From ladies in roller skates to kilt-clad laddies playing bagpipes, the Irish For a Day festival gave Long Beach the chance to let the green beer flow.
The main event was an hour-long parade that started at 1 p.m. on Saturday at Pine Avenue and Broadway. Attendees watched from the sun-bathed sidewalk as participants including First District Councilwoman Lena Gonzalez and Long Beach firefighters passed by in 80-degree weather.
“I think it’s great,” Shenanigans Irish Pub owner Theresa Rosczewski said, adding that the celebration’s originality is a good thing as it stretches beyond the holiday’s trademarked traditions of pinching and newfound levels of inebriation. “Who doesn’t like St. Patrick’s Day?”
Irish-music band Dublin Public performed in the background while Marko’s Treats handed out free ice cream to the crowd and rivers of dyed alcohol flowed.
Event organizer Mimi Masher said she came up with idea for the parade as a community-oriented way to celebrate the lesser-known holiday in comparison to the city’s “dozen Christmas parades.”
“Michelle Molina, [contributor to the Irish for a Day parade], and I decided that Pine Avenue was perfect for a parade, and we haven’t had one since a Latin American festival a few years ago,” Masher said. “We decided to honor our firemen [while] drinking green beer at the same time.”
Masher added that this is her first time stepping out of a march in order to plan one. She “reached out to everyone” she knew and is in the works of making the parade an annual event.
Wearing green, wishing on shamrocks and many of the other St. Patrick’s Day traditions that filled the air at the parade come from a variety of Irish roots.
“[A famous story said that St. Patrick] used the three leaves of the shamrock to explain the holy trinity – [father, son and spirit],” according to a video from the History Channel. “As a result, people in 18th century Ireland started wearing shamrocks on March 17 to signify their Irish
As for the phrase “luck of the Irish,” Long Beach resident and parade attendee Joe Gonzalez said he thinks the phrase comes from a lineage-linked tradition that “probably came from someone’s family.”
In an article from Mental Floss magazine, Edward T. O’Donnell – an associate professor of history at Holy Cross College – explained that the phrase stems from the success that Irish and Irish American miners experienced during the gold and silver rush years in the second half of the 19th century.
“Over time, this association of the Irish with mining fortunes led to the expression ‘luck of the Irish,’” O’Donnell wrote in the article. “Of course, it carried with it a certain tone of derision, as if to say, only by sheer luck, as opposed to brains, could these fools succeed.”
Long Beach resident and parade attendee Michele Aufrichtig solidified her stance on the “luck of the Irish” concept, saying that she believes in the superstition as well as the Celtic-based religion – Wicca – that promotes good luck.
“One day I went to the Museum of Latin American Art with my friend, and the museum was having a raffle,” Aufrichtig said. “I used creative visualization by envisioning myself winning the raffle, and I won. But don’t give this away to too many people, because then I won’t win anymore.”