Amateur Hour

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 6th 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.