A month or so ago I was talk­ing with Pultz about all of the things two bearded, over-​educated, Cleve­land trans­plants are likely to talk about when forced by neces­sity to drink in a bar they nor­mally wouldn’t fre­quent. I admit to my snob­bery. One of the top­ics that came up was the impend­ing Saint Patrick’s Day Ama­teur Drink­ing Hour Vari­ety Show that Down­town Cleve­land turns in to every year. Pultz, as a self-​described pro­fes­sional drinker, does not imbibe pub­licly on this day.

I have another friend, a fel­low Notre Dame alum­nus named Liam, who is a con­nois­seur of the great Saint Patrick’s Day cel­e­bra­tions in the US: Chicago, Savan­nah, Cleve­land, New York City and Boston. The man knows his Irish-​American celebrations.

I have a Notre Dame cap with a sham­rock on it. I wear it year-​round, but only feel like an idiot when I wear it on Saint Patrick’s Day.

I wish every day in Down­town Cleve­land was as crowded with peo­ple as Saint Patrick’s Day. Euclid Avenue in par­tic­u­lar feels less like a road through ‘90s Sara­jevo and more like an actual city.

This is the part where I sound like a grouchy old man.

The major­ity of young peo­ple who roll down­town on this day, unfor­tu­nately, are ani­mals. The sense of enti­tle­ment and lack of respect for any­one else in the vicin­ity was astound­ing. Catholic schools in Cleve­land are closed for the day, and the hordes appear. I saw sev­eral home­less peo­ple loudly insulted by groups of drunken young’uns who then pro­ceeded to run into the traffic-​packed street, bang on car hoods, and yell pro­fan­ity in front of fam­i­lies; gen­er­ally not know­ing their ass from a hole in the ground.

Look, the peo­ple I’m talk­ing about are puk­ing green beer on street cor­ners, and hav­ing their friends haul them to West 6^th so they can fin­ish the boot & rally. The afore­men­tioned home­less folks have more deco­rum, and [if you par­don the delib­er­ate insen­si­tiv­ity for the sake of some lev­ity] can hold their liquor better.

On my twelve block walk to my bus stop, I saw rel­a­tives to this sort of behav­ior pretty much the whole time. I was actu­ally thanked by an old lady for not run­ning into her and let­ting her have the right-​of-​way. This is because the crowds of young’uns refuse to devi­ate from their course, which, due to drunk­en­ness, takes up the whole of the extended side­walks on Euclid. They’ll walk right through you.

The bus was filled with passed out kids from Padua head­ing back toward Parma, and the bus dri­ver almost had to pull over when one of them lit a cig­a­rette and wouldn’t put it out when the reg­u­lar pas­sen­gers hollered at him. There was an addi­tional RTA employee on the bus, whether for secu­rity sake or just headed home, who was mocked by the drunken white kids for not hav­ing the best English.

I’m pretty sure the solu­tion to this is to get these mall­fratrats to come down­town more often, so they can get a chance to learn how to act in public.

Maybe next year I won’t wear my hat.