the point where there are quite a few businesses in the downtown area that will be open only until 10 am to allow for the parade through downtown. The town will supposedly swell from its normal size of 300,000 towards 1 million. It is apparently the largest celebration outside of Mardi Gras all year long. It will be interesting to see how it goes. So far though, Savannah has definitely been the most interesting city to be sure.