Just Another Day Off..

It’s St Patrick’s Day, somewhere, but not here in Palm Springs. People often ask if I miss Boston, especially around this holiday. I tell them about my time living on the parade route in South Boston, on Dorchester St, for a few years. The undead masses reveling in the streets, people asking to use our bathroom, people just using the parking area or stairs as a bathroom anyway. What a mess it was. 

Getting to work was even worse, no way to get an Uber, if it were even a thing when I lived there- I don’t think it was, as I used to take a lot of taxis. There wasn’t any reasonable way to walk to Downtown that I was aware of, and it wasn’t like you could walk anywhere anyway. The T was always closed based on the direction, I would battle my way to Broadway Station only to have someone tell me it was closed Northbound, and then fight my way to Andrew Square only to have someone tell me that I needed to go back to Broadway. For the record, it was Broadway after all. I remember getting off at Park Street, running past the crowds to finally breathe free air after being stuck in beer-soaked, sweaty purgatory on the Red Line. The free air didn’t last long. The bars had lines down the sidewalk, I remember even the usually empty Bertucci’s location near work had a line. 

By the time I got to work, a musty little oyster cellar that wasn’t built for such business, I would wiggle my stocky frame past the people lined up on the stairs waiting to get in. There was a staff Jameson bottle my buddy had hidden down in dry storage, so that was my first stop of course. It wouldn’t be the last time during the shift that my lips would commune with it..

I remember one year the entire bar was full for the whole shift, shoulder to shoulder, of people chugging Bloody Mary’s. They drank us out of gallons of Bloody mix, and the ingredients to make more, and ate all of the shrimp that we used as garnishes. When I told the mob that sad news, they asked what they were supposed to have after six bloodies, and I answered, I believe, “Pancakes and a fucking nap?”. 

If I worked the day shift, I would usually go to the more famous oyster place down the street, as for some reason it wasn’t too hard to get a beer there despite the crowd. Oyster shuckers watch out for each other I guess. One year we went to one of the more “shit-show” bars in the neighborhood for some reason. My friend and I were in a hurry to get our first post-shift cocktail and we ordered a “something and coke”, which was unusual for us. Our crew were, to a man, Boilermaker types. I seized some highballs over some frat boys confronting us that the drinks were for the two girls they were talking to. I wasn’t having it, and was covered in oyster guts no doubt, so eventually I won. 

We both blacked out that night, my buddy and I, despite not having had anything else after that. I woke up on the couch later in the evening with no memory of getting home, he had a similar experience at his house. I’m guessing we got a dose that was meant for those girls. Hopefully the guys didn’t have a second one ready. 

There were always the brawls. Faneuil Brawl. You can probably still find videos on the internet of the street fights downtown on St Patrick’s Day, that is if kids still fistfight, I honestly have no idea. They probably just fight on Twitter or something. Everyone talked about the fights. The thing they never talked about with St Patrick’s Day in Boston was the urine, and the bodily substances in general. The ever-present horse piss in Faneuil Hall was replaced with human piss, and spilled beer, and vomit. There was nowhere to go. It’s hard to even blame anyone. The only move was to be coherent enough to get into line for a bathroom 20 minutes before you actually have to go. That sort of awareness doesn’t last long.

There are many things I like about living in the desert. There are a lot of things I miss about Boston. I can’t say there’s much I miss about St Patrick’s Day, except maybe the sense of camaraderie that we veterans of a thousand bar holidays would feel seeing each other free when the shift was over. What about the money, you ask? It was usually gone by the end of the week. The gray hairs last forever though. Happy St Patrick’s Day.